Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this heartfelt and thought-provoking episode, hosts Scott and Jess explore the complex relationship between food, parenting, and childhood development. Inspired by a viral social media post about body image and food messaging, they explore how parents can foster healthy relationships with food by focusing on family rituals, mindful eating, and meaningful connection rather than restriction.
Jess and Scott share personal experiences, including their own family dinner traditions and weekend donut rituals. They reveal how food struggles often point to unmet relational needs and offer practical ways to approach these challenges with empathy and understanding.
Some important topics discussed in the episode include:
* Food as Connection: Discover how food issues often reflect underlying relationship dynamics.
* Positive Memories: Learn how to create meaningful rituals that build healthy associations with food.
* Mindful Eating: Equip your children with tools to develop a balanced and intuitive approach to eating.
This episode offers valuable insights for parents looking to nurture a happy, healthy attitude toward food in their families.
If you want to hear more from Jess and Scott about food and eating, listen to "Is It Healthy Eating, Or Is It Trauma? Unpacking Scott's Relationship With Food". [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-it-healthy-eating-or-is-it-trauma-unpacking-scotts/id1740816838?i=1000653892969]
Get 10% OFF parenting courses and kids' printable activities at Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/] using the code ROBOTUNICORN.
We'd love to hear from you! Have questions you want us to answer on Robot Unicorn? Send us an email: podcast@robotunicorn.net.
Learn more about the Solving Bedtime Battles course here [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/solving-bedtime-battles/].
Credits:
Editing by The Pod Cabin [https://thepodcabin.com/]
Artwork by Wallflower Studio [https://www.wallflowerstudio.co/]
Production by Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/]
Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn.
We are so glad that you are here.
Hey friends, so at pickup last week, our daughter asked Scott a truly kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a plan and he said
To our daughter, thank you for asking.
Let's talk tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from our new body safety and consent course at Nurturture First.
So this new body safety and consent course is taught by me.
So
Jess, if you listen to this podcast, you know me.
I'm a child therapist and a mom of three, and I have taught body safety and consent education for years
This course takes all my years of experience teaching this education and gives you calm, age-appropriate language for body parts, consent, and boundaries.
You'll learn how to teach your kids that no means no, you'll learn how to teach them to read facial cues, you'll talk about safe and unfortunate.
safe touch and you'll even teach them about their uh oh feeling.
There's guidance inside this course for the real life stuff like tickling that goes too far and even the difference between a secret and a surprise
We made this course at Nurtured First because research shows that body safety education helps kids speak up sooner and we want that for our family, for Scott and I, but also for you.
So check the course out at nurturedfirst.
com slash body safety and to save 10% use
the code robot unicorn and just full disclosure here we are the creators of this course and we're so proud of it
Are you ready to use your kind words with me this afternoon?
I was a little grumpy with Scott this morning.
You don't say.
Don't talk about it?
No.
No, it's okay.
I woke up in a bad mood this morning.
And I think we've mentioned to you that we're moving.
And I just woke up and I was looking around the house and just everything was everywhere.
The boxes were all over the place and
For some reason it just filled me with a rage that could only come out at my husband.
And filled you with a rage.
That needed to be expressed.
Annoyance.
I thought you said it was a moment of panic.
But that panic came out as well.
Oh I see.
Yes.
Right.
I was panicking because we had stuff everywhere, and then it turned into anger towards Scott, which he did handle with Grace.
And then
I realized later that it was just misdirected, maybe anxiety around moving.
And then I apologized to Scott and said, I'm sorry for being a grump towards you this morning.
And he forgave me in full
Actually he hasn't said that yet I'm manifesting that.
Is that what you're looking for?
Yeah.
Forgiveness?
Can you forgive me, please?
Sure, I guess.
What's in it for me?
Is that toxic?
Is that what you want to talk about today?
No, we we did forgive each other.
I forgave Scott.
What did you have to forgive me for?
I forgave Scott for doing nothing wrong and just simply existing as a man in my house.
And you forgave me for being really rude to you for no reason.
And that's sometimes marriage.
And now we're recording a podcast.
together.
Yep.
Hopefully you can be kinder to me when you're speaking with me.
And I just want to say, like what I mean to you, it's not even that I was that mean.
It's just that I had a certain attitude towards everything that was happening in the house.
It's not like I was said anything like
Specifically rude to you.
No, just the overall demo.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you can say anything rude to me.
Exactly.
Anyway, clearly we've surpassed it.
