Within our Special Infant Feeding we return today to the issue that so much worries parents of the variety in food. Do you want your child to eat everything? Well, be careful what you want, eating everything has its dangers and there are much more important things to be well fed.
Many parents worry about getting Let your children eat everything, thinking that this is essential for their health and a social obligation, but really eating everything is very treatable and, like everything else in children's lives, it also has its logic and natural evolution.
Is it important to eat everything?
More than eating everything that is important, essential, is to receive all the necessary nutrients to live with health, but it is also true that the fundamental nutrients in infant feeding are found in a multitude of foods.
That the variety of foods we consume is very large can help all nutrients reach us, but with more restricted diets than the current one, humans have also been raised healthy and strong. That is, with a scarce variety but well balanced and naturally harvested and prepared so that it does not lose micronutrients it is possible to be very healthy.
There is no need to worry, either, if the child rejects any particular food or preparation, as long as we do not perceive that it is serving as a vehicle to manifest any emotional problem or rejection of our attitudes.
Quality is more important than the total variety
Eating everything can help us have good health, but it is not essential to achieve it. In fact, there are foods that are better for children not to eat and others that, to be really nutritious, we would have to produce, marketing and preparing them in a way that conserves their nutrients. Quality is much more important for the
I want to highlight the importance it has, to have a complete nutrition, of the product and its quality, much more decisive than the huge variety of the supermarket. What we can now buy is of a huge variety, and it is not necessary to consume all the products available in stores, much less in all the culinary preparations we know.
Rather than having children eat everything, everything, to be well nourished, we parents would have to take responsibility for choosing industrially unprocessed, locally and ecologically produced foods, prioritize the preparations that maintain nutrients and that the family's diet include eating raw fruits and vegetables abundantly as usual and basic. The responsibility of proposing dishes and even healthy snacks is ours.
We must not eat everything, moreover, there are things we should not give to children
I would say more important than eating everything to be healthy it is precisely not to eat at all and that there are foods that we should not give to children.
What do I mean by not eating everything? To all those processed foods, loaded with unhealthy fats, flavorings, preservatives, corn starch, camouflaged soybean meal, salt and sugar (or the names under which it hides). We should use them as an exception, but not as another element of the children's diet. That's more important than getting them to eat artichokes, or eggplants or liver.
And not to buy or give to children goodies, industrial pastries or industrial preparationsor meat, pizzas, croquettes or other processed foods with excess salt and fat. That is bad. That is much worse for health and eating habits than not eating at all.
That one day they eat them, as an extraordinary situation, is acceptable, do not obsess or prohibit because it is counterproductive. But of course you should not have them in the pantry as a food to normally use. Eating everything can be worse than eating a smaller variety But much healthier.
All that, better that your children do not eat it. It is better to eat another grilled chicken breast and another freshly peeled carrot than some industrial cannelloni, a real pump of hydrates, fats and salt.
That you ever eat in a fast food restaurant or buy a precooked or a goody I cannot say that it is serious, but I cannot say that it represents something about having a varied diet. All of that is unnecessary, superfluous and nothing beneficial.
That is not eating everything. In these cases there is no wish Let the children eat everything, but avoid what is not healthy to eat and seek, more than absolute variety, a natural diet, with healthy preparations and that provides the necessary nutrients. That is desirable.
