Ren Allen

"I can understand that you might not be able to imagine it but kids
who will eat sugar to almost the exclusion of anything else do
exist. I live with one. For several years, he ate almost nothing
besides sugar-filled, highly processed food. He went into
malnutrition while I kept talking to him about nutrition and
offering options."


I'm having a really hard time with this one. Not because it's hard to
believe a child will eat mostly sweets...I have one of those. But to
imagine a parent allowing a child to be malnourished just because
he/she exclusively prefers sweets...that's just not doing your job!
Why was he eating only processed foods? Why weren't you cooking/baking
things he liked that were sweet AND loaded with nutrition?

There are loads of sweet things with nutritive value.

Heck, we had a casserole, pea salad and layered berry/cream dessert
for dinner last night. I always put everything out at once, because we
don't do the "dessert after dinner" thing. If there is something
sweet, it's out with the dinner.

So...Jalen ate about 7 servings of the dessert item. Nothing else.
Guess what? It has eggs, butter, cream and berries. He'll be fine.
There are a million ways to make sure a child gets enough
nutrition...none of them have to involve coercion or control.

Ren

Deb

--- In [email protected], "Ren Allen"
<starsuncloud@n...> wrote:

> Why was he eating only processed foods? Why weren't you
>cooking/baking
> things he liked that were sweet AND loaded with nutrition?
>
> There are loads of sweet things with nutritive value.
>
>
> Ren
>
Like sliced sweet potatoes baked and sprinkled with a bit of
cinnamon sugar. (they have even started serving sweet potato fries
with cinnamon sugar at our local cinema!) Or one of DS'
favorite "treats" - my "super secret short cut sweet potato pie" -
that came about because pumpkin pie (his favorite) takes about an
hour to bake. DS didn't want to wait. We had leftover mashed sweet
potatoes in the fridge - some graham crackers, a schmeer of sweet
potatoes and a squirt of whipped cream and voila something very like
pumpkin pie in seconds - and lots of beta carotene et al in with the
sweet. Jam thumbprint cookies using whole grain flour and 'all
fruit' type jam (fruit and fruit juice and pectin).

I guess part of it is that sweet doesn't necessarily equal processed
white sugar.