Health, Not Food = Love « Healthy Children

“Eat! Eat! How often do I see you?”
Dr. P’s grandma

“Food is love”
As a child I would visit my immigrant grandma and, just for me, she would have made her famous oily fried chicken and her lethal-dose mayonnaise potato salad and, of course, a generous supply of her might-as-well-just-directly-paste-them-onto-your-butt creamy cookies, “just like in the old country “.

Yum! I can still taste them to this day – a glorious childhood memory. And if I didn’t ask for seconds (at least) or eat a dozen cookies, she was all over it, insisting, “Eat! Eat! How often do I see you?“

The truth is: food really is love.

A baby learns to associate the divine smell and taste of milk with warmth and cuddling and soft skin and gentle words and human interaction and nurturing and cozy love – a multi-sensory emotional feast.

Plus, our brains are wired to love the taste of food (alas, the more fat and the more sugar the better!). How can we not then appreciate and love the vehicles who generously put it in our eager mouths? What better way to promote child-parent attachment? (When I collaborated with Dr. Spock and he recommended a milk-free diet, I was horrified by the thought of a childhood without ice cream!) As George Bernard Shaw, the Irish dramatist, wrote, “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”

So too does food = love for parents. A woman’s first official act and most solemn responsibility as a new parent is to nourish her infant. A “fat baby is a healthy baby” has long been a universal truism. A fat child is a sign of high social status in many cultures. We may not have nearly as much control of our kids’ lives as we might want, but we can feed them 3 squares a day. It’s an easy, “can’t miss” way to demonstrate our love.

So where’s the problem?
Am I just another killjoy puritan (defined by the American humorist H.L. Mencken as a person with “the desperate fear that someone, somewhere might be having a good time.“)?

As I have written in a few previous blogs, the epidemic of childhood obesity – showing up at earlier and earlier ages – is a major 21st century health concern. And I’ve been honest in sharing my frustration as a pediatrician in successfully helping my patients and families deal with their overweight child.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about why I can’t seem to get anywhere with this problem, why parents’ eyes lid over as they politely tune out my lecture about decreasing animal fat and junk food, why they show up in my office a few months later with a hangdog look on their face and a child with 5 new pounds of body weight.

For some reason, this old saw kept echoing in my brain: food is love, food is love. Remember that controversial and excruciating case a few years ago of the young, morbidly obese child who was taken away from her Latino parents on the grounds that continuing to feed her was a form of ‘child abuse’?

For many parents of overweight children, asking them to cut down on calories, to deprive their child of one of his/her favorite things in life, to diminish this pure message of parental love and regard — is simply asking too much, especially to prevent health concerns (like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension) that are not likely to show up for decades.

How can I do a better job helping overweight kids and their families?

Some initial thoughts:

Try to help parents change their awareness to “health, not food = love.” Even if your child won’t really appreciate it until much later, as a parent you can best show your love by having a healthy child. (And then launch into my usual healthy diet and exercise mantra.)
“Feed everyone much smaller portions.” In 1760, a portly Benjamin Franklin wrote, “In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.” Why are the French (and their kids) skinny? It’s not a mystery. Portion size. (Plus they don’t snack between meals). A typical French meal is perhaps 1/2 the size of a stick-to-your-ribs supersized American meal. They even feed their babies less milk to avoid excessive baby fat (which I’m not recommending until more is known).
Admittedly, this is a tough sell in our culture, but “smaller portions have their advantages.” There is not much deprivation in the type and wonderful variety and tastes of food you can eat. A nice small dessert is allowed. I’m convinced we have been programmed in childood not to be satisfied unless we are very full, instead of just a little hungry (or at least not stuffed) when we leave the table.
“There are other ways to show your love.” In the shorter time it takes to eat smaller meals, you can be with your child, do fun things together, interact in great ways. Yes, I’m talking about some extra quantity of quality time together as a way to supplant food as the best way to express your love.

As you can see, this is a work-in-progess I’m sharing with you. I’m getting desperate to figure out ways to inspire parents to follow sound nutritional advice. And I’m hoping to use my Blog to improve and refine my ability to improve outcomes for overweight kids and their families.

Help me (and my patients) out here, team. I’d love to hear from you! Tips, thoughts, suggestions…?

Technorati Tags: parenting, childhood obesity, diet and nutrition, fast food, portion control