Please don’t use the “H-word” around my daughter

I don’t like the word “healthy”.  I’m probably ridiculous for having this pet peeve.  I just don’t like when people praise my daughter for eating “healthy” foods when she’s chowing down on broccoli, for example.  I’d like it if she never knew there was something special about eating broccoli.

In Intuitive Eating, the second principle is “Making Peace with Food”.  The idea is that you don’t categorize foods as “good” and “bad”.  This inevitably brings up the response, “You cannot tell me that Cheetos are the same as an apple!”  It’s a fair response, and once again, this requires an additional post to address this question.

But for now, I’m going to stick with the guideline that I follow in my own life.   This is from Intuitive Eating (3^rd edition) by Tribole and Resch, pg 84.

“The key to abolishing the pattern of restraint and subsequent overeating is to give yourself unconditional permission to eat.  This means:

• Throwing out the preconceived notion that certain foods are “good” and others are “bad”.  No one food has the power to make you fat or help you to become slim.

• Eating what you really want.  Yes, what you want.

• Eating without obligatory penance.  (“Ok, I can have the cheesecake now, but tomorrow I diet.”)  These kinds of personal food deals are not unconditional.

When you truly free your food choices, without any hidden agenda of restricting them in the future, you eliminate the urgency to overeat.”

So this is how I translate this principle with my daughter.  I’m going to call it “Food Neutrality” which means…. in our house… food is just food.

Not “good”, not “bad”, not “healthy”, not “bad for you”.  Just food.

This is what Food Neutrality looks like in action.

We routinely go to the neighborhood bakery when daddy is off of work.  It is a highlight of our week.  Even the dog walks with a little more bounce in her step when all of us go down there together.

Daddy feeds Edie part of his danish.  She has a few bites of my croissant.  There is no value assigned to these foods, they are just part of this morning routine.

If I were to assign value, I’d say these foods represent a special family routine that encourages bonding and building community with neighbors (as well as bringing us a great deal of pleasure).

But otherwise, these foods are just presented the same way other foods are.

Then for lunch, she had vegetable stew with chicken.  Again, no value assigned.

I decide what is offered at meal time.  I do my best to provide lots of new foods, new textures, and new flavors from all the food groups.  But she decides whether and how much to eat.   (Ellyn Satter’s DOR).  For this meal, this sometimes means she eats all the broccoli, sometimes she picks out the currants first, sometimes she eats all of it and sometimes only the chicken.  But I leave that up to her.

As stated in the last post, I’d love if my daughter never had to overthink what went in her mouth.

This is how that vegetable chicken stew meal goes down when there’s no agenda.  (If no one else, I know that the grandmas appreciate my videos)

For now, this is what Food Neutrality looks like in our home.  I do recognize that as she has more opinions and more words, I may need to evolve my thinking.  But as always, I’ll include you as I figure that out.

And for my readers with older children, I’ve asked my dietitian friend Jamie Lee RD, LD to share how mealtimes look in her home with a toddler.  That article will be up later next week.