Food power

I might have mentioned before, that our family is primarily vegetarian. My girls are vegetarian, my husband eats chicken when he eats out but is extremely picky with it and I eat small amounts of meat when I go back home to Colombia. Having said this, I consider us to be vegetarians on a regular basis, as a matter of fact, I try to be a vegan vegetarian during the week as much as I can. I have enjoyed this lifestyle and I believe that it has given us great health benefits.

One of the things that I am finding very challenging is for my kids to enjoy it too. I feel that the more junk food they are exposed and introduced too, the less interested they are in the healthy stuff. This is so hard because when extended family and even us as parents eat junk food and let them try some, we are not doing them a favor but a disservice. For example, if we only give our kids good cereals they will learn to like those, but if we introduce them to the stuff full of sugar and coloring, then obviously they will never be interested in healthy stuff. Kids can’t really make a logical decision to eat what is healthy….they will make a decision on taste instead (to be honest that is a lot of adults too).

As parents, I encourage each of you to do research on the power of foods. Foods can give us health or they can make us sick. We need to educate ourselves on the lifestyle that you want your children and grandchildren to have (hopefully they will follow it, but for the most case eating styles are passed on generationally). For us, we are mainly vegetarians and we do eat ice-cream, pizza, fried stuff on the weekends, but to be honest with you I am starting to feel terrible about it, and I am not enjoying it as much as I use to. One of the reasons why I feel this way, is because what use to be an occasional treat, its becoming more common…..these foods are addicting, studies show it. I also see how my youngest daughter absolutely LOVES sweets, and she is OBSESSED with it.

In conclusion, educate yourself, pick the food diet (lifestyle) that will work for you in order to be healthy. Remember that what we feed our kids will not only have an impact on their health but their self-esteem as well, because if your family and kids have a tendency to gain weight fairly easy, this will be hard on your kids in their teenage years. Let us be proactive in this area of parenting and let us prepare our kids for a healthy future. I know this is not easy, because, I am a sweet lover and I love cooking delicious foods, but I am on a journey to be healthier. I haven’t arrived but at least I am conscious of it.

Feel free to share what has worked for you in this journey and leave a comment below.

If you have time, do a study on processed foods, sugars, and fast foods and how they affect us.