My kids love veggies!

By Hoda McClymont

My kids love veggies! How to make your wish come true.

Putting the science into simple language to help parents change their children's diets

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hoda McClymont
• Release date: Jan 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645606812

Hoda McClymont

Hoda McClymont PhD, BBus(Hons), GradDipPubHlth, GCertHuman Services.Hoda McClymont is a mother, researcher, and project officer for a national not-for-profit organisation. In addition to authoring numerous academic journal articles available on ResearchGate, Hoda has years of experience working for government, academic, and non-government organisations. Over the two decades of teaching and research in academia, Hoda's research interests became more focused on individual health and well-being, leading her to change careers by studying, volunteering, and working first in human services, and more recently in public health. While completing her graduate studies in public health, Hoda became aware of the pressing need to educate and empower individuals to make healthy lifestyle choices for themselves. She also saw two key barriers that stood in the way: limited public access to trusted scientific information, and a limited understanding of the technical language used in scientific publications. Hoda saw that she could use her skills to remove these barriers, especially in the domain of health-which is fast becoming a growing concern worldwide. The outcome of her endeavour is this book, aimed at parents who are looking for help to improve their children's diets. Hoda lives in sunny Queensland, Australia, with her husband and two sons, who were the inspiration for this book.

Book preview

Hoda McClymont is a mother, researcher, and project officer for a national not-for-profit organisation. In addition to authoring numerous academic journal articles available on ResearchGate, Hoda has years of experience working for government, academic, and non-government organisations. Over the two decades of teaching and research in academia, Hoda’s research interests became more focused on individual health and well-being, leading her to change careers by studying, volunteering, and working first in human services, and more recently in public health. While completing her graduate studies in public health, Hoda became aware of the pressing need to educate and empower individuals to make healthy lifestyle choices for themselves. She also saw two key barriers that stood in the way: limited public access to trusted scientific information, and a limited understanding of the technical language used in scientific publications. Hoda saw that she could use her skills to remove these barriers, especially in the domain of health—which is fast becoming a growing concern worldwide. The outcome of her endeavour is this book, aimed at parents who are looking for help to improve their children’s diets. Hoda lives in sunny Queensland, Australia, with her husband and two sons, who were the inspiration for this book.

Published by Hoda McClymont

hodamcclymont.com

First published 2022

Copyright © Hoda McClymont, 2022

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright restricted above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

Disclaimer

The purchase and use of this book implies your acceptance of the following Disclaimer.

Some of the information provided in this book may be health related information. It does not constitute any health advice and we provide this information for your general use only. It may be historical information, incomplete information or could be an opinion that is not widely held. Your personal situation has not been considered when providing the information, so any reliance on this information is at your sole risk, and you should always seek independent professional advice before reliance on the information. You are responsible at all times for your, and your children’s own safety and wellbeing. The information in this book is not prepared by any health professional. You must always seek proper advice from a professional regarding any diagnosis, assessment or treatment. We are not liable for any loss or damage suffered in connection with your reliance on any health or medical information in this book. We do not guarantee any results by the use of information in this book.

A catalogue record for this

book is available from the

National Library of Australia

ISBN 978 0 6456068 0 5 (pbk)

ISBN 978 0 6456068 1 2 (ebk)

Cover design by David McClymont

Typeset by Helen Christie, Blue Wren Books

Printed by Ingram Spark

I dedicate this book to my mother, Nura Behjat,

who has and continues to inspire me in life.

CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. Let’s face the problem first

3. Don’t shoulder all the blame for your children choosing junk food over veggies!

4. Big words you need to know before you start interventions

5. Let’s start the change process

6. Barriers and opportunities (SCT trick 1)

7. Reinforcements and punishments (SCT trick 2)

8. Knowledge (SCT trick 3)

9. Behavioural skills (SCT trick 4)

10. Self-efficacy (SCT trick 5)

11. Social support (SCT trick 6)

12. Intentions and goal setting (SCT trick 7)

13. The other three tricks (SCT tricks 8–10)

14. Tackling policy, community, and institutions

Appendix:

Hoda’s table of factors that impact kids’ food choices

References

Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION

Why this book?

I’ve written this book to help parents who are losing the battle at the dinner table to instil healthy eating habits in their kids. I was one of these parents. My struggles began when my firstborn reached the age of 18 months, with many mealtimes resulting in total food rejection, tantrums, and tears. Once, when he was around five years old, I remember telling him to eat what was on his plate. He just sat there and stared at the food. I could see there was no way he was going to eat any of it. In frustration, I appealed to my dear husband for help. His solution will be familiar to many parents: force the child to remain at the table until everything is eaten. With much coercion from his dad, our son finally put some food in his mouth—only to vomit all his dinner back onto his plate. It was a traumatic experience for all. I realised then and there that forcing a child to eat something they don’t want is not helpful and could potentially even harm them. And so began years of struggling with my two children to choose fruit and vegetables (veggies) over processed foods.

