The Myth of “Every Once in a While”

When I explain our eating plan to people, one of the first responses I get is pity for my children.  Even intelligent, thinking people who completely understand that my children need this for their best health and well-being think it is deprivation of the worst sort.  They imagine birthday parties and trick or treating and picture my children sitting mopey on the sidelines, possibly even taunted by their peers, unable to participate.  I absolutely worried about the peer response and whether my children would feel left out of certain events.  That’s one of the main reasons that I threw myself into this diet (and therefore the kitchen) with such abandon.  I vowed that I would be able to make anything that would be as good (or better–according to my boys) as the junk food equivalents they are faced with on a literal daily basis.  I’ve been very successful–although Mario is waiting impatiently for me to figure out a recipe for homemade Skittles.

What really surprises me, though, is that when a lot of people think of my children at parties, they are sad for them…..but not necessarily sad that they might be feeling left out.  Some people are genuinely sad that my kids are not eating the massive cupcakes with 3 inches of icing and artificial colors.  They are sad that my children don’t gorge themselves on ridiculous bags of Halloween candy.  They are sad, because in America, junk food has become an integral part of the childhood experience.  And we accept that.

Think about it.  You might hear parents say, “I don’t eat junk food/soda/kool-aid/candy–I just keep it in the house for the kids”.  That is so backwards when you think about it.  Giving the worst food in the house to the very people who are trying to grow and learn and develop appropriately?  Grown-ups being careful about what they eat, but then setting their children up for a lifetime of sugar addiction and carbohydrate cravings?  This has become totally acceptable behavior.

Then there is the argument of “every once in a while” and allowing treats on “special occasions”.  If we lived in a bubble, I would totally accept that.  Meaning, if my kids had no other interactions other than with our immediate family and our own activities.  Because then a special occasion would be one of four birthdays in a year.  Or a family trip to a baseball game.

But my kids go to school and each has around 15 classmates.  There are in-class treats for each birthday.  There are full-fledged off-site birthday parties to attend.  There are pizza parties and teddy bear tea parties and fairy tale balls and 100 days of school parties and gingerbread man decorating parties (none of which I am demonizing, mind you).  Halloween candy arrives on the grocery store shelves in September only to be replaced by Christmas candy only to be replaced by Valentines candy and finally Easter candy.  At birthday parties, you don’t just get cupcakes and ice cream, you get party favor bag, bursting with candy, to bring home.  Animal crackers and pretzels every Sunday at church and being handed a lollipop on the way out the door.  Girl scouts selling cookies, boy scouts selling popcorn, schools selling candy.  Please explain this myth of “every once in a while” to me.  Or special occasions–how do I choose which of these scenarios qualifies as “special”?

We walk a fine line with our kids on this.  We don’t want them to feel left out, but we also don’t want them to eat junk for the sake of eating junk.  We want them to make good choices, but we also want them to understand that sometimes their not-so-good choices will come with a tummy ache.  We want them to be label-readers, but we don’t want them to judge the choices of their friends.  I feel like it’s a literal tight-rope walk sometimes.

Here are some of the choices we’ve made since beginning this new eating lifestyle.  I don’t know if they were all good choices, but when we make mistakes, we just try to do better next time.

• For Halloween (which is also Mario’s birthday, by the way), we allowed each boy to go trick or treating.  When we got home, we had them each choose 3 pieces of candy to keep and traded the rest in for a toy that they had each been wanting.
• For birthday parties, I always contact the host in advance to find out what they are serving.  I bring the closest equivalent I can manage.  If cupcakes are being served, I ask if there will be an extra cupcake topper I can use for my kids’ cupcake.  Recently we went to a party that was having ice cream.  I thought I would be super lenient and told Mario that he could eat the ice cream provided if he wanted to.  But he specifically asked me to make some homemade because it tasted better 🙂
• Both teachers let me know of food activities in advance and I do my best to make do.  I have made special gingerbread men for both boys to take to school to decorate at Christmastime.  I have prepared homemade doughnuts for them to eat at Santa’s breakfast.  I sent chocolate covered frozen bananas to the fairy tale ball for them to use as a magic wand vs. chocolate covered pretzel sticks.  I sent a small bowl of cooked quinoa pasta (which is technically NOT on our diet, but is way better than the regular wheat kind) for Luigi one day because his class was learning about Italy and would be eating fettucine alfredo.  I sent homemade chocolates for every child in Mario’s class to eat during a taste testing of sweet, salty, sour, etc.
• Our family went to a college basketball game and I opted to let the boys eat popcorn and tortilla chips.  I knew that the worst case scenario would be some stomach upset for Mario (which did occur the following day).  We discussed this possibility and we knew that the next day we would be at home and he made the decision that he was okay with that.
• My kids bring their own snacks to church every Sunday and we politely decline the lollipop on the way out the door.
• Sometimes it’s a plain and simple compromise and choosing of the lesser of the evils.  This past week was the 100th day of school celebration.  In the class, the kids counted out 10 of each of the following:  raisins, cheerios, golden grahams, marshmallows, M&Ms, pretzel sticks, chocolate chips, goldfish, dried cherries and teddy grahams.  That left them with 100 items in a ziploc that they were free to eat.  I spoke to the boys before hand and asked them please not to eat anything from their bag, and that if they brought it home, I would let them pick the M&Ms out to eat.  But everything else would be off limits.  And I’m not saying by far that M&Ms were the best choice here.  But I know that sugar bothers them much less than grains and that they would be most excited about the M&Ms.
• One lesson that I have learned with both of my kids is that they are mostly fine with not being able to eat the candy and junk that they bring home from parties.  But they want to keep it.  Mario has a bag of candy in his room.  Luigi keeps his in a doctor’s kit to give to his stuffed animals when he plays doctor.  Once Mario brought M&Ms home from school that were left over from a counting activity.  He said he didn’t want them but he was going to sell them to people who visited our house 🙂  It’s the act of throwing the junk away that rips their heart out.

What I wonder is, how do people who aren’t dealing with special dietary needs do it?  For instance, if you are a parent who simply wants to eliminate processed foods and sugars from your family’s diet–how do you handle all of these so-called special occasions?  I, at least, have a reason that most people can understand when I bring our own food places–my child will get sick if he eats your food.  But if you are just doing it to be healthy, would you be looked at as a snob?  I’m genuinely curious.  Some people live by a principle of 90/10–if you eat clean 90% of the time, it’s okay to indulge the other 10%.  That sounds pretty good, but if I let my kids eat everything they encounter out in the world on a daily basis we’d be more in the 70/30 territory….maybe even worse.

Of all the minefields I never expected in this parenting gig (and there are many!!), junk food is a HUGE one.  I’d love to hear how other parents are navigating this tricky area.