Relax, Ms Whole Foods Puritan, relax.

I’ve just come back from an encounter with one of those god awful parents. Ms Wholefoods Puritan, you probably know the type:

“Oh no, dahling cheree can’t have those for lunch, my children have never TASTED white bread.”

"My children don’t get choices, they eat what they’re given!”

“This woman was giving her kids FAIRY BREAD!! at a QUARTER to FIVE!!!!”

I was trying to be polite I really was. My eyes were quivering in their sockets with the effort required to keep them from rolling skywards in bored exasperation. “Relax, get over yourself!” I wanted to say, “No healthy person has ever died from occasional consumption of fairy bread. Your obsession with food is going to rub off on them and not in the way you think. As soon as they get a tiny bit of freedom they’re going to be gorging themselves on all the food you wouldn’t let them have and they won’t know how to leave it alone because you didn’t let them take it for granted you silly woman!”

But of course I didn’t, I did try to say something like maybe the errant mother thought the kids would like a treat since they were all having a play togther but she wouldn’t let me finish the sentence. I also thought of telling her about my cousins who weren’t allowed anything nice so they bought or borrowed treats and hid their contraband under the bed. However, she was too busy telling me that her children’s love of lentils was due to the fact that they’d never had icecream to listen.

I know people who grew up with parents who thought that certain foods had inherently evil qualities. I was one of them. My mother would go through phase after phase. First it was dairy products that were causing all her ills, then it was wheat, then sugar (she was an alcoholic so I used to think that the sugar allergy was hilarious given that it’s one of the breakdown products of alcohol). But the alltime evil foods were processed foods - the ones with the dreaded additives. Preservatives, colouring, artificial flavouring, they were all inherently evil and the nasties would hang around for years doing hideous things to your insides. She was always very vague about the exact nature of these things, but cancer came up a lot.

I don’t buy the idea that if you restrict your child’s diet to nothing but wholefoods they’ll grow into serene, well behaved little angels with a model health record. I do believe in not allowing too many sweet things, letting them go hungry before dinner (depending on the age group, it’s a bit too hard on babies and toddlers to my mind) and making their first taste of food something savoury, like pureed brocolli. But outlawing fairy bread, cup cakes, and the occasional jelly bean is sheer lunacy because you’ll end up creating a desperate desire for the things that they see all their friends enjoying but can’t have themselves.

Choosing healthy foods is one of the first ways kids practise the fine art of making good choices. I want to let my children make lots of mistakes, I want them to practice choosing so they are not making their first real life choices when 18, head strong and behind the wheel of a car. I want them to be able to know the difference between yummy foods that are loaded with sugar and salt and yummy foods that are good for them so they are not making their first choices when they move out of home for the first time. I heard of a girl who ended up with scurvy because she lived on white bread and jam for most of her first year at Uni. Guess who wasn’t allowed white bread at home?

I encourage my children to eat well. I tell them why we are eating what we are eating but the rest is up to them. I let them get sick on easter eggs and marshmallows because I know they’ll remember the experience for next time. Even at two years old my youngest knows that too many easter eggs will make her feel unwell. I feed them fruit and chicken soup when they’re sick so they’ll associate those foods with comfort and feeling better. And my favourite rule: Nothing makes food taste better than eating it at a friendly dinner table when you’re ravenous.

My mother was an “eat it all or else” Nazi, my step-mother was a “you must try it, but you don’t have to eat it. If you don’t want it there’s fruit and cheese in the fridge and you can get it yourself. Remember, what you don’t eat today you get tomorrow in another form!” (My step-mother is a soup and fritters from leftovers cullinary genius.) Guess who’s cooking was my favourite? and guess who’s table I try to emulate today? My step-mother’s.

So my message to Ms Whole Foods Puritan? Relax woman. Let them have the occasional hamburger with their salad, let them see that junk food is a tasty thing that they can access but is not desirable all the time. Withhold it and you’ll create desire for it sure as free range eggs are happy eggs.