That is honestly the one thing I do love about this show is I feel like we're so honest.
If if we had a rough morning, then we're just gonna share that.
If we're in a jokey happy mood, then we'll share that.
But that's marriage.
That's how far can I push it today?
I we'll find out.
Okay.
We wanted to talk about a post today.
It's a post that I wrote last weekend and is really hitting home with a lot of people in different ways.
And I felt very passionate about the message in the post.
And I read it to Scott and he had said he had some thoughts.
Did you read it to me?
Yeah, I read it to you when we were talking about what podcast we wanted to talk about today
I think you only read the comments.
I don't know that you read the actual Oh, okay.
So maybe I didn't read the full post.
So I was kind of hoping that you could just read the post to me without too much prefacing and then I could say what I think you meant to say and also possible
uh ways people interpreted it.
Okay.
I'm really excited.
Imagine being seven.
Your clothes feel a bit tight.
You tell your mom they don't fit.
She tells you it's because you've been eating too many treats.
Mom tells you that when you eat too many treats, you start getting fat.
She noticed that your belly is getting bigger.
She tells you to eat less sugar and that she'll make you eggs instead of cereal.
For the first time in your life you notice your body.
Growing out of your clothes is no longer a sign of getting older, it's a sign of getting fat
At the young age of seven, you listen to your mom.
Only you love sugary treats, so now you only eat them when you know she isn't looking.
Now you're 14.
You're out of sleepover looking through a magazine with your friend
You notice how a girl in the magazine doesn't have what mom calls chubb on her body.
You want to look like her.
For the next 20 years.
You focus on staying thin.
You try to remind yourself that sugar is bad.
And when you mess up and eat it, you feel so angry at yourself.
You spend hours staring at your body.
You want to make sure that it's perfect.
and it never is.
Now you're thirty-four.
You've spent your whole life at war with your body.
You have a daughter now.
She's seven.
She looks in the mirror.
She tells you her clothes don't fit.
What do you say?
It's in these moments where we have a choice.
We can choose to break the cycle, to say something different, and to save ourselves from years of hurt.
Or we can repeat the same patterns that were given to us.
What do you choose?
You decide to look at your daughter and say, your clothes don't fit, let's get you some new ones.
You don't comment on her body.
You start to heal your own relationship with food.
And as you do, you realize that food wasn't the issue after all.
Your issues with food were about your own deep need to feel seen, loved, accepted
and worthy from your parents and society.
It wasn't about the food.
Your daughter won't have to go through the same pain because the cycle stops here.
She is worthy as she is, just like you were at age seven, and you still are today.
Can I say it?
Profound.
Propound.
There it is.
I feel like you can hear the passion in my voice.
Like I I loved that post.
It hit close to home.
It wasn't my story.
Oh.
It's not my story.
I just want to clarify that
It actually was inspired because I was doing weekend polls on Nurtured First and one of the polls was about did you grow up being told you were
that and so I had a whole bunch of women in my DMs just kind of talking about that.
And of course some of these pieces are my experience like you know being 14 looking at magazines that type of thing but
It was kind of based on the collective experience of women in the eighties and nineties growing up, being told that having any kind of anything on your body is not good.
And you need to be as skinny as possible.
So I think a lot of us have unhealthy relationships with food and that we don't want to pass that on to our kids.
And that was really the inspiration.
But tell me what you think people took away from that post
Well, I feel like I know what you were trying to get at, so I can understand that you're trying to help people through their own issues with body image and f
food and whatever.
So I get that part of it.
I understand that to be honest, the way you read it, it's a little bit more challenging for me to to see how people took that the wrong way.
That's why I wanted to read it in my voice.
Yeah, but people are not reading it in your voice necessarily.
Or rarely if ever.
So I could foresee how people
People would take certain things out of context, whether or not they read the whole thing too, that's another big thing on Instagram.
People often will comment without having actually read.
the whole thing they'll see like a single slide of your 10 image carousel or something like that in comment.
So I can foresee a lot of parents saying, but candy and sugary treats are unhealthy.
Yeah.
I think that is definitely missing the point of what you
So my comment section became a place of saying that we have an obesity crisis.
and children are eating more treats than ever before and children need to be better at not eating so many treats and that sugar is bad.
And that children need to learn that sugar is bad.
And it became a place of anger in the comments on both sides.
Some people r resonating completely with the story and understanding it and a lot of people being like
Yeah, but kids need to know that sugar is bad.
