Food And Kids: Who Decides?

Remember being told to clean your plate when you were a kid? Or that children in Africa are starving and therefore you should eat everything in front of you? Now that I'm a mom -- especially one of picky eaters -- I'm more conscious than ever about the messages I send my kids about food.

 

A new Temple University study about how children choose their food portions has me thinking about the way I serve dinner. We don't typically eat family-style dinners around here, unless it's a holiday or we have a big group for some reason. Normally, when I'm done cooking, I plate everybody's food for them and bring it to the table.

 

Why?

 

Because that's the way my mother always did it.

 

During my year with Shape, I learned that some of my traditional ways of thinking about food were traditions that were best left in the past. When somebody puts food on a plate for you, you typically eat it, right? It's almost a mindless thing: Here's my dinner and I'll eat until it's gone. When you're in charge of your own portions, though, you're able to take your own hunger level into account, taking only the amount of food you feel like eating. By serving yourself, you (hopefully) learn to make choices based on actual hunger, not on somebody else's idea of an appropriate serving size.

 

A valuable skill for a healthy life, no?

 

So tonight, when dinner's ready, I'll call my kids over and ask, "What would you like?" and "How much?" After all, the choice should be theirs.

 

 

Comments

[Allison]

I actually think that people clean their plate because that is what they were taught, not because it is some instinctive thing. I certainly was expected to. I serve my kids and put the plate on the table, but neither one of them ever seems to feel obligated to finish and we never make them (sadly, my husband and I generally clean it for them). But, I think because I have never told them they have to clean their plate, they don't, unless they are really hungry. If they want more, they ask for it, if they don't they just say they are finished.

[MizFit]

I love that idea, Dara.
and Im starting tomorrow with my daughter.

[Dara Chadwick]

Allison, I grew up with the "clean your plate" mantra, too. I think it's great that your kids know how to listen to what their bodies are telling them.

Let me know how it goes with your daughter, MizFit.