Feed me, Seymour - FEED ME!

Over at 100 Bloggers April’s theme is Proper Care and Feeding. There’s some great posts about nurturing ideas and about maintaining essential commitments.

It made me think more “prosaic” thoughts about what Generation Z kids get fed literally.

[No, it's not going to be a rant about childhood obesity. Yes, the word prosaic is somewhat pretentious, as is the word pretentious].

My oldest son eats almost anything. He’s a little like The Blob from the old horror film: a relentless eating machine. Oh, sure he’s slow getting started in the morning, but as the day wears on, his appetite moves up through them gears until even the dog is running for cover.

He’ll eat: all vegies except onions and peppers (fair enough!); any kind of meat including kangaroo (although he complains that steak is too hard to cut and doesn’t want it! Jeez!); most breakfast cereals (once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once again in the evening); and of course almost every junkfood known to child-kind.

3 days into the recent school holidays (and four days after our grocery shopping night) i go to the fridge to make lunch for both boys. Nothing. No bread, barely any cheese, no tinned food, no nothing.

“Where the heck did it all go?” I ask myself … and then - like Jerry Seinfeld realising Newman is behind some calamity - I hiss “the boy”.

The most annoying thing is at 11, he has the body most surfers aspire to complete with six-pack abdomen. I look at a cheeseburger and my belt pops its buckle. (double Jeez!)

Youngest son? He actually eats the right way round if you listen to dieticians: big breakfast and then less as the day goes on, so that dinner is problematic for getting him to eat anything (besides dessert which - let’s face it - relies less on appetite than it does on sugar-addiction).

He’ll eat: Brocolli but but no other vegetables (unless you are prepared to weather the emotional storm of forcing him to eat them, which we try to do); cereal and bread (but not toast); apples (if the moon is full or nearly full); honey but not jam (unless it’s the third Wednesday of the month, where this is reversed); oh, potatoes sure (if the wind is blowing from the south); corn (if it’s just the right shade of yellow); a nibble of meat; and if you serve him a fillet of any fish he’ll gobble up the entire thing (but tuna is yukky).

Up until now, Youngest Son has despised oranges. Yesterday his teacher asked his 2nd-grade class to bring an orange cut into quarters. Now he declares he wants oranges every day (yeah, like that’s gonna last!)

Here’s two questions that plague caring sentient parents everywhere (the non-sentient uncaring ones have different questions):

1. Is my kid getting enough nutrition? (e.g. is a diet of rice, wheat flakes, milk and oreos enough?)
2. How do I stop my kids eating so much junk? (junk = the salt + sugar + fats + chemical additives that seem to give even the most well-adjusted children double chins or irregular bouts of homicidal rage followed by superhuman feats of acrobatics)

To question 1, my wife and I agree that if the kid is healthy and not pre-anorexic, let em alone. As long as the diet doesn’t consist entirely of oreos, but contains grains protein and some stuff with vitamins somewhere - what’s the problem? Who says they have to eat like a horse? That’ll come with adolescence or pre-adolescence. I’m open to correction of course; I’m not a nutritionist. But Youngest Son doesn’t seem any less healthy for missing out on most of the food on his dinner plate.

To question 2, I laugh uncontrollably. “Stop them??” I exclaim: “Good luck with that!”

But, seriously folks, it’s a deep concern. It’s like a quote from one of my favourite books on parenting (which I won’t reference because they won’t give me permission to print any of their words - officially - the buggers!): “The child’s job is to test the boundaries. The parent’s job is to resist.”

Good news huh?

But if you care, you’ll just take a deep breath and control the junk food intake, without denying them the odd Happy Meal or Oreo … well, alright the odd 6 Oreos! Ya can’t stop at just one - hope you’re reading Oreo Company: see my contact details to get the advertising cheque ready…)

And heck! We need to find ways to become less dependent on processed foods for our own sakes as much as our kids…

…but that’s for a more serious blog…