Okay, I admit it. I’m guilty – I used to indulge my toddler’s French fry fetish. That’s right, when my baby was a toddler – she loved potatoes. She loved them in any format she could get them. But what she really loved were French fries.
Part of her French fry adoration came from loving the fact that she could feed herself. She liked nibbling fries whether I baked them in the oven, got them in a restaurant, made them homemade at the house or (yes, I did this too) grab them at the drive thru McDonald’s.
Junk Food is Bad Bad Bad Bad
The news article headlines are announcing it everywhere. Obesity in children is running rampant. In fact, now we need to pay attention to every single calorie-carrying morsel that passes the lips of our children. Of course, it’s a no brainer that junk food is bad for them – but am I truly guilty of a heinous crime because I let her eat French fries?
What about hamburgers? Chicken fingers? What other finger foods fell into the category of bad for baby? Should I worry about the fact that she grew so rapidly in the first two years of her life that she was wearing a 4T by the time she was 2?
Proportional Response
Weight, height and size are all great numbers, but you should never take them out of context. You need to check your proportion sizes in order to have a better and more accurate gauge of what is going on. So, yes, I let my daughter eat French fries – but not every single day. Instead, it was about once a week that we picked up the deep fried kind – the rest were homemade when she had them.
How about her growth spurts? Her height and weight were always in perfect proportion to each other. She never had a sip of soda before her 4th birthday. She didn’t even like chocolate before she was 3 and a half and to this day – she prefers fruits and vegetables (apples and spinach are personal favorites) to eating junk food.
So – should you feed your baby junk food? No. Should you count each and every single caloric morsel passing between their lips – remember proportion and moderation have a meaning in everything and not just in a headline.
What junk food have you given your baby or toddler?