Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Employing the "I Forgot To Buy It" Strategy for Healthier Pantries

In working with families who are trying to improve their homes' dietary choices, one of the barriers I regularly come across are worries about how kids will react to the removal of beloved, but perhaps not healthful, dietary staples (like the cookies masquerading as a wise choice up above).

It's probably an unnecessary worry.

The last thing I would recommend is the idiotic, TV-style, black garbage bag purge of your pantry that likely would come along with the admonition that the stuff in the bag isn't good and won't be brought back into the home ever again.

That style of an approach would no doubt put a child's back up, lead to frustration, conflict, and potentially help in cultivating an unhealthy relationship with food as a whole.

Instead I recommend something much simpler. "Forget"

Forget to buy it the next time you're at the supermarket, and when questioned by your kids as to the whereabouts of the products, apologize and tell them that you forgot.

Then buy it again somewhere down the road, and then when it next runs out, forget again to re-purchase, with lengthier and lengthier periods between repurchasing until your kids forget that the product was ever a regular part of their lives.

(Tackle foods you want to eliminate one by one using this method as "forgetting" a whole bunch of stuff all at once is pretty much an unspoken garbage bag purge.)