Force-Feeding Your Kid: Confessions of a Health Food Foodie
by Cait Johnson

There was a quote online recently about how conservatives' children rebelled by becoming hippies and then the hippies' children rebelled by becoming conservative. So how does a health food foodie's child assert his independence? By becoming a junk-food freak. My own offspring, for example, made his personal statement of autonomy by living almost exclusively on fast food burgers his first year away at art school. Unlike the maker of Supersize Me, he didn't gain weight, but I'd hate to see the insides of his arteries.

Where did I go wrong? I wail as I pore over the vibrant organic produce at the Farmers' Market. How did I fail him? I wonder as I stir yet another pot of nourishing, savory soup. (Soups and stews are my passion, but they're anathema to him.) What the heck happened? I ask myself, remembering that he ate—and loved—sushi before he was two and could make whole wheat muffins from scratch before he was five. Is the penchant for unwholesome food something that comes along with raging hormones? When did he decide that every possible variety of squash is the Devil when he used to gobble up anything from a garden with gusto? Would he be more balanced around food now if I hadn't been so anti-artificial-everything when he was growing up?

It's not like we were food fascists: our meals were really delicious—organic, seasonal, local food usually is. We didn't eat stuff that tasted like cardboard just because it's healthy: no gelid bean sprouts and soy grits for us. We feasted on homemade apple crisp with organic whipped cream, toothsome kale and corn cakes, roasted squashes stuffed with quinoa and pumpkin seeds. But it didn't seem to matter; after a certain age, my son—like so many others—was addicted to junk food.

My son had never tasted anything from the fast-food-chain-that-must-not-be-named until a friend's parents took him there. They must put heroin in those fries—one bite and he was hooked. And it's not only the fat and salt; the free toys that come with Happy Meals are like cocaine for kids. (When he was out with friends, Reid used to ask for a girl's Happy Meal. Then he and his little pals would take their mini-Barbie dolls, place them in the street, and gleefully watch them get run over. Now that I think about it, this sort of prefigured the artwork he's making these days.)

So how do we get our teens (or younger school-age kids, for that matter) to eat a healthy diet? Answer: with great difficulty. Here are a few things I've learned.

1. Peer pressure is king and there's not much you can do about it. Kids hate to be weird and everybody eats junk food, so if you don't, you're the oddball. But when they're younger, you can cultivate friendships with kids whose parents are of like mind and form your own alternative it's-cool-to-be-healthy enclave. Take ‘em to great healthy kid-friendly restaurants like the Garden Street Café, or Luna 61, or the cafeteria at Omega. Cook tasty wholesome meals at home and insist they tear themselves away from their computers to eat with you. By the time they're starting to drive, they'll be hanging out at the mall food court and you might as well save your breath. You can't keep them from trying and liking the stuff, but you can balance it out with good fresh food.

2. Get kids involved in growing and cooking the food they eat. There is a certain magic about eating a tomato you've just picked, or a carrot you've pulled from the ground. And when they help to scrub the clams for steamers, or stir a bowl of batter for berry-stuffed waffles, you can be pretty sure they'll eat what they've put their energy into.

3. Avoid preaching, shaming, and rigidity around food. To my shame, I remember once, when my son wanted a hot dog, quoting a friend who famously said, "We don't do hot dogs. It'd be like giving my kids snot sandwiches." Also, did he really need to hear a lecture on the evils of factory farming and the wastefulness of meat production every time the poor kid wanted a pork chop?

4. Be glad they're eating at all. Anorexia and bulimia among the young are a real and growing problem: my son told me that many girls in his old high school regularly visited the rest room after lunch to throw it up. And actually my son, even after all his whopper meals with fries, is still terribly thin himself.

5. Remember that their bodies are young and resilient. They're able to tolerate a diet that would put many of us in the hospital. Most kids survive their own weird food preferences: even the little girl I knew who would only eat spaghetti and cheese—nothing else, I'm not kidding—lived to tell the tale as a happily omnivorous adult.

6. Eventually, they will outgrow it, whatever it is—a passion for Charleston Chews, a yen for nitrate-laden beef jerky, a jones for Twinkies. One day, all these will come to represent their teen years to them, and the budding adult they are becoming will decide a change is in order. Or so I keep telling myself.

7. Remember that we were not exempt from teen rebelliousness ourselves. My mother was enamored of convenience food and my family ate steak and roast beef several times a week; of course I would decide that I would cook things from scratch and have no truck with red meat.

8. Trust them. They're smart kids. Eventually they will find their way. Just last week, my son told me he is now working out every day and that fast food has not passed his lips since he started. Also, he has discovered the great healthy takeout from the Wild Oats store not far from his Boston apartment. So maybe there is light at the end of the fast-food tunnel.