Q: Am I a bad parent if my children do not eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day?

How luxurious it must have been for my mother, in the 1980s, to be able to place a cart in the grocery aisles without checking every item with a multi-point checklist. In my family, we had a good meal growing up, meals were cooked at home and many natural colors were on display. But I do not remember anyone who counted our vegetables or thought twice before occasionally opening a 7-liter, two-liter bottle for a meal. L & # 39; horror!

So what happened between yesterday and today?

By some measures, we went astray. We realized how packaged foods make it easy to eat tons of sugar and few nutrients. We have also become more aware of the effects of food production on our health and that of our planet. But then, in the typical American way, many of us have done too much. We have turned food into a kind of religion, a way of dividing behaviors and habits into tidy categories of good and bad.

This is wrong. Our eating habits are not a measure of our moral worth. But they can not be totally ignored either.

How does all this translate into your situation? You should not waste another second feeling bad about your children not eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. In addition, you should not give up trying to realize it.

Maya Adam, director of health education at the Stanford Center for Health Education, wants parents to take a long-term view of getting our kids to eat a balanced diet. She told me that the data is extremely clear: "Decades of research around the world have taught us that the main thing that kills people before the time is their diet." However, healthy habits are not something we are going to, can or should create overnight.

Adam said that the first thing she wanted parents to think about is the type of relationship they have with food and whether they hope that this relationship will happen again. If they start eating vegetables with ease and joy, their children are likely to feel the same way. "At some point in their lives, maybe tomorrow or maybe when they go to university, they will imitate what they've seen," she said.

The fact is that children are difficult and their food preferences are both arbitrary and subject to change without notice. I have a 6 year old who is cold for a while with vegetables but who has become a game for greens, but who finds almost all the options rich in loathsome proteins, with the exception of cheese in string and peanut butter.

Adam advises to fight against discomfort with gentle perseverance. Continue exposing children to a wide variety of fruits and vegetables; try a mix of condiments and styles of preparation; buy the tastiest products you can afford; offer this food when they are hungry; and worry less about the amount they eat and more about whether they have good experiences.

For young children, she suggests trying to make a game of eating fruits and vegetables, perhaps a taste test or an artistic project. For older children, try giving them money at a farmer's market and perhaps letting them prepare the food they chose when they return home. Anything that allows children to feel in control will encourage them to explore new foods.

Do not count vegetables and do not hide vegetables. Spinach brownies do not "cultivate a true love for the right way to eat," said Adam.

Also, do not force the vegetables. Virginia Sole-Smith, author of "The Instincting Food: Food Culture, Body Image and Eating in America," said it would only turn against him. Research shows that feeding certain foods to our children "is a short-term game with disastrous consequences in the long run.Nobody likes the foods that they were forced to eat".

I know this rule and continue to rape it often. Sometimes I do it because I feel tired and impatient. As a working parent who is married to another working parent, it is difficult enough to prepare a dinner every night without having to prepare extra food for junior palates. Sometimes it's because there's a lot of pressure to be the mother who says things like "my daughter lo-o-oves kale!"

Today, we talk a lot about eating healthy. It is the idea that it is good to consume a diet rich in organic vegetables and refined carbohydrates, and that everything else is dirty. Sole-Smith thinks that this conversation around eating well is often just another manifestation of what she calls the culture of food or the pressure that grows to be thin.

"The culture of eating once was that mothers feel bad about their own bodies, and now they are spreading to children as well." It is not enough anymore that women eat in a certain way and look somehow. We must also breastfeed and ensure that our children eat in a certain way. The judgment that was reserved only for the plates and the waist of the women now applies to the whole family.

She stated that it was difficult for women because feeding has always been difficult for them: "Our food choices and our body are a way of defining our self-esteem." It's hard for kids because most of them are just not designed to eat as our culture expects their mothers to eat. In doing so, it is almost certain that flashbacks will occur, be it through tantrums or a future of food disorder.

So keep giving spinach to your kids and brownies to your kids – but not like a dish! Deliver the two with equal love and wait patiently, very patiently, without judgment of yourself or your children, so that they accept all this love and eat spinach.