I had been very health conscious ever since I was a child. This habit of mine still carry on till today, though I had kept lowering my standard. So, I have put up the quite a high standard to my kids initially cooking them the healthy food. However effort not appreciated most of the time, sometimes even my hubby would complaint of the food being too plain. He wanted more flavour.
And all my kids don't really care about how nutricious is the food, what they want is the good tasty food. Typically deep fried crispy food with all the rich sauces and flavour. No matter how many times I have told them what's the benefit of each food. Wasted all my effort...I really envy those moms that are able to have kids that will eat on healthy but plain food. I guess it'll never happen in my family.
When they were younger, it was much easier to enforce my way of cooking over their appetite; a lot of vegetables and very little meat/fish/egg/beans. My favourite food is all in one brown rice porriadge or all in one fresh blendered fruit juice. But they ended up with the "bamboo" shaped body. Naturally this mother would be blamed...Very soon, my kids were getting smarter, they started boycotting my food. So, I had no choice but to give in. That ended up with very limitted choice of food that they take...They favourite food are fried egg, fried boneless fish, fried potatos, candies, ice cream, chocolate, biscuit.
With our society getting richer, most of the parents would spend money on junk food for their kids to make their kids happy. Their love a lot of time will extend to their kids' friends too. Last time, when I went to school; I only got the goody pack once a year that was on Children Day. But nowadays in the kindergarten, almost everyday there's a birthday party going on in the school. After the birthday party, the birthday kids would pass around a big bag full of goodies. So much so it had becomed a trend. Even my kid asked me to prepare them the party pack. But unfortunately most of the time those food were not home cooked food. Even when you prepared home cooked food, the kids won't enjoy it. So, the goodies ended up to be kids' favourite but unhealthy food. They were mainly artificial junk food with lots of coloring, flavouring and preservatives; some were even made in China...I do not want to be prejudice, but recent news on the China food industry just kill my confidance over them. These goodies bags have been the point of the war between me and the kids. Whenever I stopped them from having their goodies, they would get very upset and think I was overacting. To them, the other moms were not like me. So, their words hit me inside. I was thinking should I just give in so that they would enjoy their junk food? At the same time, I saw the bad side effect of controlling the food too. My kids would find all ways and means to sneak in the junk food from my mom's house. They would keep the food in their pillow, throw the food wrapper underneath my cupboard/bed....
Till now, a war would still take place whenever the junk food come to my house; even though I had started keeping one of my eyes closed. And most of my relatives thought I was overcontrolling my kids' food intake. To them, I shall just follow the tide and join the crowd. If one understand the word 'You Are What You Eat' thoroughly, one would understand why I do so. I am not surprised why nowadays children have so much behavarior problem cause the food played an important role...
KF
Wrote on 6 Aug 2011
