Healthy Eating Made Easy

Eating Should Be a Pleasure, but Food Should Not Be Used as a Reward

Most of us are shocked when we hear of parents punishing their children by sending them to bed with no dinner, but how many of us would feel equally concerned about the adult who habitually rewards a child with a cookie or other desired food for being good? Yet this tying food together with behavior is one link in developing eating disorders in later years. Certainly eating should be (and is!) a satisfying pleasure, but that pleasure needs to be kept within bounds; it should not become the primary source of gratification in life. Food should not be used to punish or to bribe or to reward.

Eating Together Should Convey a Sense of Happy Family Life to the Children

There should be time both to eat and to chat. Discipline situations should be avoided whenever possible. Mealtime can also be a time to enjoy each other and to help the group by going for seconds, passing food to each other, and group cleanup.

Eating Should Help a Child Be Independent

When food is passed around the table, each child can take what she desires; it is up to her to choose. She knows how hungry she is, and she knows her preferences far better than her teacher does. Then, too, by serving herself she has the opportunity to learn to observe the social rule “Take some and leave some.”

Having sponges close at hand also helps children become independent because they can mop up their own spills. Advertisements that stress the joys of carpeting to the contrary, it is much easier to clean up food from uncarpeted floors, so it is best to eat over a linoleum floor or even outdoors when possible.

Another way to help children retain independence is to make sure they do not have to wait to be fed. When children are hungry and their blood glucose level is low, they are in poor control of themselves, so food should be ready to be served as the children sit down. If it is placed on a low table or nearby shelf, the teacher can start passing around the serving bowls as soon as everyone has arrived.

Eating Can Be a Learning Experience

Although the most important goal of the eating situation is to furnish nourishment and pleasure, this experience can provide many opportunities for intellectual and social learning, too (Dahl, 1998; Fuhr & Barclay, 1998; Martini, 2002). The lunch table is a fine place for conversation and the development of verbal fluency. Children can be encouraged to talk about their pets, what they did on the weekend, what they like best to eat, and what was fun at school during the morning. The opportunity can also be taken to talk about foods, textures, colors, and more factual kinds of information, but some teachers seem to do this to excess and forget to emphasize the more valuable goal of fluency. No matter what kinds of learning experiences go along with the meal, the teacher should always remember that eating should, first and foremost, be pleasurable and satisfying.