So it became this bigger conversation about obesity, about overeating, about sugar, about the way we talk about
Food to our kids and a lot of people still relating to the mom in the story who told her kid that they're getting fine that they should stop eating treats
So it seems like even though I wrote that imagining parents in like the 80s and 90s saying that, because that was more common then, it seems like that is still very common and something that
A lot of parents are still telling their kids.
And that was concerning to me and that's kinda why I wanted to talk about it today.
Yeah.
I mean this is how we always talk about
things, but there's a lot of area in between saying you can have whatever you want to eat and actually what you're eating is completely terrible for you and you're getting fat and you need to stop.
There's a lot in between
Or maybe not even in between, maybe it's completely different.
But the way I've talked about it with our oldest two daughters is yeah, sugar is not the best for you.
And I explained that a lot of our favorite foods and the things that we like the most, especially 'cause they're my kids
are incredibly sugary.
Scott loves treats.
I do love treats.
It's a problem.
We should have had some Halloween kiddo today.
I know we should have.
We have so much at home right now.
But what I've explained to them is food acts like a fuel source for your body.
So I didn't use necessarily those terms, but the way I explain it to them is
Food is fuel for your body and for your brain.
And while you're at school, let's say, or at home doing things, eating healthier foods, like fruits and vegetables and meats and like the basic
food will help you learn better at school.
It'll help you be more energetic on the playground and be able to run around more.
And it it'll be able to do all these things.
And
let's say the candies and treats, they might have similar properties to some of those foods.
Like they'll give you that energy boost, but the way the energy is metabolized in your body causes you to
crash quickly and want more of that so that you can keep up that energy.
So I tried to explain it in very simple terms to them that there's certain foods that help
fuel your body and keep you energetic throughout the whole day, help you sleep better at night, like overall are just better for you as a human growing up.
Then some of these treats, but it doesn't mean you can't have any treats.
I don't know.
A lot of people that I know have been told
that sugar, candy, whatever is so terrible for you and then they hate themselves after they eat it.
Yeah.
Which is that really the point?
Cause the thing is our brains, our bodies have
developed or evolved or whatever into wanting as many calories as possible so that we can survive.
So it makes sense that we're just going to want to have those
things that are quote unquote unhealthy.
Yeah.
So then to me it's more logical to have that healthy relationship with those unhealthy
Foods.
I agree with you completely.
I think we've really been mindful of the way that we approach the food conversations with our kids, just based on our own different experiences as children with food.
Me as like
You're a woman who I'm sure so many people resonate with my experiences, right?
Like just growing up in a society that especially in the eighties and nineties, like anyone you saw that was like on a magazine cover
was completely skin and bones and like that.
Do you think it's that different now?
I mean maybe a little bit.
No.
It's progressing potentially in the right I don't know.
There might be a progression in the right direction, but we still have a long ways to go.
I kinda wanted to read because I want to get your thoughts on this.
So I wrote that post, right?
And then I told you that a lot of people were mad because sugar's bad and this mom's just doing the best she can.
Like the kids should have an egg instead of cereal.
Cereal is not good
It became a whole debate on cereal.
Oh really
Now you're gonna get us.
Don't cancel us, please.
Kids love some honey nut cherios in the morning.
A sugary cereal, really, Jess?
So then I really sat for two days I sat on people's comments to that post.
Yep
And I thought about food is so much more than just food, right?
It's it's so much more than just you're eating a a candy bar.
Like food can be profound.
There can be
Something deeper.
So I really sat on this and I wanted to write out my thoughts, which I've never done before on Instagram, on the way we teach our kids about food.
So I wrote another follow-up post, but this post was about imagine being seven and your mom wants to help you create a healthy relationship.
With food.
So I shared some of the things that mom could do, but I wanted to get your thoughts to see what I think.
Have you posted this already?
It's already posted, yeah.
Let me guess.
It's probably not as popular as the other one.
It's not as popular.
Go figure.
But it still did pretty well.
Okay.
But n not nearly as popular.
People love debating online.
People like to debate.
But I personally did not want this post to be missed because I felt like it is one of the more important ones I've done.
But I wanted to get your thoughts as a dad and just see if this is how you would talk about food.
Here's the post in response to the controversial post.
Imagine being seven.
Your mom wants you to create a healthy relationship with food and your body.
She knows that having a healthy relationship with food and your body is about so much more than just avoiding sugar
Your mom prioritizes family dinners.
