Category Archives: food

Food, Freedom, and Why I Stopped Using the Phrase, “Clean Eating”

cupcakesI love food.  And when I say, “I love food,” I mean I really love food.  I love food so much I spent 500 hours officially studying it so I could earn a nutritional consulting certificate.  And I completely loved, like geeked-out-loved, the nutrition portion of yoga teacher training (talking about food while we ate delicious, fresh, catered vegan meals every day??? I would take the training all over again just for the food.)  I love planning food, love making food, love eating food.  I love learning about it, reading about it and watching documentaries about it.

And even with all that love, society’s current obsession with food – with eating a certain way, with its tightly held controls and its attempts to shame everyone who doesn’t eat the “right” way –  is freaking me the heck out.

And I get it.  I was vegan for around 7 years.  I’ve eaten Paleo.  I’ve done the Zone diet.  The South Beach diet.  I’ve eating 90% raw.  I’ve done juice fasts, and cleanses, and drank nothing but lemon water with cayenne pepper for 10 days.  I could tell you all the science behind all of them, and I was proud, and I was self-righteous, and it makes me exhausted just thinking about it.

And now?  This is the food philosophy that I want to pass on to my kids:

I want them to see me eat food that nourishes me… in body, mind, and spirit.  I want them to see me eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full.  I want them to recognize that food is a fuel, yes, but that it’s also fun and interesting and to be enjoyed.  I want them to understand that the way an individual eats should be a fluid, changing thing, and that sometimes needs are best met with a yummy salad, and sometimes with a warm and gooey chocolate chip cookie.

I want them to know that the act and art of eating is also highly personal, and not something that should be controlled or micromanaged by another person, even if that person is a well-meaning parent.  I watch again and again as parents create food struggles, force their kids to clean their plate, make rules like “no dessert unless they eat x number of bites of broccoli first”, or refuse to buy certain foods because they’re not “healthy” enough.  I can’t imagine it’s a super good thing for your relationship with your child, but it’s also a pretty surefire way to guarantee they’ll have an unhealthy relationship with food in the future.

Food isn’t supposed to be a battle!  It’s not supposed to be about control, or stress, or pressure, or categorizing things into “good foods” and “bad foods.”

In our house, if someone wants ice cream, we’ll go get some.  If someone wants cookies, I’ll bake them.  If someone wants chips, we’ll pick up a bag.  If someone wants Milk Duds (cough::me::cough) or Hot Tamales or Red Vines or Dr Pepper, we’ll walk to the dollar store. None of those things are regular, everyday staples in our pantry though.  They don’t need to be. The stores are there if someone has a craving.  Every time we go to the grocery store, everyone is always welcome to add whatever request they’d like.  Tegan, who loves her sweets, will often be the one to request ice cream, although it’s just as often berries or watermelon or some other sort of sweet fruit. Everett’s pick – every week – was dill pickles, so it finally became a standing order.  Other than those few things? Their response when asked is “The normal stuff is fine” 99% of the time.  For us, “normal” generally consists of whole foods, meals cooked from scratch, fresh fruits and veggies, and very little packaged stuff.

I used to say we ate “clean,” but that’s a phrase I just can’t get behind anymore.  That one silly word, when used to describe food, has become so rife with judgment it makes me cringe.  What does “clean” eating even mean? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.  I asked it not too long ago on a Facebook group and someone responded:  No processed food, no sugar, no white flour, no preservatives, no artificial colors or flavors.  And sure, those are all things you probably don’t want to eat a ton of – for various reasons – but is it helpful to think of them, and/or the people who them, as dirty?   I know many people who work hard to put food on the table for their kids, and their budgets (or taste buds) dictate that they round out the meal with inexpensive things like packaged ramen noodles.   Do we sit, and point fingers, and say, “Ooooh, that’s… unclean!”?

It kind of makes me feel like we’re living in the Old Testament.

And unfortunately, sitting and pointing fingers is exactly what some people are doing.  I had to hide someone on my Facebook feed because her version of advocating for “clean eating” included chastising parents for poisoning their kids by letting them have candy.

Yes, candy has sugar.  And depending on what kind it is, it also likely has chemicals and coloring and preservatives.  I’m pretty sure we all know that.   Shaming parents and pointing fingers and using strong words like “poison” isn’t going to change it.  The way we talk about food matters.

I saw a recipe the other day for a “sinless brownie”.  Sinless.  As opposed to the other brownies that go around stealing from people and cheating on their wives?

