[email protected]

> The danger of defining things as "good food" and "crap" is the same
problem
> as dividing the world into educational and not educational. It's
false and
> it puts values on things that get in the way of kids figuring out on
their own
> in their own way what's what, what they like, what they want, and
making an
> honestly good choice on their own.
>
Can you explain a little what you mean by 'It's false'? Are you
saying that all food is good food?

-------------------------------------------------------

Crap is shit that comes out of the butt of some animal.
Food is never crap.
That's an emotional argument designed to disgust and shame a person who
wanted to taste whatever it was the speaker wanted to call "crap." What you were
defining as crap, I don't know. Let's say marshmallows.

If a child wants to roast and eat a marshmallow, but her mom has called it
crap (soon perhaps to be flaming crap), she might want to eat it anyway, but
she won't be as happy about it. She will choose to make her life smaller to
appease her mother, or she will choose to defy her mother and do something she
knows her mother thinks is wrong.

That's not a good way for natural learning to unfold peacefully.
It's not a way for family life to become more harmonious.

None of that is anywhere NEAR "all food is good food," but it's nearly
impossible to label various foods "good" and "crap." Better and worse, maybe yes.
But what's great for one person is not for another, for reasons of genetics
or allergies or biochemical constitution. Some people get gas so easily
that lettuce and onions aren't good things for them to eat. Some get the runs
very easily. Some tend toward nausea. Some don't. A person in her 30s told
me she had never once in her life thrown up. When she felt ill, she just got
the runs soon after. Some are allergic to cheese. Others thrive on it.

Official opinions of professional dieticians about what parts of hamburgers
are the "healthy" part have changed over the past 35 years so thoroughly that
there's nothing to be thought but that dieticians will change their minds,
and it's probably best to eat the whole hamburger.

Sometimes going from one plane to another in an airport with a kid who needs
protein, the "best" food is going to be a PayDay bar out of a vending
machine. Those pretzels they give her in the plane aren't going to help at all,
and there's not time to buy a nice turkey sandwich. Sometimes a pregnant
woman in an airplane could do no better than to eat pretzels slowly so she can
survive the flight without more nausea.

"Good" and "bad" are often situational.

A marshmallow joyously consumed at a campfire is much better for a person
than deprivation and guilt at the side of a campfire where other people are
eating marshmallows.

Sandra



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

diana jenner

SandraDodd@... wrote:

>Crap is shit that comes out of the butt of some animal.
>Food is never crap.
>That's an emotional argument designed to disgust and shame a person who
>wanted to taste whatever it was the speaker wanted to call "crap." What you were
>defining as crap, I don't know. Let's say marshmallows.
>
>If a child wants to roast and eat a marshmallow, but her mom has called it
>crap (soon perhaps to be flaming crap), she might want to eat it anyway, but
>she won't be as happy about it. She will choose to make her life smaller to
>appease her mother, or she will choose to defy her mother and do something she
>knows her mother thinks is wrong.
>
MY fear in this situation is the child will eat the *crap* and think,
"Something this good just *can't* be crap, mom must be a liar. I wonder
what else she's lied to me about?????" and the trust is broken
forever... NOT a scenario I want running thru my kids' heads!

:) diana


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Elizabeth Hill

**

MY fear in this situation is the child will eat the *crap* and think,
"Something this good just *can't* be crap, mom must be a liar. I wonder
what else she's lied to me about?????" and the trust is broken
forever... NOT a scenario I want running thru my kids' heads! **

The recipes that I've modified to reduce the fat haven't tasted very good. Which makes me wonder whether kids will continue to eat yogurt-based fat-free cookies when they've tasted the alternatives?

(I am compelled to admit that when we started avoiding cookies with trans-fats, we replaced them with butter cookies. <g>)

Betsy

Angela S.

You know, it is so mainstream (to label food as bad when someone ( a child)
is eating it) that often people don't even see it, but I experienced the
feelings that a child would experience just the other day when it comes to
food and someone (my mother) labeling it as *crap* or junk. (choose your
word)

We had been gone all evening and we were hungry. We live in the country and
McDonald's in a ten or 15 minute drive from our house but near my mother's
house. We go to McDonald's maybe half a dozen times a year, at most. But I
wanted something hot and fast and cheap and I like McDonald's food, even
though I know it isn't the most nutritional food on the planet. I thought
about ordering a salad or some other healthy thing but then I thought. I go
to McDonald's so infrequently, a Big Mac and fries isn't going to kill me.
So, we went and got some MD food and decided to go to my mom's and visit her
while we ate dinner. I can't even remember what she said but she commented
on the fact that we were eating such unhealthy food. I knew she would
before I went there. In the past I wouldn't have brought McDonald's food to
her house to eat just because of that. I didn't want a dose of guilt with
my fries, thanks. I knew they weren't healthy and I chose to eat them
anyway. This time decided that it was worth the visit (we hadn't visited
for a few weeks) and that I would disregard her comments. When she asked
why we got that *crap*, I responded that I wanted something cheap and hot.
She said she'd have made us something. I responded that I wanted something
cheap, hot, greasy and good and that McD fit the bill. I told her that I
thought of getting something healthy but decided that I eat there so
infrequently that it wouldn't kill me. And it tastes good to me. My kids
would prefer Subway but both thought the idea of something hot was a good
one this time. We had been out in the cold drizzle for 3 hours watching
horses and riders. Both ate their fries and drank their drinks. I threw
out a whole wrapped hamburger and one that had a couple bites taken out of
it. It wasn't *because* it was junk or that my mother commented on it. It
was because they just don't like it all that much and they ate just what
they wanted from the meal and no more.

I try really hard NOT to give my kids a dose of guilt with their food, and
although I know I am successful most of the time, I know I fail sometimes at
it. I shall try harder not to do that to my kids because one day instead of
bringing their dinner to my house to eat while they visit, they may eat in
their car instead of having a dose of guilt with their food.

Angela
game-enthusiast@...


> That's not a good way for natural learning to unfold peacefully.
> It's not a way for family life to become more harmonious.