FEARMONGERING

Someone on Instagram messaged me the other day about the ingredients in an RX bar since I had shared a photo of my child’s lunch with an RX bar. She was very kind and simply shared that she saw someone else’s post about the company falsifying the ingredient list and wanted to let me know in case I wanted to look into it further. I checked out the account and saw the post she was referring to. There was a lot of red and bolding and underlining and a whole lot of fearmongering. I was honestly horrified and was just about to leap out of bed and go downstairs to remove it from my son’s lunchbox and try to find a last minute protein.

I stopped myself there and said WAIT JUST A MINUTE. I have my own brain here. I have a masters degree and can use my mind to think critically. So I started to look into this myself (you can read one of the articles I saw HERE if you’re interested, but that’s not what this post is about).

My point here has nothing to do with the RX bars. I found myself quickly going down a rabbit hole researching this and that and protein requirements and wxyz. We are BOMBARDED with information and have the world at our fingertips. To someone like me, this can be practically debilitating. I am not a nutritionist or a doctor and I don’t have time to stay up to date on all of the current research; I am an anxious mother trying to navigate through this information-rich world trying to do what’s best for my children. The last thing I need is a fearmongering post about what I feed to my children. This is a tricky subject and fine line because I DO care about the ingredients my kids eat.

I also care about my kids’ relationship with food.

My kids (for the most part) are not picky eaters. I could honestly probably get them to eat a “perfectly clean” paleo-type diet. They enjoy meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts and eat them in abundance. We don’t live in this paleolithic world, though. We live in a world with obesity, eating disorders, depression, decreased self-esteem, birthday cakes, and pizza parties. I want my children to grow up and become adults that can go to another country and enjoy all of the foods that country has to offer. I don’t want them to worry about the gluten in the pasta in Italy, the dairy in the cheese in France, or how the desserts are sweetened in Spain. I want them to eat vegetables because they ENJOY them not because they HAVE TO.

As parents we are so judged based on the foods we feed our children and the foods we don’t feed our children. Food is a very sensitive subject for people, especially parents. I’ve been judged by people who think I feed my kids too many “healthy” foods and I’ve been judged for ordering them pizza when we go out to eat.

I never cared about the nutritional value of the foods I ate until I became pregnant with my first child. I had gestational diabetes and changed my diet significantly. I came across a fearmongering food blogger and I got SO wrapped up on every single ingredient I ate. It got to the point that I was avoiding drinking WATER (we had a well and I was nervous to drink that water and we were buying bottled water until I found this blogger. I switched to only drinking water out of glass jugs that I had to refill at Whole Foods 40 minutes away. When I was low on those I would consider not drinking water until I refilled my glass jugs).

THE. FEAR. MONGERING. NEEDS. TO. STOP.

Parents (especially new parents) have so much information thrown at them. Self-doubt is basically built into becoming a parent. We need to create a positive environment around food. ALL FOOD. We need to stop judging ourselves. We need to stop judging each other. We need to stop with the unnecessary fearmongering.

The thing is, no one knows FOR SURE about any of these ingredients. Our mental health is so much more important than the ingredient lists we feed our children.

Let’s focus on offering mostly whole foods and lots of vegetables, modeling a nonjudgmental attitude around food and eating choices (ours and others), celebrating life’s milestones with delicious food as people have been doing for centuries, and worry less about the rest. Let’s fight back from the fearmongering and use those brains of ours. Who’s with me!?

xoxo