Don't Feel Bad that I don't Give My Daughter Junk to Eat

[amileegirl]

That's right.  I don't give my 1 year old soda, lollipops, cookies, juice, cookies or other sweets.   No chips or junk food. 

She gets plenty of "sweets" from good wholesome foods.   Breastmilk is number 1.   Then apples, pears, peaches, kiwi, plums, mango, cataloupe, cherries, berries, and other fruits that come with fiber.  She eats them whole skin and all when they are edible.  No teeth either!   She has plenty of fun with fruit and they already contain plenty of sugar.  It also takes her longer than 30 seconds to consume.   I don't need to give her a bottle of soda to suck on, a cookie, or a fistfull of cake.     When you stop eating junk food you lose a taste for it, and so I intend not to do the reverse and create a taste for junk.

Don't pity her for the fact that she didn't know what junk food tasted like for a whole year.    I don't give her processed sugar with the exception of the small slice of birthday cake with whipped cream "frosting" on her first birthday and that's all the sugary cake she's ever going to have until birthday number 2.  She didn't even know it was edible at first which I think was a GOOD thing.   Because really, cake is edible but I wouldn't classify it as a "food".       She's young.  I've got control over what foods she experiences and I want to create healthy food preferences and avoid junk for as long as possible and then will begin teaching appropriate portions and times for junk food.

The next time you consider giving a  baby or toddler candy, soda or juice.  Consider if you would pour them a glass of water and spoon in a teaspoon of sugar before giviing it to them.  Read the labels on the foods you buy especially health foods in disguise like fruit yogurts.   A lot of them have an incredible amoutn of added sugar on top of the natural sugars present in yogurt in the first place.

Take a look at sugar stacks.com for an eye opener:   http://www.sugarstacks.com/beverages.htm

Video 1:  Fast forward to about 1:32 if desired  (4 grams =  (approximately) 1 tsp)

[girlcar99]

Oct. 12, 2010 at 4:56 PM

Couldn't agree more- and I might add, and hopefully this will help other moms.  Please don't offer my child sweets with out asking me first!  Nothing like having to take a sweet out of my childs hand!  Then, even I feel bad.

[wendy46121]

Oct. 12, 2010 at 7:46 PM

I totally agree and I HATE when people *ahem my mother* gives my kids this processed crap food.  So sick of it.