Even the word “healthy” is loaded.  What does healthy mean?  (Again, rhetorical)  Ask a vegetarian, a Paleo advocate, and a person with celiac disease that question, and you’ll get three very different answers.  Different people respond to food in different ways.  Some people have allergies.  Some people have sensitivities.  Some people feel sick if they eat dairy.  Some people can practically live on dairy.  Information is a great thing!  I love to learn about, and share about, nutrition.  But the information is constantly changing.   There are many many schools of thought.  If one thing is true about nutrition it’s that you can’t approach it as if there were hard and fast rules.   There’s not.  There are no better teachers than our own bodies.

So I eat food that makes me feel good, whatever that may mean for that day, or that moment. Yes, I do buy simple foods, and many organic foods.  Yes, I cook from scratch.  Yes, I eat lots of whole foods, and fruits, and veggies, and nuts, and seeds.

And I say YES to cookies.  And YES to baking.  And YES to ice cream.  And YES to chips.

Sometimes I miss the mark, and don’t feel so great physically (she says as she sips her peppermint tea to help settle a stomach that’s a little cranky about some Superbowl choices) but I absolutely refuse to give food the power to make me feel bad mentally or emotionally.  It’s not “bad” to indulge in some heavy Mexican food or a cupcake or a margarita or three.  Hate is bad. Prejudice is bad.  This is just food.  And if you listen to your body, and trust your body, it tells you everything you need to know, every time.

We’re missing the mark if we wrap food up with shame.  Food should be enjoyed!  And I whole-heartedly believe (as a person, as a nutritional consultant, and as a mother) that the stress, the fear, and the guilt you assign to certain foods is going to be far far more harmful to your bodies than whatever’s in the treat you deem so horrible.

I look at my kids, who have much healthier relationships with food than I ever had as a child (particularly as a teenager) and I see people who understand what food’s supposed to be.  I see people who trust their bodies to tell them when they’re hungry, when they’re full, and what makes them feel nourished.  I see people who enjoy a wide variety of food….. both in its simplest form, and its most complicated.  I see people who love to try new foods, and aren’t afraid of something just because it’s different.  I see people who accept food for what it is, and don’t feel the need to drench it in negative sounding labels.

Mostly I see people I can learn from.  People who are strong and healthy…. people without any weird food hangups, without any weird body issues or any weird guilt issues.  People who own and embrace their own food choices.

Even when they’re not “clean.”

 

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Filed under food, unschooling

That Which Makes Me Very Grumpy

I blame Flylady.  Well, Flylady and my good friend Jess.

If you’re not familiar with Flylady, it’s basically a housekeeping system that teaches you to get in the habit of doing a morning and evening routine every day (dishes, laundry, swooping the bathroom, etc), along with one bigger chore, with the goal of getting and keeping your house running smoothly.  It’s the exact opposite of anything I’d naturally be drawn too… but it’s actually quite perfect for people like me: people who’ve admitted to themselves that they function a lot better in less chaos, but who tend to make a mess everywhere they go.

Anyway, on Friday my job was to mop the floors.  Actually, it was technically just to mop the kitchen floor.  But if I had out a wet mop all ready to go, why stop at the kitchen?  Why indeed.  So I get my mop ready, fill the sink with water, and get started on the kitchen (which, if I’m being honest, was WAY overdue for a mop).  That’s when all four kids – who’d been happily involved in their own projects up until that very moment – suddenly desperately needed me, in four different directions.  It turns out that mopping is sort of like going to the bathroom in that regard.

I put out their fires, with less patience than I would have liked, and went back to mopping.  I was grumbling for no reason before I even left the kitchen.  There were spots everywhere, I kept having to stop to put something else away, and there was another *&%$ fruit sticker stuck to the floor in front of the fridge.  If I could get some help once in awhile… grumble grumble grumble.

By the time I’d made it out through the pantry into the other room, I lost it.  I was tripping over Tegan’s latest 27 costume changes all over the floor.  I needed to put in another load of laundry.  Someone had to clean the mice cage.  Something had clearly been spilled and only halfway wiped up, and there was another something that I can only guess was once gum or Silly Putty that had hardened into a black, concrete mound of glue under Spencer’s desk.

Before I knew what had happened, I’d had a totally unwarranted Jekyll and Hyde/Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk transformation.  I was snapping at everyone, I was flinging stuff around, and I nearly burst into tears when I found one of my favorite pens without its cap.  Spencer was – rightfully – looking at me like I’d gone crazy, and Paxton was still staring straight ahead at his computer screen… his only defense sitting as absolutely still as possible.

And that’s when I saw my raving lunatic self,  took a (rather mortified) big breath, apologized to the kids, and said to myself, “What is wrong with you??”

Then I remembered.

