04.02.07

The Munchies: Keeping Our Food Consumption in Check

Posted in News at 12:33 pm by Dawn Miller

Half of the ads broadcast during TV shows for kids are for food, and tweens see more than 20 ads per day. These new revelations come from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a well-respected group that did extensive research and you can read more about the report. Everyone who cares about kids, should be interested in this report and efforts to curb food marketing to our kids.

The targeting of children by the advertising industry creates even more demand for treats - and far too many of us buy right into it. With schools clamping down on junk food availability - the reality is that our kids are getting this food from us.

I have to admit, I was more than happy to bribe my stepchildren with homemade cookies to like me early in our marriage. And I bought the occasional kid favorite snack to keep on hand when my stepkids were around.

I love to bake and am not a confident cook. A few of my dinners were bona-fide flops - so I leaned on my baking talent to crank out desserts. As I was trying to build a relationship with my stepchildren, I would often work in the kitchen and bake, and talk with my stepkids.

The natural rhythm of baking allowed for lots of pauses so I could talk with them. Sometimes they would help me roll out the dough or mix, but often they would just hang around or be nearby doing homework, chatting on IM, or surfing the Internet. Baking gave me an excuse to be in the kitchen and observe them, but without being in their face about it. And they seemed interested in what I was doing.

I wouldn’t want to change those experiences, but if I could go back, I probably would decrease the volume of stuff I made so there weren’t as many treats lying around. And I wouldn’t have kept as many kid favorites in the pantry. My husband was diagnosed with high cholesterol last year, so we changed our diet in radical ways to bring down his numbers. The snacks and yummies in the cupboard were banished. Much to my surprise, the kids went along with the diet change with minimal complaining, because they love their dad and we were upfront with them about why we needed to make those changes.

With his numbers down now, we enjoy the occasional treat - but it’s definitely not the volume it used to be. Now I generally only bake desserts for holidays and our regular “family dinner” - a night when we all gather at the table to share a meal and talk. And much of my baking effort these days is focused on my brother who is a U.S. solider in Iraq - I trot to the post office every two weeks with a package of homemade cookies to mail to him.

Now my stepkids ask before they eat a cookie - is this going to Iraq? If yes, they don’t eat it.

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