Earlier this week, I shared my answer to the common problem of whether or not to allow our children to have “junk food” when we try so hard so hard to feed them well at home.
Although my post had nine points to it, I still had more to say. Plus, through all of the (great!) comments, I realized I should clarify a few things as well. This is an important enough of an issue, that I think it should be talked through thoroughly, so I hope you don’t mind me taking another post to discuss it.
What the 80/20 rule looks like for us
I shared the thought of using the 80/20 rule in my first post. I believe I got that idea from an article in the Wise Traditions journal. But, as many of you know, this “rule” isn’t an option for many. It’s not always been an option for me, and it’s certainly not an option for my five-year old right now. In fact, in a post I wrote a couple of years ago when I really had to be on a strict-as-strict-can-be diet, I wrote this:
I used to take a little pride in not being too “extreme” in my “nourishing” food pursuit. While I tried to cook very healthy at home, I wasn’t against a white sugar/white flour dessert here and there, and I would be willing to have “compromise” food often enough, if out and about. Although overall our diet was quite healthy (and way above par compared to most), I was willing to “fudge” depending on our schedule and where I was. I didn’t want to be one of those extreme “health nuts” who turned their noses up on birthday cakes at parties, and couldn’t get together with other families if they cooked the meal. This was the most gracious pursuit, but not always the safest. While I don’t want to encourage anyone to be an ungracious guest, I do want to point out how the matter lies in our culture today.
When my health starting getting really poor (not necessarily caused by how I ate, but from other sources, such as long term stressful situations for a few years), I really had to swallow my pride and become “extreme”. Birthday cakes were definitely out and I always tried to host get togethers so I wouldn’t stress anyone out, making dairy, sugar free meals for me. Although, I have a few wonderful friends who have graciously been more than willing to cook a special meal for me. There are just a few places that my husband and I can go out to eat now as well (and even there, I feel I am compromising).
Think about it. Refined Sugar cane has only been made widely available for a few hundred years. And in those few hundred years, it has only been more recently where we have started using it in everything. When it was first “widely available”, it was still a rare treat for the common man.
But what do we have now? An extreme overuse of sugar. It’s not only in all of the desserts we consider normal, rather than special fare, but it’s in everything else as well! It’s even hard to find “health food products” that aren’t loaded with some type of sugar cane product.
As I have had to cut out all sugar cane products and realized how” extreme” I had to become to completely eliminate it , I realized I was not the extreme one. Our food culture is extreme….” Who is the extreme one?
Just cutting back our diets to be a whole food, nourishing, diet without certain ingredients, can make us seem extreme solely because our food culture is extreme.
Cane sugar is just one of many examples. Let’s say you are inclined to let your child have a small slice of birthday cake at a party, as you feel they won’t be bothered by a sugar-y treat every once in a while. But when you get to the party, you realize that the cake is brightly dyed, and one of your absolute “never” items is food dye. Even when trying to be less strict, you can find yourself in the same position as before.
All to say, while many of us even should feel more freedom to eat less than stellar food items every once in a while, it’s not always going to be possible.
So what does this actually look like in our family?
Well, for me I went through a period of having to be extremely careful about my diet. If I got even a smidgen of dairy, I would get extremely bad stomach aches. I remember a time when I ate one bite of rice with butter on it, and that alone gave me a lot of pain. So, my diet was 100% dairy-free and strict and extremely nourishing. And it paid off. I healed and now I can eat dairy without it bothering me (though I really shouldn’t, as over time it will start to stress my body again).
Now, my husband and I can go on dates and I can enjoy a crusty piece of baguette smeared with butter while we wait for our main meal. We try to eat at restaurants that serve good food, though perhaps not quite the same standards at home. There are many amazing restaurants in our area that use higher quality, pure ingredients that I feel great about eating. But when I was on my 100% diet, it was hard to eat at any of them.
My daughter has been on a fruit and sweetener-free diet for quite a while now. It’s not been very fun for her, in all truthfulness. We recently started going to a new doctor who ordered a bunch of tests for her (I will write about this experience soon), and found out that she doesn’t need to stay on the absolutely sweet-free diet anymore. We were very grateful. But the point is, she was on a 100% sweet free diet, and there was no 20% leeway for her.
She still continues to be on a gluten-free, and dairy-free diet, and is now egg-free as well (I will also talk about why soon). So she doesn’t have the freedom to have cake and cookies at a birthday party.