The day before, I’d just begun a juice fast.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I like to do a good cleanse/fast a few times a year.  It’s really important to detox, especially if you’ve been eating a lot of sugar or processed foods (or, in my case, a ton of NSAIDS)  Plus, it’s February, and the new year, and I was still carrying 5 holiday pounds.  I knew from experience that a week or two of juicing would do wonders.  So when my friend Jess said, “Hey, want to do a juicing blitz with me??” I said “Sure, sign me up!”

Now if you’ve ever done any type of cleanse, you know that the first few days are unpleasant:  I get headaches and a host of other physical detox symptoms.  I crave things.  I feel foggy.  I sometimes get dizzy.

All child’s play compared to just how GRUMPY it makes me.

By day four or five, I feel fantastic.  Lighter, mentally clearer, more energetic, ready to take on the world.  But day two?  I’m a beast.  And I always forget that part.    So while Jess was writing a lovely blog post about the juicing and all its benefits, I couldn’t write anything, largely because I was too focused on wanting to inflict major bodily harm on any and all inanimate object that got in my way.

So, my advice to you, should you ever choose to do a juicing fast (and you really should;  It’s so good for you.  And I’m on day 5 now, so I’m very much in the zone of “WOOOO HOOOO, juicing ROCKS!!”):  Go easy on yourself and the people around you.  Treat yourself gently, and with patience, and with grace.

And for the love of all that is good and holy, don’t even think about mopping.

 

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Filed under about me, food, learning, life, natural health, nutrition, rant

Won’t they just eat junk food all day?

This is all unschoolers eat, right?

“One question that I have from reading your blog, is how you reconcile your nutritional beliefs/values .. with the concept of unschooling – I ask this because this is a really difficult issue for me – letting go of media/bedtimes/respectful parenting, we are already somewhere down the line with all of this, but I cannot see myself buying “junk” food/keeping it in the house – I was just interested in your take on this.”

If you’ve ever watched one of those unabashedly biased nightly “news” pieces about unschooling – or read any number of unschooling articles in the mainstream media – you’ll know that unschoolers are often depicted as eating nothing but junk food all day.  Since they’re given the freedom to choose, they’re feasting on donuts and chips and sodas at all hours of the night and day… because that’s what a child would choose, right?  Because of pervasive misconceptions such as these, the above question is one that I receive often, in various forms.  Is that one area where you just don’t give them freedom?  Don’t you worry that they’ll choose nothing but junk food?  I know my child would just eat candy all day…

Let me start by saying that as someone who has studied nutrition, I do think it’s important to know about food.  Absolutely.  Parents are doing themselves and their children a disservice if they’re not educating themselves at least on the basics.  We should know what’s in the food we’re eating, and why some choices are better than others.  Why the white flour products don’t have the nutrition of their whole grain counterparts.  Why commercially grown produce is so inferior to that which is grown organically.  Why packaged “kids” foods like Goldfish crackers are no different nutritionally than feeding your kids cookies (in fact, as long as I’d made them myself, I’d much prefer the cookies).  As parents we should know why it’s not a super idea to be serving up hot dogs or boxed macaroni and cheese or chicken nuggets with any regularity.  If for no other reason, because we can’t expect our kids to understand what it means to eat a clean, healthful diet if we don’t understand it ourselves.

From an unschooling perspective, I also believe that eating is personal.  Just like adults, kids should have autonomy when it comes to what they do and do not put in their body, at what time, and for what reason.  THEY are the ones who know when they are hungry, when they are full, what makes them feel good, and what doesn’t… not their parents, and not the clock.  And yes,  I believe in freedom and choices when it comes to food.  I believe that eating should be both functional and pleasurable, not something to be used as reward or punishment or fodder for a battle.  None of the above is healthy (either physically or mentally) and it hurts me as both an unschooler and as a nutritional consultant to see the pressure, control, and stress that parents will sometimes place on their children over the issue of food.

So to answer the original question from up above:  how do I reconcile the two perspectives?  I buy lots of interesting, real, whole foods.   We don’t eat fast food  – no one ever asks –  and we rarely buy boxed, bagged or otherwise processed stuff.  We involve the kids in the entire process, and everyone gets an equal say in what we’ll eat for the week.  We look up new recipes together.  We talk about the pros and cons of various “diets” our friends or families are trying.  We give the kids freedom, choices, and information.   They know why we buy what we regularly buy, and they also know that on those occasions that they ask for chips, candy or other “extras”, that the answer will be YES.  They are welcome to eat anything in the cabinet, refrigerator or freezer anytime… whether it’s before dinner, after dinner, or during dinner.