Before dinner, you say something you're grateful for.
She makes sure your body is calm before you eat.
Most of the time, mom tries to make sure that dinner isn't eaten in front of a screen, unless it's Friday night.
This is movie night, a ritual your entire family looks forward to.
Mom takes the lead on what is served for dinner.
She always makes sure there's something
you like on your plate, but she also offers you other options.
She chooses the menu, you choose what you eat.
Mom models her own healthy eating habits.
She talks about food with respect and care.
She talks to you about her favorite meals and you make them together.
Every Saturday morning you walk with mom, in our case this is actually with Scott, to the bakery down the road and get donuts
The smell of the cinnamon spice will remind you of your childhood for years to come.
Donuts will remind you of your walk to the bakery and the time spent with your family.
You sometimes see Mom look at her body in the mirror and smile.
When she's feeling fancy, she'll wear lipstick and perfume.
You love the smell and how fancy she looks with lipstick on.
Mom tells you the story of the food that you're eating.
For example, when you eat apple pie at grandma's, she tells you how she loves her mom's recipe.
She tells you how she looks forward to the taste and the smell.
Eating apple pie is more than just eating food.
It's eating a memory and a piece of who mom is.
What your mom knows is that creating a healthy relationship with food and body has everything to do with the relationship she has with you.
Food issues are often not about sugar, carbs, or picky eating
They are about closeness, belonging, and being seen.
As you grow up, you still love grandma's apple pie, movie and pizza nights on Friday, and donuts on Saturday.
You also know your body feels good when you feed it veggies, fruit, and protein
You see your food as a gift.
It's an honor to consume it.
There's wisdom in slowing down to eat it and saying something you are grateful for first.
Food is a blessing, not a curse, and there's room for all of it.
Cute.
That was my follow-up post.
Yeah, that's nice.
Were people still pissed about it?
No, they loved it.
And I think a lot of people who read that post were like.
I've never seen food that way before.
And I feel like we're making the problem.
This is where my rant comes in, about sugar and kids eating too much.
And like that's not the problem.
The problem is
A, so many food issues are rooted in relationship issues.
And I said in my caption to that post, like I'm not a dietitian, so I can't speak to like X amount of protein and X amount of this, right?
But all the di there's so many dietitians who comment like, Jess, you don't need to be a dietitian.
What you said is exactly what we would say.
You know?
It's not about
the sugar being the problem.
It's about maybe there's a lack of ritual or routine or conversation around why we're eating a treat, right?
Maybe it's not the food, but it's like a lack of routine and like family dinner time and prioritizing like stillness before you eat.
Right?
We're so rushed and we're hurrying all the time and food has become something that we're just like even you and I are bad at this.
Like we're just racing to do and we're eating without thinking about it.
I feel like we've been pretty good recently.
We're really good at family dinner time.
Yeah
That's one thing that we're going to do.
Oh yeah.
The other meals.
Like breakfast.
Often I miss both and I'm only eating dinner when I'm busy.
And even like we're we can, in general, not just you and I, be bad at like stopping a pause before eating.
You know, we're just like we're rushing.
So we're not like our bodies are not prepared to like consume the food.
Or even I mean, I think I've referenced this book, but Braiding Sweet Grass, which is like my new ultimate favorite book of all time.
It's like we're not seeing a food as a gift.
We're not wondering where it came from.
Like it's just it just appears and we just eat it.
100%.
And I know this might throw some people off when I say this, but
It's something that I've said to our oldest daughter that I think when she's older she has to understand and potentially like I'll get my hunting like my gun license or when we go hunting or something, but she has to actually see where meat comes from because right now it's just like
Meat just comes from the store.
Yeah.
But the reality is it's a living animal that has to die in order for you to eat it.
And I d I just don't think it's fair.
I feel like not even that long ago it was still common to have animals on your property and then you would butcher them and eat them yourself.
So you would understand where that came from.
But I feel like that's it's definitely lost for
For us and our kids.
Like I grew up on a farm.
Yeah.
So then I would see that.
But did you ever see that?
Maybe partly.
Like I I spent a lot of time around farms, but it makes you rethink how much
meat then you eat too because you realize hey this is a living thing.
You can't just constantly eat it necessarily.
And I well you could but you have to actually know where it comes from.
Yeah, we've lost this like respect, I think, for the food that's in front of us and food is just like a thing.
And it should be so much more than that.
And if you look in history, like it has been like we've been a lot more hands-on in the creation and like the getting ready of food, where it comes from.