All to say, know that you are not alone if you have to be absolutely strict in your diet, despite the restrictions it can place on your social life.
But, I do think that it’s valid to point out that it being absolutely necessary to stay on a 100% strict diet is not the goal. My goal for my daughter is the same as it is for me. I want her to heal so that she can have an occasional unhealthy treat without it having consequences to her health.
In an interview, Donna Gates and Dr. Campbell-McBride share that the the goal of their gut healing diets (the Body Ecology Diet and the GAPS diet) is to heal the gut, so that a child could have birthday cake at a party without bad results. (That interview starts with this video. It’s specifically about autistic children, but really can be related to any gut issues). This thought has lead us to take further steps in working to heal our daughter’s complaints. We realized that ill-health shouldn’t be kept in check by a strict diet, but rather that true health is when one has a bit of freedom without fear of adverse consequences. While many of us may not find the path to 100% healing (I know that many of you readers deal with very severe health issues), I think that our hope and goal should be to have such robust health, we can splurge on occasion.
However, for those of you who are already in good health, you may find that if you give yourself too much freedom with the 20% rule, that you end up not feeling as well, or it could lead you down the path of eating too many sweets at other times. I’ve found that it is the easiest to stay away from junk food by being strict about not eating it often.
But, the good news is, if you eat really well most of the time, you will most often stop cravings. While I have found good sleep needed to prevent me craving sweet things (something that can be hard to get with young children), most often I find that if I am doing a good job avoiding excess sweeteners, and really filling up with plenty of quality foods, I don’t crave or even desire junk food at all. It’s easy to avoid eating compromise foods because I don’t really care whether I have it or not.
That’s what I want to pass on to my children. I can definitely see that in my daughter Elena. When she first started eating, she was attracted to really nourishing, healthy food. Recently, she has been able to eat fruit and naturally sweetened things again. But she really doesn’t like them to be too sweet. Joel made us a smoothie the other day that had enough banana in it to make it pretty sweet. She wasn’t able to even finish it! Often, if you eat really well, you won’t really like junk food. I don’t know what she will want to eat when she is a teenager, but I do hope to help develop a palate that appreciates good, healthy food.
I don’t want her to feel that junk food is a forbidden pleasure, rather, I want her to just not be that interested in it.
While the desire to eat like everyone else is a common desire for any child, I hope that my children can also desire to feel good. It’s obvious with our oldest that she realizes that what she eats affects how she feels. I hope that that lesson holds her closer to the diet she has grown up eating as she gets older.
Again, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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Thank you for a balanced view. Pride can sneak in with just about anything, can’t it? I am one of those who cannot eat desserts because they give me large cystic acne breakouts. I’m seen as extreme even in Real Food circles. The 80/20 rule is certainly fine for some people, but I honestly get a little tired of it being shoved down my throat. I think it was intended to calm the fears of people who tend to be obsessive about healthy eating, but it is often misused to excuse poor choices.
Like you, I find it very difficult to find a healthy balance so it’s easier for me to just abstain.
I have had to be super strict, dairy free, alcohol free, grain free, sugar free, low carb, etc, etc, etc. I am lucky that I am in a place where I can have a little bit when I want! I am sure that I will be in a place at another time in my life where I have to be more strict. It’s hard. I’m low grain, refined sugar free right now and I feel ok.
It’s a hard balance for kids though. With my daughter it seems to be the norm in preschools for there to be a couple of food allergies. We just had the privilege of going in and cooking gluten free/dairy free/nut free with her class. When the knowledge starts young it is almost “normal”. It’s hard, isn’t it? How do we choose to do the right thing – how do we choose what the “right thing” is?
We are very lucky as a culture that we can spend so much time and energy worrying about our diets and what we put into our mouths.
Faun,
Actually, considering times of famine and need in the past and now as well, historically people spent a lot of time thinking about what they put into their mouths. Historically, people feasted and celebrated the harvest because they had so much thankfulness that they had a harvest to gather. It’s really only in our society now that we DON”T think about what goes into our mouth, and that’s when we can end up just eating whatever our industrialized food corporations package up. Food is a blessing that we can’t live without, and should be very thankful for. Our society actually thinks much less about food because we don’t have the daily worry of it.