I think one big misconception that people have about this is that giving kids freedom and choices means just leaving them the heck alone, keeping the pantry stocked with Cheetos, soda, and Ring Dings, and letting them have at it.  That can’t be much further from the truth.  We maintain an open line of communication about food like we do everything else, and we stock the house with the things that they love, enjoy, or want to try.  Nine times out of ten they’re snacking on fruits, vegetables, and nuts because that’s what they choose.  But if they’re craving cookies, we’ll make some.  If they’re craving cupcakes, we’ll make those too.  If they’re craving cheap, sugary, artificially dyed confections from the dollar store, I’ll drive them.

The question remains though…. What would I do if it went too far and one of my kids suddenly wanted to eat nothing but junk food, white flour, and candy?  It’s honestly never been an issue.  They know real food, and they know that that isn’t it.  They know that those things don’t make them feel good.  And sure, they enjoy candy now and then.  They like ice cream as much as the next guy.  And would they happily eat pizza, pretzels, and potato chips at a Super Bowl party?  You bet.   But because none of it is “forbidden”, and they know that they’re always free to choose, they’ve learned to trust themselves, trust their bodies, and trust their instincts.

And I trust too.

 

I also wrote about food freedom in this post.

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Filed under food, freedom, nutrition, parenting, unschooling

Food: Balance, Choice & Freedom

A few things you will never hear in this house:

No dessert until you finish your vegetables.
Just a few more bites.
You’ll sit at the table until dinner time is over.
No, you can’t have that.

Things you very well might hear in this house:

Can we make cookies for breakfast? (Sure)
Can I finish this whipped cream? (Why not)
Can I have some beans for a snack (Of course)
Aw man, who ate all the asparagus? (It was me)

We talk a lot about food around here.. partly because I’ve studied it for most of my adult life, and just can’t help it; and partly because it’s fun! Shopping for it, growing it, experimenting with it, making it, eating it. I’m very much of the opinion that if nothing else, food is to be enjoyed.

We’ve never battled over mealtimes, and never limited what our kids could or could not eat. They are the only ones who know when they are hungry and full, and they should be the ones who make the decisions about what goes into their bodies. It makes me sad to see families continually fighting their kids over food, and turning something that’s supposed to be pleasurable into a power struggle between all involved.

I want to tell people to relax. To take a big deep breath and a giant step back. Battling, cajoling, and bribing with food is not only not a great thing for your relationship, but also completely counterproductive. I don’t know anyone who learned to have a healthy relationship with food through force, but I do know a lot of people who have unhealthy relationships with food due to force (and who ended up resenting their parents to boot)

I’ve read a lot of philosophies regarding food, particularly among unschoolers, that state that food isn’t good or bad; it just IS. I completely agree with that on general principle (and yes, absolutely: Hate and war are bad, but a cookie is just a cookie) But it’s a simple fact of science that different foods do different things in our bodies… some negative, some positive. Certain foods make us feel better than others. Most adults have realized this – whether they pay attention to it or not – and children realize it too when they’re given the freedom to do so.

Our refrigerator and cupboards are stocked with real, whole foods, and the kids are free to eat (or not eat) any of it at any time. They’re also free to request cookies, ice cream, candy, or any other “extras” any time someone’s going to the store. They all like to bring their own money for treats at the dollar store, they like helping me bake, and it’s definitely not uncommon for them to flag down the ice cream truck. They’ve inherited their mother’s sweet tooth to be sure, as well as their father’s love of burgers and hot dogs.

But their day to day chosen diet? They snack on fruit, nuts, raw vegetables, and yogurt. They eat whole grains, lots of greens, and a variety of proteins. When I go out to the store I always ask them if they’d like anything special, and two of the four usually have no request at all. Spencer always makes sure we don’t forget orange juice, and Everett usually has a certain fruit in mind. They eat, and enjoy, food, of all types and all varieties. And if we happen to have cookies and they want cookies before dinner? They have them. If they want cookies FOR dinner? They have them (and will most likely follow up with a “traditional” dinner sometime before bed.) They trust their brains, and their bodies, to know what they need… and they are healthy, happy, and strong.

When I started writing this post several hours ago, the kids were laughing as they finished off the last drop of whipped cream we’d bought a few weeks ago when we’d made fancy drinks in the blender. Right now, two of the boys are eating oranges. And about thirty seconds ago, Tegan came up to me, eyes wide, cradling something in her hands.

“Mommy. Can I have this??”

I had to look twice to see what it was. “Sure, if you want to.”

Her chosen snack? A huge ripe tomato. And she happily sat down and ate the entire thing.

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Filed under food, freedom, parenting, unschooling

It must have been a really good episode


I came into the living room a little while ago to find all four kids squished in front of the TV. I don’t know why they were sitting so close – and no one really had an answer – but it made me laugh.

And this was dinner last night. It just looked so pretty in the bowl that I had to take a picture. Yay, food!

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Filed under food, random, television