You see, my battle was as much with myself as with my kids. Every time my kids chose an unhealthy processed snack over a healthy veggie or fruit option, I would worry and feel guilty. I would keep hearing a tiny voice in my head saying, ‘chronic disease’ and ‘you’re a parent; you should know better than to let your kids eat rubbish.’ When I talked about these struggles with other parents, I realised that many of us shared these patterns of thought: fear, guilt and/or helplessness.

In desperation, I did what many parents do: buy books on the topic and read, hoping to find the holy grail for making children eat healthy. I found many recipe books targeted at children labelled as ‘fussy eaters’. I would try the recipes, only to discover that what one child likes, another hates. There were other books where parents had explained their wonderful strategies that had improved their children’s eating habits. Unfortunately, again, what works for one parent doesn’t always work for another.

It’s this challenge that prompted me into action! So, for my year-long project in health promotion, which was part of my postgraduate degree in public health at university, I decided to look at this problem and see how I would solve it scientifically. I even spent another eight months researching and refining the contents of my findings. The outcome is this book, which I’m sharing with you as a fellow concerned parent who wants to alleviate some of the challenges of parenting.

I can happily say that my children now like most veggies and get their recommended serves almost every day! Although my journey is not over, I now have a greater number of tools in my toolbox with which to help. Hopefully, after reading this book, you will too!

What I hope this book will do for you

There’s a lot of information out there to help us eat healthy, but somehow many of us parents remain perplexed and bewildered. One reason could be that some authors fixate on a single solution that they believe will get all kids to eat healthy. The number of cookbooks for kids is a testimony to this. The reality is that there’s no one fix, and parents often start to blame themselves when their kids continue to defy them in the veggie-eating department! Another reason is the overwhelming number of resources like videos, games, songs, and stories scattered across the internet, making it difficult for a parent to know why, when, and how to use them systematically for maximum impact. A final reason could be that the nicer resources are often on commercial sites that parents must pay for, and I’m not sure how many parents prioritise the time and money to subscribe!

Considering these shortcomings, I decided to plug some of these holes through this book. First, I want to show you, the parent, why you should stop feeling guilty about your children’s food choices. Next, I want to empower you with a map, or what I call a framework for action, so that you know exactly what needs to change and why. Finally, I want to give you some free, evidence-based tools and resources to help you understand how to change things to get going straight away. Keep in mind, however, that the research base is still growing, and so what I provide in this book is what I could find at the time of writing.

Although this book is mainly about helping your kids to like and eat veggies, it frames this issue within the context of the entire diet where possible. The World Health Organisation¹ recommend kids increase their fruit and veggie intake while reducing their intake of energy from sugars and fats. As lofty as this goal is, we need to start with small steps, and so I’ve decided to target veggies. Studies show that increasing veggies in the diet can reduce health risks. Also, children seem to hate veggies the most of all food groups, hence the uphill battles at snack and mealtimes. By focusing on veggies, you can get through the book and make some changes without becoming too overwhelmed by the number of interventions for each food group.

Who this book is for, and what it offers the reader

This book is for parents of children aged 7 to 10 years who feel guilty, worried, or helpless because their children prefer junk food to veggies and fruits. The reason for targeting this group is that these children are old enough to start understanding and making choices for themselves but young enough to willingly listen and be influenced by their parent(s). Therefore, healthy eating habits can more easily be fostered by parents in this age group. Also, different age groups need different sets of solutions or interventions, and so sticking to one age group makes the book informative while keeping to a reasonable length for busy parents to get through.

Importantly, this book is not for children who have specific medical problems that impact their ability to get enough nutrients each day. These cases may need specialised interventions by health professionals. Instead, the book is meant to help the average, fussy eaters most parents have.

How to read this book

Because you may be a busy parent, this book has been set out to help you navigate it quickly. Each chapter explains in layman’s terms what you need to know and do. For those of you who want to get to the point quickly, you can flick to the end of each chapter, where I’ve summed up the key messages and provided accompanying resources to action the strategy with your child. Some of you may want to understand the evidence behind my suggested interventions; never fear, I’ve provided for you as well. Those little numbers you see at the end of some sentences or words are references to the evidence I’ve used. You can look up the references for each chapter at the end of this book. There are a handful of chapters where the theory can’t be easily put into conversational language because it would make it sound cumbersome and boring. Therefore, in these chapters, I’ve inserted a box with