How Parental Intervention and External Environment Shape Your Diet

Diet influenced by external factors

Once you start eating solid foods, your sense of taste and eating habits begin to form, and the influence of your parents and others on your diet increases. Initially, you may prefer sweet or salty foods and dislike sour or bitter ones, and you may be unwilling to eat almost any new food variety that you haven't tried before. This fear of new foods can be a headache for parents, but it may have been an adaptive behavior for our prehistoric ancestors, preventing the accidental ingestion of poisons or non-food substances.

Children may need encouragement to "try it," and most children gradually develop a liking for new foods with such encouragement. Evidence also shows that children are quite capable of knowing how much to eat if given the opportunity to manage their own portions. For example, in a study from Pennsylvania, children were divided into two groups, one given a high-energy meal and the other a low-energy meal. The former group ate less at their second meal, indicating that children know how to regulate their food intake without assistance.

Besides encouraging children to try new foods, parents often discourage them from eating fast food or junk food. Write the answers to the following questions in your notebook:

Do you remember the foods your parents wouldn't let you eat? Did your parents stop you from eating them?

Now, as an adult, how do you view those foods?

Generally speaking, the more parents forbid their children from eating what they want, the more they crave it. When forbidden foods are available when parents aren't around, children will eat them recklessly, sometimes losing control and binge eating. Think about your own experiences of being forbidden or restricted by your parents. I don't condone frequenting fast food restaurants, but if you could get candy (ice cream, desserts, or other favorite treats) whenever you wanted as a child, happy meals wouldn't be as appealing to you now.

The causes of the long-term dieting patterns described in Chapter 1 can often be traced back to well-meaning parents controlling their children's diets during childhood. At least one study has shown that the more parents control their children's diets, the more obese girls (not boys) tend to be.

In 2002, psychiatrists Robert Berkowitz and Albert Stunkard carefully examined research on parental control of food intake and concluded that encouraging and rewarding eating can reduce children's ability to regulate their own food intake, fostering overeating. Less encouragement and reward during meals may help reduce the risk of childhood obesity. This issue requires further research.

Kelly's experience is a typical example. She often argued with her parents about her food as a child. When I first met Kelly, she was a 22-year-old college dropout weighing 230 pounds. As far as she could recall, her parents were very concerned about her weight. Her mother, Mrs. S, was often on a diet and made Kelly eat her diet food, forbidding her from eating sweets and fast food.

Kelly described somewhat awkwardly how she would wait for her parents to leave and then sneak food she had always wanted but her mother forbade. On several occasions, her mother returned to find Kelly wolfing down a bag of cookies, and severely reprimanded her, threatening punishment. Other times, although the disobedience was less obvious, Mrs. S expressed disappointment in Kelly's lack of willpower.

When Kelly was in third grade, Mrs. S became discouraged because she still couldn't lose weight, so she enrolled Kelly in a diet program and set weight loss goals for her. Kelly responded by secretly eating more food, which led Mrs. S to search Kelly's drawers and cupboards every now and then for any food. Kelly always won this competition, and any dieting methods Mrs. S tried to restrict Kelly's food intake were ineffective. Kelly always managed to eat what she wanted and deliberately annoyed Mrs. S.

Kelly's example and numerous studies illustrate a crucial principle: in a person's life, there are a few things entirely within their control, and eating is one of them. Some parents let you eat whatever you want, even forcing you to eat (a somewhat barbaric method often used in hospitals to treat anorexia); others lock you up and deprive you of food. Regardless of the approach, ultimately, they cannot control what you eat or how much you eat. Physical and intellectual development requires you to realize that no matter what others think you should or shouldn't eat, no matter how well-intentioned they are, the decision is ultimately yours.

As adults, our eating habits are often determined by factors other than hunger. This kind of eating and drinking, unrelated to nutrition, has existed for a long time. Babies know how to eat smartly, but well-meaning parents intervene by introducing new foods. In this process, parents may have taught you a "lesson"-that you shouldn't trust your own judgment. When you gradually rely on external cues to decide what you eat and drink, you lose some of your physical intelligence.

Do Kelly's example or the dietary guidance from the parents mentioned above remind you of your own dietary upbringing? To make your thinking clearer, please take a moment to jot down some of the lessons you learned about diet from your parents in your notebook.

However, don't blame all your eating problems on your parents. Civilized society is the ultimate cause of your weight gain, and your parents are merely the closest intermediaries to you who are being used by civilized society.

Meat culture is eroding your physical and mental health.

In 2002, McDonald's and other large food conglomerates like Kraft Foods spent $15 billion marketing their products to children. Most of this money wasn't used to promote cauliflower and bananas. American children spend more time watching television than at school, playing, or doing anything else besides sleeping.