And now it's just like
Like we can buy it pre-packaged.
We c and and that's fine.
I'm not saying like we get takeout.
Scott and I enjoy takeout quite a bit.
So it's not a judgment, but there's been this real calling inside of myself lately to
like slow down around meals and be like, hey, if I want my children to develop a healthy relationship with food, it's actually not on them.
And that was an issue I had with a lot of the comments.
It's like, well, kids shouldn't eat sugar.
Kids should know better.
And kids are making themselves obese.
It's like, actually that's my role.
as their parent to decide what kind of food is in the house.
It's not on the children.
It's not on the children.
We shouldn't be telling children you're gonna get fat if you eat this.
We should be mindful of what we're presenting and the opportunities and how they learn about
food through their relationship with us.
Right.
Maybe that you don't want to go here, but how do you think the way you were raised around food has impacted the way that you want to talk about it with our kids?
Well I mean it's obviously had a significant impact and you know that
Mm-hmm.
Because there were in my family some very addictive behaviors with food and obesity and all that.
Like it was a mental health issue level.
And I probably dealt with a bit of that in like high school.
Yeah.
But I think since then I feel like I've developed a pretty good relationship
With food, and I think we've talked about this in another podcast episode, right?
Yeah, we can like one of our earliest podcast episodes.
We talked about Scott's history with food.
Yeah, our my relationship specifically with food.
And I think
Like I said, I feel like it's pretty healthy for the most part, except for the fact that let's say when I'm getting the kids ready for school and I'm busy at work, it'll be sometimes three in the afternoon and I'll realize, hey, I haven't had anything to eat and I've only had like f
three or four cups of coffee and some bottles of water and like that's pretty much it.
Yeah.
But I realized that I should probably have something to eat now.
Yeah.
But that's more just I don't know.
I'm in such a flow of things that it's hard to get out of that sometimes.
But I don't know, I feel like when we're eating, I'll often sit there and try and actually eat and like understand what's inside I don't know, there's some
There's a bit of pride that I have in my ability to pick out different spices and textures and tastes in foods.
So maybe I just spend more time trying to do that too, being mindful of all those different things
I was reflecting on our relationship and one of the first things so Scott and I started dating, we we were pretty young, and so I was still living at my parents' house at the time.
And
Something I have come to be so grateful for about my childhood now that I'm older is the fact that we had family dinner every night.
Yeah.
Like without question.
Family dinner happened every night.
It was always a similar routine, right?
Like my mom would cook.
We'd watch TV while my mom cooked.
It was our one hour of screen time a day.
My dad would get home.
We'd all sit down together at the table and eat.
And I think I just took that for granted as a child, that that was such a routine and rhythm of our day until I started
dating you and I remember that you would often bring that up.
Like, oh I love how your family has meals together.
And in hindsight, I'm like dinner time was about so much more than we're just sitting here and eating meat and potatoes together.
Right.
I don't have that at my grandparents.
Like we would sit together and have
meal together, but not necessarily at home often.
Right.
Well when dinner time's like a ritual and it's like every night we do this, every night we check in with each other.
It becomes so much more about whatever
food it is that you're consuming.
And it becomes about pausing to take that time to nourish your body and to have conversation.
And now, so the wisdom in the family dinner that I grew up with, now we're trying to recreate
that maybe it looks a little different with our kids, but I feel like maybe six, seven months ago we both felt really called to like, okay, let's prioritize family dinner because it was a bit crazy in our house.
for a time.
Yeah.
Just with like having baby and stuff like that.
It was hard to like all sit together.
But we've been trying to do that.
And it's been incredible, I think.
It's been getting easier now that they're a little bit older to actually accomplish that too.
It's really hard when you have like a baby and a tiny tiny toddler.
But it's been cool because every night at dinner we're eating, so we eat a meal together, but we're also checking in
Yep.
And it's become more than just the food.
Like our four-year-old likes to dictate the check-in.
And it's always like, what's your bestest part of the day?
What was your worst part of the day?
Or baddest, as she'll say
Yeah, she'll go around almost like playing a day a game of duck duck goose and like tap you on the head if it's your turn.
Like, Daddy, what's your baddest part of the day?
And we're eating together, but we're also creating this association that like food is a positive thing.
Yeah.
And like when you, Scott or his dad will go and get donuts with the kids every single Saturday morning.
And I never worry about like
the sugar in the donuts.
