It's Not About Nutrition

I recently discovered a great blog by Dr. Dina Rose about teaching kids how to eat. The underlying theme of her advice is that it's more important to teach your kids healthy eating habits than it is to worry about their day-to-day nutrition. The logic being, that if you teach them the right habits, then nutrition will follow, and will set them up for life. Whereas, hiding veggies in their pasta sauce or muffins, or forcing them to eat 'two more bites' of brocolli might result in acceptable nutritional intake at that moment in time (or not!), but they're unlikely to develop healthy eating habits for life.

The 3 tenets of her ideology are:
- proportion: we should teach our kids to eat healthy foods most of the time, less healthy foods less often, and junk food only occasionally.
- variety: we should teach our kids to eat a wide range of foods.
- moderation: we should teach our kids to eat only until they feel full.

I'm starting to implement some of her ideas with my just turned 2-year-old. I'm finding it a struggle though, as I don't exactly have the healthiest eating habits myself, and counting points right now also complicates things. Although I guess if I can stick to those 3 tenets, particularly the proportion one, then it should make counting points (and sticking to my daily allowance) easier.

I'll try to report on progress regularly.