I love your comment from your previous post about our society is the extreme with sugar in EVERYTHING and cutting it out is the healthy balance. I have often thought this. I sometimes wonder what our ancestors would think about our diets today. They did not have the sugar like we do…white sugar was very rare, or non extistant for most people even 200 years ago. And I often think that we need to get back to eating like they did. But it is definitely hard to teach kids this when they are offered sugar at every turn…lolipops in preschool every time they finish a homework poem. Parties in elementary school where everything is brightly colored and utterly devoid of nutrition. Cookies at church, or lolipops, or m&m’s, or jellybeans or even Fruit loops and fruit snacks. It is extreme to have it at every turn and there are so few people who actually see that. It gets very overwhelming to try to keep it all out. I really don’t know how to do that.
However, I am teaching my girls about the nasty chemicals in things and they are slowly learning. Because I am interested in this, they are becoming so. I often tell them I would rather they not eat something because of the yucky chemicals in it. So they are learning.
I really appreciate this post. I’m in the 100% phase of a year long health battle. I needed to read this for encouragement (I’m not alone) and for hope (maybe someday all my efforts will pay off and I will be healed?). I echo your feelings and your take on the kids. My cravings are gone and while I would love to be able to eat “normal” again I hope that in the long term this will be worth it.
Just for the encouragement of any others out there. I’m currently not able to eat:
honey, soy, wheat, gluten, 100% of all dairy, corn (nothing corn, not even corn syrup or dextrose), shellfish, citrus, sugar in any form, nuts, peanuts. It’s really hard but I’m making it through it. Hopefully next year will be better.
There are many things we don’t allow in our home (such as soda) which we do allow our children to eat when we go out to eat or when visiting a friend. As my children grow up and have experienced how they feel eating those things, they usually choose to eat in a healthy manner. It is not unusual to have all my kids order water when we eat out or order a sandwich with a whole grain bread. I think the key to getting to this point is to set a standard for our family, but allow children to explore other options in a limited way.
Great points. This issue has been really stressful for me. My husband does NOT care whether we eat real food or not and eats terribly. He respects my decisions on how to feed our children, especially after my children developed eczema and allergies,but he still keeps his “treats” around the house -like soda, cheetos, and twizzlers -and it is hard for me to explain to my kids why Daddy eats “junk food” and we don’t. Now they are young, and the issue isn’t too bad yet, but I worry about when they are older and I can’t control every bite that enters their mouths. Does anyone else have a spouse who is not on board with real food? I’d like to hear how others handle the situation.
My husband is the same. It really bothered me for years. My children are 7 and 4 and they tell my husband ” If you want your body to take care of you, you need to take care of your body!” Cracks me up. I decided if he wants to eat junk he can do so out of the house but if I find junk in the house I just toss it out. It’s not something I want them exposed to in our home when they are bombarded with it outside of the home!
I asked my husband to watch Food Inc. with me because I knew changing our food habits would cost a bit more and I wanted us to be on the same page. He really enjoyed the movie and now gets why I do what I do, but he still likes his soda etc.
The most helpful thing I have done is to try and make good substitutions at home. We got a soda stream and add stevia to the fizzy water for “soda”. I now can make cookies and carmel corn (Kimi’s recipe I think!) that he loves and eats happily. I want to make him happy and not feel like he’s deprived. If he asks about something he’s missing, I try to go the extra mile to make it at home and please him as well as keep it healthy.
Thanks for the tips! I just bought a soda stream. We have yet to try it out!
I wanted to share with all of you my AHA moment related to sugar in our diet! My older son was gluten sensitive so since he started on solids we completely cut out gluten. That was 14 years ago, it was much harder back then. I mastered buckwheat and rice and co. and we ate fruit as well for dessert. When my younger son was 6 yrs old, I took a group of kids from school to celebrate to the nearby cafe, where everybody ordered a cupcake (my older son a gluten free one). When we got ready to leave I realized that my younger son took only a little bite and left his cupcake on the table. I asked him if he feels OK, and he said, loud enough that everybody could hear: Thank you very much, I do not like it, it is too sweet for my taste! I replay this conversation in my head every time we discuss not eating or drinking the things we are sadly surrounded by and I need reinforcement that it is the right thing to do. He is quite impulsive otherwise so we have this conversation often! May you children find pleasure in what they eat so they can turn down the crappy stuff, even under pressure.
Very well articulated reminder of what I also want to pass on to my children – “I just don’t care for it.”
