Dawn Friedman from Brain Child via the UTNE Reader on why bullying kids to lose weight won't work (brief quote from me in the piece).
Aydrea Walton in a piece from last August on "Eating While Black". Food's complicated.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Saturday Stories: Big Produce, Kids and Racial Eating
Dawn Friedman from Brain Child via the UTNE Reader on why bullying kids to lose weight won't work (brief quote from me in the piece).
Aydrea Walton in a piece from last August on "Eating While Black". Food's complicated.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Re: the "bullying kids" story. I see in there an argument I've seen a few places now: that restricting kids' access to junk food only sets them up for bingeing on it when they have the chance. I don't know if I agree with that premise. If you find out your kid is bingeing on juice boxes and candy bars at a friend's house, do you buy your kid juice boxes and candy bars? Or do you stop the kid from going to places where they are given unrestricted access to these foods and can binge? I mean, if your kid got into porn or cigarettes at a friend's house, is the answer to buy your kid cigarettes or porn? Obviously not.
ReplyDeleteTo me it just shows that these foods can trigger binges and are still best avoided. I'm not for never letting kids have treats/junk food, mind you, but I also will not feel obligated to buy stuff like this and let my kids have unrestricted access to these foods if/when I become a parent.
Also, are Jewish and Muslim kids from observant households prone to bingeing on ham, bacon, and cheeseburgers if given the opportunity? If you follow the argument that forbidding certain foods makes them more enticing to kids, then this should be a recognized phenomenon among kids from religious households that have dietary restrictions, I would think.
I also take exception to the idea (promoted in that article) of "intuitive eating", or the idea that "your body knows what you need" and that given unrestricted access to all foods, you will only make good food choices and automatically eat a balanced diet. Give me a break. We evolved in an environment of scarce food. Our genes want us to eat, eat, eat highly palatable and caloric-dense foods.