Like there's this routine around getting the donuts.
You go, you come back, we make coffee, we eat the donuts together.
Yeah we actually sit around the table too.
So we've had breakfast already.
Yeah
And then we're sitting around the table again and having donuts together and we're having coffee.
And you get to watch us eat donuts.
Yeah, I have ziliacs so I can't eat donuts.
But there's something beautiful to that too, right?
And it's about so much more than just eating sugar
It's about this relationship that you're forming around this food.
And I think for years to come the kids will always have this positive association with donuts.
Yep.
So I think it's it's less about the sugar and more about creating these
these patterns or these rituals and understanding the story of the food that you're eating.
Honestly to this day, I have that connection in my brain still of when I was a kid, like any time I smell butter in a frying pan.
Yeah.
I can visualize the kitchen at my grandparents' farmhouse and like being there and having breakfast in the morning and potentially coming in from the barn after having
milk the cows and whatever, helping out with that and it's still to this day that smell brings me back to that.
What were you gonna eat with the butter?
Often it was eggs.
My grandma would make like fry eggs for us in the morning.
And it's just I don't know.
It's the weirdest thing.
Yeah.
There are a few different smells that I have where as soon as I smell it, it brings me to a certain place.
Like uh my uncle and I when I was a kid.
He would bring me to a place like forty-five minutes away to get Caribbean roti or wraps with curry.
And I still now smelling it have to watch like
Harry Potter.
Harry Potter.
What other movie?
He had like a certain rings or something.
Certain movies that we would watch together and we would go bring it back home with us and then we'd like watch a movie together on a Saturday afternoon
Yeah.
And still to this day, like I will go there or w will go there, bring Roti back and it's like this weird need.
We haven't done it 'cause the girls find those kinds of movies too scary, but
Yeah.
And I smell that too because I went I did that with you a bunch of times too.
So now when I I will go out of my way to pick up this roti for Scott and when I smell it, I'm like
We need to just cuddle up on a couch and watch like a movie like Harry Potter or something like that.
And that's where food is so much more than food.
And I think, I mean, this is a whole other podcast, but we're blaming so many things on, let's say, sugar
And like a sugar addiction.
And maybe it is that, but it's so much more than that.
To me, it seems similar to, I don't know, people complaining about kids being on screens too much.
The screen time issue is the same thing, right?
Yeah, it sort of boils down to the same underlying issue with a lot of these issues that kids face.
Yeah, like we blame screens, we blame food, we blame all this stuff.
And it's not that it's to blame, but there is
an underlying issue of this closeness, this relationship that we have with our kids.
So they might be eating more sugar, but maybe we just need to bring back like a ritual around the type of sugar that
that they're eating, right?
Like donuts or even how much of a lot of people are.
They're gonna do what their brains are telling them to do, which is get as many calories as you possibly can because that's how you survive in the wild.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's not our children's fault.
No.
So we take the lead on that.
I kind of think
Cause I'm also thinking about how there's like, uh, what is it, the child mental health, what are they calling it, epidemic or whatever they're calling it.
Yeah.
Screen time, like kids are on screens too much, they're using social media too much, like all these different things.
I think they all boil down to the same underlying issue, but
It definitely seems like there's more complexity for parents to face now than ever before, right?
Because you have any food you could ever want, you could
consume any type of content you could ever want.
There's an unlimited number of apps and ways to connect with random people all over the world now.
There's a lot of shit going on.
There's a lot of competition for parents
For the parent-child relationship.
Yeah, and like a lot of the big companies, like the social media companies, the whole goal is to get you to see their ads and to collect data and like that's the whole point of them
So yeah, they don't want you to have an unhealthy relationship with their product, but also in the same sense, I don't think they're going to put all the measures in place necessarily
that should be in place so that realistically maybe kids shouldn't even be on social media at all.
Right?
Like you sh maybe need to have a
Developed adult brain.
I'd say all the leading experts in child mental health are saying that right now.
Prolong the amount of time
It's kind of like alcohol.
Yeah.
Like your kids can't control their impulses around it.
Right.
So we're gonna put protections in place.
I think the problem is as parents
Like we also now often have to both work.
Like both parents are working.
There's a lot of stress on parents.
So what happens, I think, with the screen issue, not that this is the topic, but it kind of is, is
They put their kids on a screen on the iPad 'cause it's easy, it keeps kids entertained and I totally understand that.
Yeah.
