Dessert for dinner – a guest post

Often bribed your kids with dessert at the end of a meal? “If you finish all your dinner you can have an ice cream?” or “just one more bite and you can have your chocolate egg?”

We’ve all used food as a bribery tool in some shape or form and usually out of desperation to get our kids to eat.

As a Nutritional Therapist and mum of two girls I’ve always tried hard not to use food as a form of bribery at all. Even for good behaviour or an excellent report – I’ve done my best to use non-food rewards as a prize or symbol of reward.

You may wonder why?

Research shows that using food as a reward can lead to emotional dependency on food in later years. It can teach children when we are sad we must eat, and if they hurt themselves ice cream will heal them. What it doesn’t do is teach children how to deal with a sad moment or how to deal with a cut or a fall. Food is there to feed us and provide nutrients and minerals our bodies need for fuel, concentration and almost every function.

So my challenge set from Jo was to give my 4 year old daughter dessert alongside her dinner. Sound like a strange suggestion? Well yes, it did seem strange but it was a challenge to minimise dessert, to demystify its glory and make it like any other food item on her plate. She’s always been a good eater, weaned well, mainly baby led weaning and suddenly started nursery at her sister’s primary school and everything became about dessert.

Whether this was a direct influence of the lunch hall, having the dessert on their tray but knowingly not allowed to eat it until the end or maybe it’s the whole dessert culture that we don’t really practise at home. Meal times may consist of different courses and sometimes there is ‘something else’ if my kids are still hungry but ice cream, cake, chocolate are usually saved for a weekend meal or a party and if they do have something sweet it’s often just because it’s there or because they’ve asked for it and I try not to make a fuss about it. My seven year old will often ask me for a square of dark chocolate, yes 90% dark chocolate, strange you may think but she sees my husband and I eat it as our ‘treat’ and because we don’t make a thing that now we are having dessert she has acquired a taste for it.

So back to the challenge: for the last few weeks dessert has been served with mealtimes:

• Cereal with a small bag of sour cream and chive pretzels,
• Egg soldiers with digestive biscuits
• Fish and chips with ice cream
• Pasta with yoghurt
• Vegetable plate with biscuits

We’ve tried to take away the ‘treat’ element of dessert and take dessert off its pedestal. What’s been interesting is somehow my daughter instinctively knows what to eat first and when she asks if she can have her biscuit now, I either reply with a simple yes or you can choose what to eat and when.

Key learnings:

Not saving the best part of the meal until last has helped her understand there’s no big deal around dessert and often she’s chosen her own dessert which is sometimes just fruit or dried mango, or a cracker and says its for after her meal.

Children will self regulate, they WILL eat when they are hungrier and as I’ve learnt from Jo it’s our job to provide them with food and set the meal times, and their job to decide IF they are going to eat and how much, in line with Satter’s Division of Responsibility model.

Sometimes they will eat a little of their dessert during the meal but that’s ok, they’re learning the role food plays in their lives and for their bodies as well as exploring their own tastes. If they choose to eat all their dessert and none of their meal it’s up to use to remind them this is dinner time and there’s nothing to eat until the morning, this gives them the control over their eating.

Other extremely helpful tips are get your kids involved in their food, be it washing the peppers for younger ones, cutting up the cucumber for older children or letting them help lay the table. Children are more likely to taste food that they’ve been involved in preparing. It really does work, I’ve had great success with my nearly eight year old daughter by giving her some freedom in the kitchen together with many of Jo’s helpful tips on family style serving.

After all masterchef doesn’t only have to be on the TV!

I’m Lindi, a mum of two gorgeous girls and the owner of LJ Nutrition. I help busy parents to think differently about food by providing easy ideas around family mealtimes. I am a registered Nutritional Therapist and use a science based approach towards the promotion of optimum wellbeing, health and peak performance. Nutritional therapists work with everyone, from healthy individuals to prevent disease or improve their diet and wellbeing, or with an individual who has health concerns to minimise their symptoms and to try uncover any contributing factors.

Find out more about Lindi at www.ljnutrition.com