Children see an average of 10,000 food commercials each year (more than 27 per day), mostly for fast food, sugary cereals, soft drinks, or candy. Besides commercials on children's television programs, there are ubiquitous bundled sales, such as buying SpongeBob SquarePants (a classic American animated series) and getting an ice cream bar with it, or buying Scooby-Doo (a famous cartoon dog character) and getting cookies with it.

Even if your parents don't want to interfere with your diet, advertisers want to and can likely succeed. A study published in the journal *Pediatrics* found that nearly a third of the 6,000 children studied ate fast food daily. This could be one reason why each child gains an extra 6 pounds per year.

When you were a child, besides your parents making sure you finished everything on your plate, cartoon characters, advertisements, and bundled sales encouraged you to eat high-energy, high-sugar, and high-fat foods. Even when your parents restricted your diet, they still frequently encouraged you to eat vegetables, fish, or meat. Ronald McDonald (the McDonald's brand ambassador) was always urging you to eat cheeseburgers and fried potato chips, and to swallow them with a soft drink or milk ice cream mix.

Ronald McDonald and his colleagues not only want you to eat their discounted food, but they also want you to choose the larger portions. Since McDonald's introduced "Happy Meals," the size, calories, and fat content of their fast food have been steadily increasing. A serving of French fries initially consisted of 2 ounces (200 calories), but in 1972 a size of about 320 calories appeared, and by 1982, you could buy an extra-large bag of fries containing 540 calories and 25 grams of fat.

Generally, larger portions are more affordable, as you can get much more food for a little more money than a regular portion, so buying a regular portion is not cost-effective.

Throughout childhood and adolescence, the constant temptation to consume large amounts of high-fat, high-energy foods further impairs their innate physical and intellectual abilities. It's not your inherent physical and intellectual capacity, but rather external cues, that increasingly determine when, what, and how much you eat. Think about the messages you receive from television, advertisements, or other media that urge you to eat certain foods.

Using food to relieve discomfort?

When you were a baby, a full tummy made you feel comfortable. A few minutes earlier, when you were hungry, it was a very unpleasant feeling, so you cried loudly, and your dad or mom would come to feed you, and then you would feel better. But what if you cried for other reasons? Perhaps your diaper needed changing, or you felt cold or scared.

Dr. Hilde Bruch, a pioneer in research on eating problems, points out that a competent mother can distinguish whether a child's crying is due to hunger or other discomfort. Such a mother will comfort her child appropriately, but will only feed her when she believes the child is hungry. The child is the same; they only want to eat when they are hungry and do not want to use food to resolve any other discomfort.

On the other hand, a less competent or careless mother might not be able to tell the difference and therefore feed her child whenever he/she cries, regardless of whether he/she is hungry. As a result, the child learns that food is a way to solve all discomfort.

When these children grow up, they cannot distinguish between hunger and other types of discomfort. Therefore, when experiencing unpleasant emotions such as sadness, loneliness, tension, anger, or annoyance, they may use food to relieve these feelings. Using food to cope with emotions can further reduce physical and intellectual capacity.

Learn the rules of eating

Children rarely eat alone. When you were very young, your parents, daycare staff, and friends taught you how to eat. You learned about mealtime arrangements, knowing that there are breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as snacks and desserts without time restrictions. You understood the environment of eating, knowing that you should eat in a restaurant, not in the bathroom. You learned which foods are appropriate to eat or how to combine them, such as eating cereal for breakfast instead of ice cream, and not putting syrup in soup.

As you grow older, you'll develop your own ideas about what to eat, but these ideas will now be influenced by society. If there's a conflict between your parents' dietary plans and your choices, and they can't find a compromise, mealtimes can become a battleground for power struggles. This is especially true if you're a girl and your mother is dieting to control her own weight; she might feel the need to control your portion sizes as well, though perhaps not as harshly as Kelly's mother.

As parents increase their control over their children's diet, children's ability to regulate their own eating decreases. Children tend to want to eat what their parents don't want them to eat, while they may not like what their parents want them to eat.

You started your life eating smartly: eating when you were hungry and stopping when you were full. Because they were afraid you'd be too thin and malnourished, your mom and dad would try all sorts of new food options for you, and they didn't like you wasting food. But in the process, they probably taught you to regulate your eating habits using external rather than internal cues.

Clever and persuasive sales tactics have made you crave increasingly large, high-calorie, high-fat foods, and you've also started using food to alleviate discomfort. Now, food, eating, and the feeling of fullness are no longer simply about replenishing the body's nutritional needs. It's believed to have attributes that connect it to other things. External temptations and internal emotions have become increasingly important factors in determining when and how much you eat.