kids health diet

we are trying to do this at home ourselves. Particularly with the understanding that our boys (aged 3 & 7) are learning by watching us. both my husband and I are in the ‘normal to overweight range’ and have been since our teens – we were never the skinny minnys. And I want our kids to have a healthy attitude to food. Also, for our 7 year old, it’s a big part of his school curriculum; so we are trying to reinforce these behaviours at home. The big thing that we have learnt (particularly with the toddler) is not to make food a battleground nor a reward system. If they eat their dinner, they get an extra story – not an ice-cream. But if we’re out at the beach/park etc and an ice-cream van goes by hey, we might get one (not every time though). If the toddler will only eat weetbix/toast etc for dinner; then fine. But he has to have the leftover dinner for lunch the next day (I actually find at his age, he’s much more likely to eat his main meal at lunchtime than dinner time anyway). I guess a lot of it is trial and error and different kids behave differently. And as soon as they have a favourite, it seems to disappear… I think the hardest part is for the parents to get over their own attitudes to food really. We were never allowed to leave the table without emptying our plates (my parents were refugees), so as kids we massively over-ate. Now, I just let the boys decide when they are full. But they also know that there’s nothing else, so maybe that helps


It wasn’t long ago that Mia wrote a post saying she wasn’t comfortable with the young (teenaged?) girl in the US who lost a lot of weight (through her whole family adapting their habits in a healthy way) and then talking about it on a talk show with a before and after.

I have no idea how TBL sponsorship fits in with the ethos of this site, but I guess that massive ad about never eating bananas because they ’cause belly fat’ stayed up on this site long after Jamila said it was going to be removed. (Funny it’s now replaced by a pro-banana ad…)

Really NOT looking forward to a bunch of TBL posts, but I guess they’re coming…

I really worry about the kids taking part in this show, it’s such a fragile age and I think being on TBL would be psychologically harrowing even for adults.