Rewarding Our Children... with Obesity

How did we get to the point in this crazy culture of ours where food has become something we use to manipulate, bribe, coerce, reward and medicate.

In the good old days...we ate because it sustained and nourished us.
Outdated and wacky notions I know, but effective nonetheless.

We gave kids food at designated meal times.

If my recent trip to the local shopping centre is any indication, we're in trouble.

Apparently junk food is now being used to 'train' children to behave a certain way... just like we do with bears in the circus and the dolphins at Seaworld.

Sad.

I saw five different parents (or maybe carers) shove junk food into the mouths of crying or misbehaving children, to pacify them.
I actually watched a mother feed her baby (maybe ten months old) fries while she tucked into her bucket of fried chicken.

Two stupid, irresponsible decisions.

The poor little kid ate as many fries as he could, and then began to put the remainder in his mouth and systematically suck the fat and salt off them, one by one.

As an ex-fat kid, it broke my heart to see this child being handicapped before he even gets a chance to rationalise or decide for himself.
And by the time he can decide, he'll be obese and programmed to consume vast quantities of crap, because that's all he knows.

Mum's grooming him for a life of obesity and emotional and psychological pain.

It seems that the good old pat on the back, hug or words of encouragement, don't cut it anymore. Some parents are teaching their children that approval comes in the form of high fat, high sugar, high calorie rewards.

"You sat still for a whole five minutes...well done, here's another donut."

We reward ourselves too.

"I've been so good today; I deserve this".

What... you deserve to be fat?

You deserve to over-eat?

You deserve to stress your body with additional, non-functional, weight?

So many of us see food as a prize for doing (or not doing) certain things.
We even 'save up' for the weekend... so we can 'let our hair down'.

We 'plan' to over-eat.

We tell ourselves that if we don't let our hair down (over-eat) every now and then, we're... missing out.

I spoke to a bloke recently who 'rewards' himself every night after dinner with sweet biscuits and 'Cookies and Cream' ice cream. When I suggested that he should give the biscuits and ice-cream a miss, he said: "yeh, but I've gotta have a life."

Apparently, no late night binge; no life.

It's amazing what we can rationalise when we try.

I'm not saying that food can't be an enjoyable part of our life... and I'm not saying we should never eat our favourite 'happy' food, but I am suggesting that we shouldn't come home from work every night and throw down a block of Toblerone because we've had a stressful day... and we deserve some food therapy.

Medicating or manipulating with food ain't a great long term strategy for anything.

As long as we use food as a reward for certain behaviours (especially with our kids), we're in trouble.

We are a society which starts this pattern early and we need to stop it.

If your two-year-old is a Golden Retriever, then food rewards are a great idea.

Otherwise, give them a miss.