I am the mother of a 5 year old child myself and I understand the importance of formation of healthy eating behaviour practically from birth. And based on the topic of today’s interview about consumption of junk food and its impact on children, I would start with the premise why we, as parents, create conditions for our children to indulge in high sodium and sugar junk?
Nutritional problems, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, obesity and chronic diseases are being increasingly discussed around the world. Balanced diet and its role, primarily in childhood, is fast taking center stage on a global level.
It is time we stop associating any task, chore or reward everyday activities with food. This is a classic example of poor parenting.
In quite many children across cultures, the case of emotional experiences, difficult psychological periods, stress – food will become the psychological compensation. It is for parents to create optimal conditions required to steer a child’s diet and do not give prerequisites for skewing it according to the prevalent mood that point in time.
This often happens without our knowledge, when in perception of children, frequent repetitions of certain events are centered around food such as:
– rewarding a child for good behaviour or completing a set of tasks (here’s ice cream for you!)
– punishment and its co-relation with food (you didn’t complete your homework, so no dessert)
– establishing taste benchmarks with food (finish your veggies and you get chocolate. So veggies taste awful and must be followed with good tasting sugary chocolate)
What does this do to our children?
As parents, we need to be constantly aware of our behaviour in terms of associating food with events, accomplishments and rewards / punishment. If we want to raise children absent any unhealthy relationships with food, now is the time to wean any meaningless association of consumption with life events (homework completion does not equal candy bar).
It is for parents to create optimal conditions required to steer a child’s diet and do not give prerequisites for skewing it according to the prevalent mood that point in time. It is unhealthy to establish a relation of daily, mandatory tasks with food.
Dr. Olga Bezugla specializes in the development of personalized diet, taking into account the following medical areas: therapy, cardiology, endocrinology, and gastroenterology. She is also a certified specialist in the use of the ketogenic diet in medicine, healthy lifestyle and anti-aging nutrition coach.
She can be reached on her Instagram account: @dr.bezugla_olga
