Parental Food Warriors

There are a lot of things, which before becoming a parent and looking at your future parenting self, you swear you will never do.  Some of mine were organic milk only, never using that mean, frustrated, mommy dearest voice in public (or otherwise) with my children, very little TV, potty training on the early side and almost no sugar.  How blissful ignorance is.  I’m zero for zero on the things-I-will-never-do-as-a-parent scorecard. 

I recently started reading a book called, Sugar Blues by William Dufty, which has me thinking a lot about my diet as well as my daughter’s.  I’m not very far into the book but the basic message seems to be, “sugar is bad, evil, unnecessary for our health and has saturated the American diet.”  If I wasn’t feeling unhappy about the amount of sugar we’ve been letting our daughter eat lately, then I surely do now.   

Another recent event has brought both the diet and health of my daughter and our entire family even more to the forefront of my mind.  My mother recently found out that she has significant blockage in the arteries surrounding her heart and is scheduled for bypass surgery in the next week.  This is shocking news as my mother is one of the healthiest eaters I know, exercises, doesn’t smoke and has never been overweight.  According to her doctor, genetics play a huge roll in heart disease.  Had she not taken such good care of herself she would be in much worse shape. 

I am more committed to a healthy diet and lifestyle for my daughter (and our entire family) now more than ever.  There is a chance that we do not share the same genetic fate as my mother but there is a chance we do.  I want to do everything I can to instill a healthy diet and habits in my daughter while I still have a major influence on these decisions. 

Something I’ve always found difficult about the idea of “eating healthy” is that what is deemed as healthy seems to always be changing.  Have you seen the USDA’s new version of the famous food pyramid?  The old pyramid was imprinted on the brains of Americans for decades.  How can I trust that the new one is actually improved?  Here’s an interesting article published by the Harvard School of Public Health that highlights some of the faults in the old USDA pyramid as well as the new and improved and then unveils it’s own version of a healthy diet and lifestyle.  An interesting point that this article makes is that the old pyramid “was based on shaky scientific evidence” that “barely changed over the years to reflect major advances in our understanding of the connection between diet and health.”  Because science is always changing, how can we trust that the information we’re being given isn’t going to be negated in a few years? 

The current “trend” or science tells us that a diet with large quantities of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and good fats is the healthiest.  That makes sense to me.  I then read articles about the quality of the food that is available to us in the United States and how little we know about where our food comes from, how it’s been grown and the hundreds of chemicals used to make it “pretty”.  Organic and local are two of the labels used to market a higher quality of food these days.  I would love to say that I completely trust the label “organic” but to be honest, I have no idea how the organic growing process is different from the one that isn’t.  Is it really as pure as it sounds?  Not to mention the major difference in price between organic and conventional.  While a trip to the local farmer’s market is lovely and a fun family outing, it is not, by any definition, easy on the pocket book.  Clearly no one wants to be feeding themselves or their families food full of chemicals and pesticides but there doesn’t seem to be a trustworthy, economical and user-friendly method for making these choices.  Don’t even get me started on the expense and confusion surrounding fish and what species are considered healthy.

Another interesting challenge that can present itself when providing and modeling healthy eating habits for our children is separating our emotional and cultural ties to certain foods.  I have a major sweet tooth and love carbohydrates.  How could I not offer something to my daughter that I loved as a child and still love?  I love how excited she gets about going out for ice cream.  My husband was raised in a culture where fresh white bread and sweet pastries for breakfast are everyday staples.  While he has been very tolerant of my insistence on whole wheat pasta, I know that he would prefer the standard, white, semolina based. 

While I have a lot of doubts and mistrust about the food system in America, I also feel that we have made a lot of progress.  I feel lucky to be living in a time and city where we have so many choices and ways of thinking about food.  I hope I still feel that way in 30 or even 10 years as both my daughter and I get older and face the consequences, good or bad, of our genetics, diet and lifestyle choices.