hawthorne: how i balance my son’s sweet tooth with a healthy school lunch bag
i’m not against treats, but i know it’s important to get enough of the good stuff for young brains and bodies to develop and have energy—as opposed to the mania of sugar highs and lows
4 minute read
when parents can appeal to kids' tastes, they're happy to eat their healthy lunch.
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parenting isn’t always easy. if your kid’s a candy lover, giving them apple slices is just not that appealing. my son could eat skittles for breakfast (and lunch and most likely dinner) if i let him. they’re sweet, colourful like a glossy rainbow of flavours, and fun to pour into your hand, gobble down and go for the next handful when your mom has her head turned. so far, dentist visits have gone well, and my son actually enjoys his nightly flossing routine with floss sticks.
i’m not against treats, but i know it’s important to get enough of the good stuff for young brains and bodies to develop and have energy—as opposed to the mania of sugar highs and lows. this is especially key for school days when kids have to pay attention to learn and participate.
while he has his favourite candy on a weekly or twice-weekly basis, i’m dedicated to a healthy lunch bag for school. he likes a plain butter sandwich, carrot sticks or bell pepper strips, cucumber slices and some fruit like clementine segments or green grapes. i also put in a small container of roasted sunflower seeds for protein and healthy fat.
include healthy sweets to boost lunch bag appeal
now here’s the sweet part: fruit bars, fruit leather or granola bars are good. but my new discovery is freeze-dried fresh fruit. you can get berries, bananas or mixed fruits with no added sugar. the intensity of the sweet flavour is deliciously amped up by the freeze-drying process, which also preserves the texture and nutrients of the fruit (or so i’ve read). as a point of mom pride, my son really loves this. and they don’t spoil if they’re left in his backpack for a while.
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does it replace candy in his diet? no, but it’s all about the little things that add up to a healthy life.
my next goal for my son when it comes to food is having him help make his lunch, building in the “ownership” of the getting ready for school routine. he is autistic and developmentally delayed, so learning is at a different pace. but i’ve started with helping him learn to make his own toast and peanut butter as a snack at home. then i’ll move to the butter sandwich and veg prep.
tips to engage kids in food experiences
there’s a lot to be said for getting kids interested in making food that they like to eat. if you can move their attention away from junk food and take-out burgers, then it can help improve their eating choices. it can also equip them with skills to carry through the teen years into adulthood. everyone needs to know how to cook simple meals. our health, as science has shown, is closely tied to what we eat and how we move.
next summer, i’m planning to register my son in a week-long kitchen camp program where students talk about recipes, shop for groceries and then make meals together. he already likes to help add spices to dishes and put on my oven mitts to take things out of the oven when the timer sounds.
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as well, i’m always looking for tips from experts and was impressed reading about the work of an edmonton dietitian and public health researcher who did a study on kids’ eating behaviours to find out how youth really feel about the food they eat. instead of relying on adults to provide the answers, she went directly to the kids to hear from them.
alexa ferdinands had groups of girl guides participate in cooking sessions followed by one-on-one interviews to talk about their experiences. the participants cooked alongside the researchers to make nachos or cookies, which they ate together, so researchers could observe their food interactions and then hear their feedback.
study: kids keen to learn about healthy eating and cooking
the most significant observation was that kids are really interested in learning about healthy eating and want to improve their food skills. in fact, ferdinands says kids need more opportunities to learn. and those learning moments shouldn’t always come with being graded or having a parent hovering over their shoulder.
as she put it in a news release, “if we really want to improve young people’s diet quality, we need to know more about how they actually perceive food, access it, prepare it and eat it, and that means we need to be engaging with them directly.”
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this is encouraging for me to hear because hands-on learning is the best way my son learns things. if i can give him more opportunities to experiment with and talk about food, he may reach for grapes or those freeze-dried strawberries more often instead of stockpiling his candy stash.
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