unschooling food - Page 4

[organicmom3]

Food is by far a more important issue than many many people realize.  So if you are setting limits on food and EDUCATING your children on what is healthy food and what is porcessed junk....what some people call food but really isn't....than you are empowering them to a long healthy life of making informed decisions.  No one who knows what they are talking about can say there is anything wrong with that!

[NellieKatz]

I've been thinking some more about this. People unschool (correct me if I'm wrong) because they know that human beings are hard-wired to learn, to explore their environments and learn what they need to know to get along in their world. This suggests evolution. Something that's innate to us, built into us so we can survive.

I'm struggling to put this into words clearly....bear with me....with food, we allegedly have all these cues which tell us what to eat and what not to. Again, a survival thing. Just like the way animals in nature sort of "know" not to eat brightly colored prey because it signifies that they're probably poisonous. We have those cues too, like the smell of rottenness is nauseating to us, so we stay away from rotten food, and voila! That just happens to save us from illness.

But nowadays, the food doesn't give us those same cues. Food which will probably kill us over the longer term is so sweet and yummy and tantalizing. It even can fool our bodies with false tastes which our senses say "Yum! gotta eat that!!" but really it's all fake and from a factory and can, if it dominates our diet, keep us from ever going near a truly nutritious version of the same thing. (i.e. fake "strawberry flavor" vs. the real strawberry)

So that is why many of us feel that our kids can't navigate the food world with the same amount of assurance that it's all going to be OK...because it takes more than those cues "that looks good" "that tastes good" and "I feel full now" that work when we're in the presence of whole foods (some processed foods actually interfere with the normal signals of the body that tell us we're satiated, so if we eat those, we're not really sure when to stop eating! Maybe not till we've overdone it.) 

That is why many of us don't bring the truly objectionable "foods" (and I use the term loosely) into our home. We realize that the advertising out there is 24/7 and heaven knows those big corporations cry their little heads off when they're regulated.....the one area we can make sure our kids are given what they need for their bodies to thrive is at home! and, if we are lucky enough to live in a positive community, we can of course seek out those places socially too (we are SO lucky to have a large vegetarian/vegan/homeschooling/local-food community here, so there ARE healthy, positive, fun and natural kid-events we can go to. Not everyone's blessed with that, sad to say.)

Anyway, thanks again for listening.

[4evermom]

Originally Posted by NellieKatz 

But nowadays, the food doesn't give us those same cues. Food which will probably kill us over the longer term is so sweet and yummy and tantalizing. It even can fool our bodies with false tastes which our senses say "Yum! gotta eat that!!" but really it's all fake and from a factory and can, if it dominates our diet, keep us from ever going near a truly nutritious version of the same thing. (i.e. fake "strawberry flavor" vs. the real strawberry)

So that is why many of us feel that our kids can't navigate the food world with the same amount of assurance that it's all going to be OK...because it takes more than those cues "that looks good" "that tastes good" and "I feel full now" that work when we're in the presence of whole foods (some processed foods actually interfere with the normal signals of the body that tell us we're satiated, so if we eat those, we're not really sure when to stop eating! Maybe not till we've overdone it.)

ITA.  You throw MSG into a person's daily diet and who knows if they will be able to self regulate.  The stuff is designed to cue you to eat.  I always want another Chik-filet sandwich (which has MSG) after the first even though my stomach feels physically full.  And I'm not very sensitive to foods the way others describe themselves. 

[MOMMMYTO3]

Nor would you allow your child to run across a busy street because it looked "fun".  We are still the sole guardian of these precious lives, and I see no reason to not interfere with decision making that is detrimental to health or safety! 

We teach healthy choices, and the benefits from making them with food.  My children also have free range of the kitchen, but I will always suggest a different path if I know there has not been one healthy choice made that day.  Two heads are better than one, and a friendly reminder never hurt anyone.  We are all working together in our home to help, support and encourage each other.  I'd rather we "said" something that sparked a healthy debate and ultimately ended in that child making an informed but independent decision, rather than standing back and watching them eat non stop junk!

I am an un-schooling parent by nature, but nurture overrides that facet from time to time.  Follow your instincts, and help guide that young mind in a healthy direction.

                                                                                             

[savithny]

Originally Posted by NellieKatz 

I've been thinking some more about this. People unschool (correct me if I'm wrong) because they know that human beings are hard-wired to learn, to explore their environments and learn what they need to know to get along in their world. This suggests evolution. Something that's innate to us, built into us so we can survive.

I'm struggling to put this into words clearly....bear with me....with food, we allegedly have all these cues which tell us what to eat and what not to. Again, a survival thing. Just like the way animals in nature sort of "know" not to eat brightly colored prey because it signifies that they're probably poisonous. We have those cues too, like the smell of rottenness is nauseating to us, so we stay away from rotten food, and voila! That just happens to save us from illness.

But nowadays, the food doesn't give us those same cues. Food which will probably kill us over the longer term is so sweet and yummy and tantalizing. It even can fool our bodies with false tastes which our senses say "Yum! gotta eat that!!" but really it's all fake and from a factory and can, if it dominates our diet, keep us from ever going near a truly nutritious version of the same thing. (i.e. fake "strawberry flavor" vs. the real strawberry)

Yep -- read "The End of Overeating" for some really fascinating work on this -- the way that modern food processors use their knowledge of our instincts to get us to buy more and more of their products.   It's very conciously done - they layer on each of the things our body seeks -- salt and fat and sugar -- in order to make the foods irresistable to our lizard brains.  Our bodies are self-regulating, but part of that regulation is since those flavors are rare in nature, our instnct is to get as much of them as we can when we find them.  

The aforementioned book has descriptions of research that has found that exposure to those very, very attractive foods actually short-circuits a child's inborn ability to gauge how much they've eaten and to balance energy intake and outtake, causing them to *lose* that ability.