But then what happens is now kids are forming these patterns in their
brain, the iPad is kind of taking over everything that they want to do because their brains are too immature to know how to set that limit for themselves.
Well and then if you think about that with respect to food, we're busy
Yeah.
So then we're gonna choose the most convenient food to eat for the family, which may not be the healthiest for them either.
Yeah, yeah.
Which in turn, yeah, maybe does not help
with the and again quote unquote obcd epidemic.
Like I don't know.
I don't actually know if that's a thing or not, but that's what some people were I guess saying that.
That's what people were saying to me, yeah.
So yes, we have to slow down, but how realistic is that also?
And then how do you I don't know, it's it's so tricky because there's all these different things competing for our time and attention.
We want our kids to
do the best in life that they possibly can.
So let's put them in five days a week of different extracurriculars activities and guys parents and I I was already saying this, but I'll reiterate my point.
Like there's so many things competing for the parent child relationship right now.
Right?
So screens, maybe extracurriculars, maybe our own work.
It's just easy to throw on a movie and we just eat dinner in front of the TV instead of prioritizing the rel like sitting down at the table and eating food
And all of these things compete and take time away from the relationship that they have with us.
And I think if you really pair back all of these different issues
Yes, screens are an issue, but is that the greater issue?
Yes, sugar can be an issue, but is that the greater issue?
I think we have more of like a crisis of things competing for the parent-child relationship and the parents taking the lead of that relationship.
And we're focusing on the wrong things being the problem.
And if we take it back and we focus on how can we nurture that parent-child relationship so that sure there's still sugar in the home, like
I don't care if it's like a Pop Tart or, you know, cereal.
Like we like I said, we feed our kids cereal every morning.
Yeah.
But they also
I mean sometimes they have pancakes.
No, I'm just kidding.
So much better.
Well, that is true.
They also have pancakes.
But there's a ritual around it, right?
Yeah.
We're sitting down, even like on a busy school morning, the girls sit and they eat breakfast at the same time while they get their lunch ready.
I actually eat breakfast.
Scott will try and eat breakfast with them too.
I get their lunch ready.
There's a routine around it.
There's a rhythm around it.
It's not like there's like as much access as they want to the sugar, right?
And I think if we can simplify it down a little bit and bring back some of those rhythms and routines and even like stillness, like calming their bodies before they're eating.
our daughter's in an extracurricular of karate and sometimes those nights can be really rushed, right?
And we're like, like, hey, let's get out the door, we gotta go to karate, quick eat something.
But like we're trying to prioritize, let's maybe start dinner earlier on those nights
So that we still have time to pause and sit together and eat.
Yep.
And that's where like all the issues are connected.
And if you're eating in front of a screen, you're also being not
not as mindful.
Like so if you're always eating in front of the screen, whether that's you or your kids, right?
Like if I'm scrolling TikTok and eating, I'm not thinking about what I'm eating.
I'm gonna consume more.
I feel like our daughters are
pretty good.
Like now that we've really focused on it for the past, yeah, six months.
I think they're quite good at finding tastes and things.
I remember like on uh in c Canadian Thanksgiving, which is in October, we purchased a couple of pumpkin pies.
And I tasted it and I was like, oh, this doesn't taste very good
Because whatever they use too much of a certain seasoning in it.
And immediately both of our oldest two daughters said
Name the exact same thing.
It wa like it wasn't terrible, but they just named oh this certain thing it's a little bit too bitter and it tastes like this.
And both in that moment I was proud and realizing what kind of monsters I've
I've created being able to pick that out already.
But I feel like they can be quite mindful of what they eat already.
It's just like an inherent
Yeah.
Capability that they have if you help them unlock that capability.
Yeah.
I was thinking about that, what you're saying about that pumpkin pie.
I was thinking back to the the conversation that we originally were having about the post and people commenting like sugar is bad and kids should know to stay away from sugar.
And I was thinking about how one of my favorite memories of all time is being a kid.
And every single Sunday we'd go to my grandma's house, and every single Sunday she'd make the same cake.
And you probably remember eating it.
Yeah, the chocolate cake.
Chocolate cake from a box with icing.
From the uh little container, the icing.
From the container with little
chocolate sprinkles on it.
I can still taste it.
Oh yeah, I can in my mind too.
I've had celiac for like a long time, so I haven't eaten that in a long time, but I can still taste what that chocolate cake tastes like.
I can still feel how it felt to like eat that cake and have all my uncles and aunts and other little cousins around and be eating that together.