I have a 5-yr old son who really craves sweets by nature (or perhaps because of certain anomalies such as a medicated birthing process, including antibiotics.) Lately though, he has not asked for them as much. I have been more stern about not having them in the house. Also helpful have been some of the recipes on your site (for instance hearty quinoa cookies to which I add a few dark chocolate chips.) When he eats them he is satisfied and not craving more like after birthday cake crack or even a “healthy” Z-bar. Anyway, my point is that I want him to understand the truth and to portray many of the things you wrote about. That is a big reason why I started blogging. So that when my kids get to be stubborn teenagers (actually, my extremely independent 1 yr old is already there) they can read my words rather than have me lecture them.
I also like celebrate the victories – he eats spinach, salad with my own apple cider vinaigrette, salmon, brown rice and sprouted bread! Hooray!
I love your further explorations of this really tough subject. My family is in that place you describe where we have to be 100% strict and part of the reason we are so vigilant is in the hopes that we can actually heal our bodies and enjoy a more varied diet in the future. It’s nice to hear we’re not alone. Just the other day I was talking about all this with my husband and he said “It’s not us that’s crazy, it’s the world that’s crazy.” So true! And it’s nice to connect with others who see the world this way, if only online.
I love that you’re talking about this. I am” that mom” I avoid outings that involve food. Bday parties I don’t let my daughter eat that junk. I hate that we’re the weird ones. Why can’t it be the norm? Why should I be willing to let my daughter eat something that I know will destroy her? I know I can’t control her forever. She’s 21 m. How do you set those stones so they do chose good food?
Just thought I’d comment on something that helped us as kids — when we went to parties or gatherings and abstained from items my parents told us to tell them (obviously you need to have a trustworthy kid here) and they would make it up to us later with a “healthy treat.” Another thought — my mom was very concerned with our not eating lots of junk, so she hardly ever brought home sweets from the store. Instead she brought little “golden books.” We not only got a library (back then they were about 50cents or so) but also developed a love of reading that has stayed with us to this day! Hope this is helpful and triggers ideas that are helpful! 🙂
I love this idea!
Using books as a reward instead of sweets seems like such a novel idea (pun intended), but makes so much more sense.
Thank you to everyone for sharing fine points to consider. I feel fortunate to have part of my life in a community of like-minded parents, with whom I often feel like the junk-food mom, which by no means am I. It just helps that we are all concerned with what our children put into their bodies, and watch for each other’s child, as some have serious allergies. On the other side of life, I am surrounded by junk food families. What I notice most is the slippery slide, if you get on it. By that I mean, once some comes in, that 20%, and as your children get older (my oldest now 9), it is harder to prevent that 20% from inching up to 25-30%, if I am not around those he is with. I have had the discussions with fellow “extreme” moms, about where do you bring in information, rather than just rules? At his age, I have started sharing information, (i.e. “Both of your grandfathers have this thing called diabetes, and it is from the foods they chose to eat, and that is why we chose carefully. A treat now and then is fine, but soda with dinner every night can give people sickness – like your grandfathers.”) I don’t want to scare him, but I know he is making decisions our of my purview, and I will say he is happy to report his decisions to me (“I did have cake for so-and-so’s birthday, but only one piece, and then I had an apple and no soda.”)
Another saving grace for us: we do not have television (I know, now I sound extreme). That originated when we were saving money for a home and had to cut corners, and we just never missed it. We still sit down for a family movie night, but without commercials. Among the great outcomes is that my children are not exposed to the marketing done TO them in the form of commercials. They don’t know what they are missing!
Andrea,
I can relate to the stress– while my husband agrees that my daughter should eat healthy, he thinks I am too strict about food. And he has his own stashes of things I don’t want my daughter to have– like pop and candy. Right now, he’s ok with keeping it from her, but I worry as she gets older, he’ll think a little here and there is no big deal (and I’m sure our definitions of little will not align!).
I will give him credit, though, he’s come a long way from when I met him (only white bread, never had yogurt, ate tons of McDs and spaghetti O’s from a can!!) I think change is really slow for him, but I’m seeing it (over 10 years). One of the things I’ve learned is that if I try to change things too fast, he really balks at it. But I’ve had some luck replacing his junk food with something a little less junky and asking him to keep his candy at work. For example, getting cheesy Pirate’s Booty (puffed cheese snack without any artificial colors and flavors) rather than Cheetos, potato chips with only 3 ingredients (potatoes, oil, salt) rather than BBQ Pringles, bagels from a local bakery rather than the ones full of preservatives, etc. It makes me less likely to bite his head off when he slips some to the kiddo! 🙂
I would love to hear from others on this issue as well!
