Kid Food Is Ruining Our Children

I think much of today’s child­hood obe­sity epi­demic results from cater­ing to kids. Somewhere between the 1980s and the present day our desire for con­stantly smil­ing off­spring birthed a new cui­sine; I call it Kid Food.

Kid Food com­mands shelf space at gro­cery stores, sep­a­rate menus at restau­rants, and teams of adver­tis­ing exec­u­tives spend­ing mil­lions on mar­ket­ing the stuff. They do a good job.

Part food and part toy, Kid Food attracts with neon blues, greens and reds; fun shapes like dinosaurs and stars beckon chil­dren to the table, and irre­sistible car­toons and games adorn pack­ag­ing. The pre­dictable fla­vors deliver just what these young­sters are crav­ing: sweet Kid Food gives that intense refined-sugar fix, while savory options bathe their taste buds in salt and fla­vor enhancers.

Kid Food does well at get­ting our wee ones to eat. The prob­lem is what they’re eat­ing. Most Kid Food is laden with arti­fi­cial col­ors and sweet­en­ers, salt, and GM and processed ingre­di­ents, and the list goes on from there.

“Oh, well,” I hear many par­ents lament, “Johnny will learn to eat ‘real’ food when he’s an adult.” But it’s pretty hard to go from Kid Food to Real Food. I imag­ine the shift is more likely to adult forms of Kid Food—fast foods that are also salt and sugar laden. To make the jump from Kid Food to Real Food would require a thor­ough edu­ca­tion in nutri­tion, shop­ping, cook­ing and eating.

Kid Food teaches our chil­dren that food comes in a pack­age and is always a microwave minute away from ready. It primes their taste pref­er­ences for a life­time of sim­i­lar flavors.

Some might say Kid Food exists because par­ents are so busy. But if we sim­ply feed the kids what we’re eat­ing, it’s one less thing to pre­pare. Unfortunately it’s now widely per­ceived that kids require their own food, some­thing akin to our pets requir­ing Pet Food.

When it comes to food in this coun­try, we are all chil­dren. Americans must learn to eat again. We need to remem­ber that chil­dren, and grown-ups, can eat unadul­ter­ated food that wasn’t cre­ated to entertain.

Sometimes I get hung up on where the les­son will come from. Then I remem­ber that the teach­ing and inspi­ra­tion must arrive from mul­ti­ple sources in order to res­onate with everyone—the gov­ern­ment, our chil­dren, the media, and our loved one who dies too young from dia­betes or heart failure.

Organic Connections recently reported on health and food safety groups band­ing together to try and stop com­pa­nies mar­ket­ing unhealthy foods to chil­dren with toys, allur­ing col­ors and trade­marked char­ac­ters. It’s grass­roots efforts such as these that are the fuel to start a fire.

As for my daugh­ter, don’t worry; I’m not a Food Tiger Mom. Chloe indulges in neon-colored cup­cakes and potato chips and she loves suck­ing down a good juice box. But she doesn’t require Kid Food to eat a meal.

Anna Soref is the for­mer edi­tor in chief of Natural Foods Merchandiser mag­a­zine, a lead­ing B-to-B pub­li­ca­tion serv­ing the nat­ural prod­ucts indus­try. She has been a con­tribut­ing writer for numer­ous trade and con­sumer nat­ural health pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing Yoga Journal, Whole Living, The Herb Quarterly, Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals, and Vegetarian Times. Anna is a fre­quent speaker at events, such as the Natural Products Association’s MarketPlace, HBA Global Expo, SupplySide West, and Natural Products Expo West and East.