Healthy diets for children are a new form of parental one-upmanship. But it is a dangerous game

A degree of paranoia about how to feed a child is part and parcel of motherhood. From the second a baby is born, mothers are prone to feelings of inadequacy if they don’t breast-feed, or if they do, if they don’t keep it up for long enough. Then, through toddlerhood and beyond, the slightest deviation from a virtuous organic diet can trigger feelings of panic because you could be feeding your cherub inappropriately and setting him or her up for a life of ill health or obesity.

As if these worries weren’t enough, a new trend is emerging as mothers battle for one-upmanship in the feeding of their children. Competitive nutrition (CN) is evident wherever you find mothers and their offspring dining in groups – coffee shops, child-friendly restaurants, parks, parties. The mothers who practise it are the ones who look on with an air of superiority as their toddler munches on a cube of melon as your child reaches for the crisps. Not for their daughter something as sinful as a flapjack – only homemade, organic and commercially unadulterated fare passes their lips…

It is not just smugness that sets the CN mothers apart; they are also prone to freaky levels of dietary control. Take a toddler’s tea party I attended recently. Out came the chocolate fingers and no fewer than three mothers leapt up in horror to shield their offspring from the offending item. Chocolate, it transpired, was destined not to become a dietary experience until the children were at least five years old. Instead, they were ushered towards the carrot sticks. Other distinct nonos include nuts, anything processed, sweetened or containing anything remotely resembling a food colouring (that means no fruit squash, oven chips, fishfingers, ketchup or ice lollies), and absolutely anything with a cartoon character on the packaging.

MIXED MESSAGES MAKE US PARANOID

In some ways, society is responsible for the increase in CN. Barely a week goes by without a new study confirming that children’s diets are so replete with sugar, salt, fat or additives that they face a miserable future unless dietary imbalance is redressed. With one in four children now obese, there is a fear that overfeeding on the wrong sort of food will result in irreversible weight gain…

… “What mothers with CN probably don’t realise is that the tighter they rein in their children’s diets, the more likely their kids are to grow up with warped views of what is, or isn’t, acceptable to eat. And the consequences can be disastrous. “That kind of behaviour teaches children at a very early age to think that there are good foods and bad foods,” says Dr Dee Dawson, director of the Rhodes Farm eating disorders clinic in north London. “That is simply not true, and it sets them up for all sorts of troubled relationships with food when they are older.”

BANNING FAT MAKES KIDS FAT

Dawson says that no food should be banned during childhood – even a McDonald’s meal or crisps are acceptable every so often. “We are never going to change the fact that, as human beings, we have an inherent liking for the taste of fatty foods,” she says. “Feeding a child only fruit and vegetables is not going to alter that fact.” …

Just last month, researchers warned that the growing number of parents who inflict adult dietary messages on their children could find that their well-meaning intentions backfire. Canadian nutritionists at the University of Alberta suggested that diet and low-fat foods distort a child’s ability to recognise calories and to regulate their energy intake appropriately…

At the very least, says Cooke, children of CN mothers are probably going to rebel by the time they get to secondary school. “It is usually the children who are not allowed to eat crisps or sweets at home who develop an obsession with them when they are exposed to them socially,” she says…

Source: The Sunday Times, UK
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