Thanks, Bethany! It’s good to know I’m not alone (-:
I wanted to tell you how thankful I am to have found this website!! I have two children, 7 and 10, with food allergies as well as acid reflux, which can be triggered by sugar. As they have gotten older, I have slid down that slippery slide of first a little and then a lot of treats, sugar-filled snacks, excusing it all because it was allergen-free and organic. A few days ago, it was decided that my boys needed to be taken off sugar, as it were, because my older son kept getting stomach aches and my younger son was just bouncing off the walls and my MIL was warning me that the school would start telling me he has ADHD, which he does not. The difference in his behavior is amazing. He was allowed a treat (homemade, organic ingredients but did include white sugar) today at a birthday party and you could again see the difference in behavior. We went to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner tonight and I brought with me several bottles of salad dressing from home for us to use. I did check the nutritional information on the usual french dressing we use there and the sugar content was twice of what we use at home. Instead of feeling like a freak walking into a restaurant with a lunch box filled with soy butter and salad dressing, I felt proud, knowing I was taking care of my family and I was thrilled to know that I had found a community of like-minded people. My boys have jumped right on board with cutting out the sugar and trying new vegetables and sprinkling flax seed on their salads, etc. I shudder to think of just how much sugar I was feeding them. Thank you so much for being here. I have really enjoyed reading the posts, the comments. I look forward to being an active participant here!
Great article – and something that so many, especially parents, have to struggle with so much! Even with family, I’m often in conflict over food choices. Worse, though, is my recent realization that, unlike your daughter who does not prefer super-sweet foods, my two year old absolutely ADORES sweets! She’s always been a big fan of fruit, but I think fruit is good (I know some have issues, but we don’t, and we try to have fresh fruits and veggies from our garden constantly available and she’ll as often pick a bell pepper as an orange). In the last month, though, we’ve had three related birthdays (hers and two other close relatives) which we celebrated with family who made wildly sweet desserts (homemade, for the most part, but still all flour and tons of sugar and what not) and she went CRAZY for them! She’s asking for cake and ice cream and even pie ALL THE TIME! She thinks of it when she wakes up, she asks about it randomly through the day. I tell her those are treats for special occasions, and usually she goes right on, but she’ll ask again. Why is she so obsessed?
I am curious about your daughter’s diet and how you went about it. Was she ever a ‘sweet-tooth’? I have an almost 4 year old who adores sweets even though I don’t allow them…(except for fruit). He is fruit-obsessed! I suspect that he has candida issues and I don’t know how to approach a diet for him. I do allow him to have birthday cake on special occasions…but just a little bit.
One thing to remember is that our children – and the children of others – pick up on our cues. Growing up there were a number of foods that I could not have. One was potatoes, which meant no potato chips at parties. It was treated very matter of factly by my parents, and other parents, and other children picked up on it. It became a non-issue and we all enjoyed sticking our tongues through the bends on the pretzels and being silly 🙂
It’s a tough topic. We control what we can, make the best choices possible when out and about, and leave the rest in God’s hands. When there is a child or situation that demands extremes, we are extreme.
I’m reading a lot of fear in these comments about when your children are older (teens, young adults). Many of you wonder how you’re going to “control” your older child’s food choices. Well, you can’t! There comes a point when you have to trust 1) your education of them, 2) their sense, and 3) God…not in that order. When they are older, if you continually inundate them with remarks and studies and such, they will turn a deaf ear. They will become numb to it. If you enjoy healthy foods as a family and don’t make a big issue over how super healthy your food is compared to everyone else’s, they will grow up not “dwelling” on it, but naturally making the right choices. Educate them, yes, by all means! But do it naturally. And when they’re 19 and have a soda now and then or completely veer off “your” eating plan for a time, don’t flip out! They have to learn for themselves if what mama taught is true…and they will learn. Relax and enjoy your food as much as possible! I know it’s tough to have limitations, but try to make it enjoyable and not a source of constant stress.
And to all you hubby feeders out there, my hubs took a while to get on board. I shifted gradually with him, in ways that he didn’t even notice at first. Now he wonders why he no longer likes the fake foods he grew up on! But if he wants a treat, I try to do what another commenter does, and give it to him in the healthiest way possible…and I certainly TRY not to roll my eyes when he indulges in fake junk. Of course, if the indulging is extreme and involves the children, I discuss it (hopefully) respectfully. 🙂