And that is such a positive memory for me and such a positive association.
And when I think about saying sugar is bad and wrong and kids shouldn't have it, like I just
I can't agree with that because I think if you create these rhythms and these routines around things like chocolate cake, that cake, if I looked at it today, I'd probably just cry.
because it represented so much more.
So I just want to give parents that encouragement too.
It's not like an all or nothing thing when it comes to teaching your kids how to eat healthy.
Like I think I learned how to eat healthy in terms of like these rhythms around having family dinner together, talking about the food that you're eating, having cake every Sunday.
Hey, if you could tell me that I'm gonna live to 175 because I only ate fruits and vegetables, sure.
Maybe I could get on board with that.
But if like a small amount of
Treats like this aren't gonna change your life outcomes.
It just seems so unenjoyable to not enjoy food that is delicious.
Yeah, it may not be the the best fuel for your body, but
It's yeah, about like the donuts doing that every weekend with us moving.
I know our girls are gonna miss that a lot.
Yeah.
And we're probably gonna have to make special trips out now.
We're gonna have to find a new place to get donuts or we'll have to just drive down to the old place.
And that's like it's in moderation.
And then it's of course you're not only eating donuts every day.
Like that's not
That's not logical either.
Right.
That's what I'm saying, like the rhythms and routines.
Like have Friday night pizza night.
Make that your pizza night.
Have a rhythm around it.
And then other days have
food that you've created or that you got for takeout that nourishes the body and then talk about how you feel after you eat it, right?
Like there's a story for all of it.
And I think if we can make food less about like
Oh, I need this many carbs and this many uh sugar and this much protein.
Like we can really help our kids develop a beautiful relationship where they respect the food that they're eating.
And they will inevitably enjoy the foods that are
best for them because they'll notice that they're feeling the best when they have those.
Yeah.
We'll start to help them notice that in their bodies.
And in doing that, in taking the lead on those things.
you're forming the the relationship with your child too.
And I talked about in the post like a lot of people turn to sugar for like a sense of
Maybe the dopamine hit or the Is that what it does?
Scott's gonna look it up now.
Yeah, I wanna look it up.
Yeah.
But people turn to sugar or unhealthy foods as a way to cope.
And feel comfort.
And a lot of unhealthy eating patterns are around control and are around seeking comfort through food.
And so we want to show our children different ways that they can receive comfort and control.
You've been fact checked.
And you're correct.
Eating sugar releases opioids and dopamine in our bodies.
This is the link between added sugar and addictive behavior.
So like there is the possibility to become addicted to it because it's providing that dopamine hit that you're looking for.
Yeah.
But that's like a lot of things you have the same thing when you watch screens or play too many video games or you go on social media and you get lots of likes.
They're doing similar things to your brain.
But that's where it can take over the parent-child relationship, right?
So don't let that be the place where your kid gets all their dopamine from, you know?
Let your love be their dopamine hit
That is quotable right there.
Wow, did I just come up with that on the spot?
I don't know.
Can't say.
But I I think You hate that, don't you?
I do, I hesitate that.
But maybe some people will like it.
But I think that that is the moral of the story, right?
Like don't let the treats and the sugar be the thing that gives your kid comfort.
Create the comfort as they're eating the food.
Create the comfort within your relationship
And then they won't have that toxic relationship with sugar where they need to have it to feel some sort of joy and peace.
They already have that in their relationship with you.
So food issues, our relationship issues, not always, but let's look at the relationship and let's look at maybe all these crises a different way and um just
Be like there's so many things competing for relationship right now and how can we prioritize that?
Cool.
Well I think that's a good place to end.
I mean we could probably talk
For a lot longer on this, but we could talk for like most things.
But it is I think this is incredibly important and just s some
Food for thought, if you will.
Okay.
That is worse than my quote.
That was coming.
I was waiting to drop that.
I knew I was gonna drop it at the end and and
I don't know what else to say.
I think that was a good episode.
We had a good conversation and hopefully it's helpful to know that sometimes
food issues are actually relationship issues.
Hope you have a good rest of your day and we'll talk to you again next week.
Talk to you soon.
Hey friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode.
We are glad that you are here.
If you enjoyed today's episode and found it interesting, we'd really appreciate it if you'd leave a rating and a review.
Scott and I actually sit down together and read them all.
A five-star rating helps us share our podcast and get these important messages out there.
Thank you so much for listening, and we can't wait to talk to you again next time.