Niki Bezzant: Broccoli battles can lead to bulge

It is better to allow kids to make choices about their eating, researchers say. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

Many will have a memory of sitting miserably at the table being forced to eat what was on the plate before being allowed to get up.

Parents everywhere still employ this tactic. The goal is good: to get a meal into our child. But the practice may be doing more harm than good. Strict rules around eating could set our kids on the path to disordered eating and obesity later on.

Researchers at Ohio State University are discovering more about parents' behaviour in relation to feeding young children.

A growing body of literature "reveals a complex relationship between controlling feeding behaviours and the child's weight. In particular, overly restrictive behaviours significantly reduce a child's ability to self-regulate their energy intake and result in weight gain or a higher body mass index (BMI)."

In other words, parents who try to restrict what kids are eating so they don't become overweight, may be setting kids up for the opposite.

Researcher Ihuoma Eneli says, "If mealtime becomes a battleground or filled with tension, it could establish a relationship with food that leads kids to unhealthy eating."

It may seem strange to think of having a "relationship" with food. But we all eat, and eating is seldom about just fuelling the body.

Emotions and thoughts play into every eating decision and, as with every relationship, it can be healthy or dysfunctional.

If food has more power than it deserves, we're getting into dysfunctional territory. If eating makes us feel like a bad person; if not eating gives us a feeling of power; if we have feelings of guilt or sadness about food; these are warning signs. And none of us want our kids to struggle like that.

We're all born with an ability to control our appetite and satiety — we instinctively know to stop eating when we are full.

But when parents are excessively controlling, kids learn to eat when they are not hungry — effectively overriding their natural instinct. It's easy to see where that could take them later in life.

The danger with parent-toddler struggles over mealtimes is that the struggle gives food more power than it should have. "Kids are intuitive about how they can use that as leverage," said Eneli. "The long-term result could be dysfunctional thinking about the role of food."

So what's a parent to do? We want our kids to develop the habit of eating healthy food. But we don't want them to starve, either. It's not uncommon to see desperate parents reduced to short-order cooks, with everyone in the family eating something different.

The Ohio researchers say it's good to let kids feel in control at mealtimes, but not to turn the kitchen into a restaurant.

Instead, a healthy feeding dynamic is when parents choose how, when, where and what to serve children, without being excessively controlling.

Within those boundaries, let kids choose how much and what to eat. Or choose not to eat — a concept that can be disturbing for parents.

But toddlers are unlikely to starve themselves. And they learn a sense of independence, to relax and try new things, and — ideally — develop a healthy relationship with food. Taking the battle and anxiety around food away from mealtimes can pay off long term.

• Niki Bezzant is editor-in-chief of Healthy Food Guide magazine.