Down With the Kid's Food Industry!

As many of you know, I have two daughters, a 3 year old and a 16 month old.  My oldest is one of the pickiest eaters I have ever met.  Her extremely narrow menu includes chicken nuggets (only sometimes, and nevrer the mechanically separated kind, yuck!), nachos (affectionately called "chips and cheese" - this comprises the bulk of her diet), “honey toast” – which is just as it sounds, butter and honey on toast, and breakfast cereal.  I once made the mistake of allowing Lucky Charms into our house.  The entire time we had the cereal in our house it was all she would eat.  The frustration resulting from this is what led me to write this article.  She would refuse anything else in favor of her "rainbow cereal.”  Besides this, she will eat candy, the last of which we refer for bribes for potty-training, etc.  Ahem, rewards.
Due to clever packaging, it is pretty easy to spot the new foods she would be willing to try when we enter the supermarket.  You could probably spot them, too.  Anything marketed to kids, any brightly decorated breakfast cereal, fruit pouches with Mickey Mouse on them, it's pretty easy to spot the foods that comprise the "Children's Food Industry."
The idea of food that is intended primarily for children is a new development in itself.  Why do children need their own food types?  Why are there kid’s meals at restaurants?  Because we have been conditioned to believe that children are too young for, or simply not interested, in the plethora of food options healthy adults enjoy.  As Charlene Elliott explains in her 2011 article, "...the category of kids food has been entirely constructed through advertising and marketing" (as if we didn't know that already).
Think back to how children were raised a century ago.  There were no Tyson chicken nuggets, no kid’s meals, no goldfish crackers.  The modern parent might ask, "What did children eat???"  The answer is, simply, whatever their parents ate but in smaller proportions.  It really is as simple as that.
But no, we had to let the big, bad advertising in and allow them to change our images of self-identity.  We have allowed them to change the way we view ourselves in relation to our food and our peers.  The process of eating has historically been and still is a social activity.  Any child or adult who has had a meal in a social situation such as a school knows that they are judged by whatever they eat.  For me, I was mocked that my mother would only buy the generic brands of foods.  It was understood that if your food was not manufactured by a recognized brand that it was not only inferior but the social strata put you at the bottom of the totem poll.  This has caused children, and adults, "...to eat particular foods, not on the basis of their tastiness, or other benefits, but because of their place in a social matrix of meaning" (Schor and Ford, 2007:16).  If you scoff at this idea or believe it is ridiculous, it has probably been a while since you had a brown bag lunch at school.

While cafeteria-style lunch may take a bit of the social pressure from food away, it does not mean that these meals are healthy.  A similar situation would be the classic argument of uniforms vs. no uniforms at school.  The social implications of certain styles places children into groups and may cause other children to be picked on or bullied.  By putting everyone in the same clothes, more or less, we take away this factor.

I am not saying that we ban brown bag lunches in favor of cafeteria lunch, but what I am saying is that we remove marketing to children in the marketplace.  It is unnecessary.  It is unhealthy.  It causes problems in the home when it produces children who simply refuse to eat anything except the usually expensive and highly-processed products marketed to children.  To compensate for this, we have even developed “nutritional drinks” that are corn-based and filled with vitamins and minerals to aid in children’s development.  I am not speaking against these drinks directly as they have been, unfortunately, a key factor in my daughter’s development.  I am speaking out against a food culture that makes these drinks necessary.  Down with kids meals, down with Cap’n Crunch!  I value a society that makes sense, where adults prepare meals based on fruits, vegetables, meats, and grains, and their children enjoy the same fare at the same table without complaining.  Sound like a pipe dream?  It’s not.
Pamela Druckerman, in her book “Bringing Up Bebe,” retells her experiences as an American moving to Paris after her husband’s job transfer.  The thing that made the most impression on her was the way young children, even toddlers, behaved at restaurants.  They were well-behaved, silent, and ate what was put in front of them.  What a novel idea!  Some parents might at get the impression that these children are being stifled and not able to enjoy childhood to the fullest.  To the contrary, in French society much of early childhood is centered around establishing the “catre” or framework for life.  Things such as a strict bedtimes, mealtimes, etc. are established so that children may thrive in the framework.  A metaphor for this might be, would you rather have your children run “free” in the wild, or would you rather them have a framework, or “house” for them to play in and experience life safely so that they are enabled to see the wonder in the world around them?  We are not “free” beings in that we all have human needs, including food, drink, sleep, and shelter.  The “catre” takes care of these things while leaving the rest of the time for development and adventure.
I have to admit that I am quite disappointed in the way nutritional education is being approached in this country.  The idea that parents need food charts and pyramids to help "empower" them to make more healthful food choices for their children is ridiculous.  The government must think we're all a bunch of foam-mouthed zombies with nothing better to do than wait for their next publication.  Honestly, what parents really need is for the constant marketing targeting children to stop.  If this means cutting off the television, I am open to it, but it extends to the grocery store, too.  Perhaps I as a parents simply need to get used to my most important weapon in raising good, healthy kids – the word, “No.”