Rewarding yourself or your children with a treat is so ingrained we think nothing of it but Dunedin nutritionist Wal Herring believes it is time to change. She tells Rebecca Fox about her book on creating healthy eaters.
Wal Herring has the perfect ‘‘laboratory'' in her own home: a child raised the traditional Kiwi-food way and one raised the new ‘‘Wal's way''.
‘‘They're absolutely miles apart,'' she says of oldest daughter Huxley (7) and youngest Eckhart (2).
Their approaches to lollies illustrate the point as well as anything.
When presented with a sweet, Eckhart was happy to put it in Mum's bag for later.‘‘There was no ‘I have to have more, more'. There was nothing special about it, it was just a lolly. That was a proud moment.''
For Huxley, lollies were special and she would gobble them up.
It was this sort of relationship with food that started Mrs Herring questioning the way she was raising her children.
‘‘With your first-born, you know, you just follow in the footsteps of your parents and kind of don't question anything. Everyone has experienced the ‘‘if you don't eat your vegetables you won't get any dessert'' comment.
‘‘I began to think there must be a better way. I was raised on a farm with really good food. And I just thought you feed your child good food, they go through a period of rebelling and then they'll come back, exactly like I went through, and my sisters.‘‘I started thinking does it have to be like that?''
With an MSc in nutrition from the University of Otago and years involved with sports nutrition, especially assisting rugby and league players in England, Mrs Herring began to research children's relationships with food and how it develops.
‘‘It started changing the way I thought and it evolved from there. It was changing the mentality more than the ‘what'. I felt I had the ‘what', it was more the ‘how', how you get your husband on side ... It was all the other stuff I started investigating.‘‘There is a lot of research but not a lot is mainstream. It is trying to get it known.''
Parents have a small window of opportunity to help their children develop good relationships with food, she says.
The thing that affected her the most was discovering the need to focus on herself as a mother and how her issues with food or even expectations of children's behaviour can affect parents' energy when giving food to their children.
An example is rewarding your children with treats. The research shows it does not work, but parents still do it.
‘‘It's really hard to stop yourself.''
Once people stop using the food bribe, they need to find different ways of talking to their children in those situations, such as supermarket shopping or getting chores done. Including them in the conversation is really important, Mrs Herring says.
‘‘They do understand but it takes more time to explain. You'll still get tantrums but then they still had tantrums when you bribed them.''
Instead of bribing with food, use experiences as the treat instead, such as going to the park, she says.‘‘It becomes natural after you start doing it.''
For some people there is always a drive to ‘‘be good'' with food but that does not necessarily mean they have a healthy relationship with it, she says.
To Mrs Herring, true health comes from eating what you want, by choosing food that makes you feel good, which in turn is healthy most of the time.
‘‘You have all this other energy because you are not concentrating on the ‘should eat this' or ‘should not eat this'. You can live a little.''
Childhood is an important time when so many subconscious messages are embedded in young brains. ‘‘There is a window of opportunity where we as parents can help them.''
Habits are really key, Mrs Herring believes - forming good ones and breaking habits that are not as helpful - such as ‘‘I've had my dinner. Now I get a sweet treat''.
When people think about breaking habits they can regard it as all or nothing, but it is a journey.
‘‘It is just recognising it. I'm having this sweet food or, you know what, I'm not going to have that tonight. Having that self-awareness that you can do that.''
Changing children already in those patterns is a slow process.‘‘Huxley grew up with ‘do this, get this'. It came down to trust. Saying, ‘I know, Huxley, I've done this in the past but this is how I'm going to do it from now on'.''
Talking to children about the importance of healthy food and explaining that parents make the food choices they do because they want to look after them, helps them understand it is not about restricting foods.
‘‘It's amazing how much young kids can understand, that eating the right foods makes you feel good.''The key thing is for children to check in with themselves and see how different foods made them feel.
It is also important for both parents to be on board with the decisions and while other parents or even grandparents might look sideways at them, it is important to remember other people might have different priorities in life and be OK with that, Mrs Herring says.
‘‘Just pick one thing at a time to change and don't worry about the rest.''Don't expect it to be always plain sailing. You catch yourself, but don't feel guilty about it. Think what you'll do next time.''
Writing a book about her journey, Healthy Little Eaters, has been a challenge but one she really believes in.
‘‘It's been a really cool process. I've loved every bit of it.''
She knew her own behaviour would be judged as a result but believed if she was confident about what she was doing that did not matter.
‘‘I 100% believe in what I wrote there. More information will come out and I will grow with that but now that is what I believe.''
She hopes it will help make meal times less stressful for parents and provide some practical suggestions to help parents.
Having just returned to New Zealand after many years living overseas in England, Japan and Canada - her three children were each born in different countries - they are enjoying the family life Dunedin offers.
‘‘It has great mountain-biking tracks and I love mountain biking. I learnt here. And my husband is in rugby so this is a great rugby place.''
The blueprint
• Awareness: about your beliefs and society's beliefs concerning food so you can challenge them. They are not set in stone; they are just beliefs.
• Your parenting style: seeing that coaching your children has more favourable outcomes than other parenting styles when teaching them to develop a healthy relationship with food.
• Seeing the development of a relationship with food as a skill to be learned. Food skills are habits, habits you will choose knowingly or unknowingly. You choose what habits to instil and then think about how to break down teaching those habits on a daily basis.
• It's never too late. It is never too late to encourage your children or yourself to form a healthy relationship with food. After all it is just a habit and you can break and form habits.
