7 Ideas for a lifelong relationship with good food
And thoughts on what being "healthy" means.
Here is a loaded question for you, what does healthy mean to you? As a food writer this is something I have been questioning lately, particularly after reading Virginia Sole-Smith’s piece on What Makes a Food Healthy after the FDA announced new guidelines for “healthy” on a food label (so much to get into there and Sole-Smith does it all so well), cookbook author Julia Turshen’s essay in Bon Appetit and then her newsletter on Blender Muffins and why calling them “healthy” is complicated, and also Anne Helen Petersen’s eye-opening essay for Bon Appetit, on why we should stop saying “junk food” — “It does not make you a worse person to eat “junk” food, and it certainly doesn’t make you a better person to eat whole grains,” says Petersen.
Similarly, “Healthy,” to Turshen, is not just about the item of food and what it is made out of or its calories or contents:
“These muffins are a good example. For me, they’re not healthy because they have oats. They’re healthy because they’re easy to make. Accessibility is healthy! They’re healthy becomes of the feeling of dependability I have when I have a batch in the freezer and know that I’ve made it possible to experience pleasure at any given moment. They’re healthy because of the feeling of togetherness and connection they allow me to feel with my wife and our pets. They’re healthy because when I eat them, they taste good and things that taste good make me feel happy. Feeling happy makes me feel healthy.”
I love this perspective because I have always felt naturally this way about food but never been able to articulate it the way Julia Turshen and Anne Helen Petersen did. But obviously if it makes me happy, then there is something good happening. And if we can look at (hopefully affordable and accessible) food this way, as potential bringers of good feelings, of connection, something to learn from and something to be grateful for — not feared or demonised or regretted — then surely we would have a good relationship with food and this, this, is what “healthy” could mean.
In How to Raise an Intuitive Eater, a book written by two dietician nutritionists, Sumner Brooks and Amee Severson, who call it “a manifesto. An ode to healing the relationship with food.” They explain so well how weight stigma and diet culture are so very deeply ingrained that most people don’t even notice we are in it or had it passed onto them and are then passing on to our children — or just how dangerous it is to our/their physical and mental health. Here are a couple of brilliant bits pulled from the second chapter, Why we need to say “no” to the status quo:
“The status quo is focusing on “healthy eating” — not how you care for your body, or how comfortable you are in your body. No, the real things that actually influence our life experiences the most — the relationship we have with ourselves — are left out of the picture and have been replaced by a focus on weight targets, BMI, calorie counting and “good” and “bad” ways of eating. Along with diet culture, parents are unintentionally driving kids away from caring, compassionate relationships with their own bodies — at a huge cost…
The status quo is telling kids what to eat, moralizing food (making it “good” or “bad”), and restricting access to certain foods that are considered “junk”. It’s teaching kids to be afraid of being fat or even of having a body that doesn’t measure up to mainstream beauty ideals, of not being good enough. It’s also assuming a child needs to be coerced or pressured to eat more, to finish their plate or their vegetables. It pushes all these things in the name of health, in the name of fitting in, in the name of beauty. It has long term, detrimental impacts that many parents aren’t aware of. The status quo is such because no one talks about those detrimental impacts, but we are here to talk about them now…
Right now, we just want you to hold on to the possibility that your child’s relationship with food could be more important for their long term health and happiness than anything else about how they eat.”
I realise I am enormously privileged to be so interested in food and live in Tuscany, a place where it is so easy to access daily markets and where farms, pasta factories and cheese laboratories are in arm’s reach, along with other fun places to connect with food in all kinds of ways. It is something I have embraced ever since moving to Italy and I’m particularly grateful for how easily I have been able to expose my children to all of this, in an effort to make sure they develop what I consider a healthy relationship with food.
We have been able to make mozzarella from scratch, dry heirloom tomato extract in the sun for days, pick saffron flowers, go truffle hunting, pick grapes for the wine harvest, make gelato with one of the world’s most famous gelatai, rake olives from the tree and watch the bright green oil run out of the press in the local mill. My girls have donned caps and lab coats to see the inner workings of a pasta factory and seen up close how prosciutto is made. They even got to play bee keepers for a morning, all dressed up in their beekeeping gear (at this beautiful agriturismo). Because all of this is my personal idea of fun!
But you don’t have to live in Tuscany to do some very simple things with your family to encourage a positive relationship with food — the suggestions below are things that you can do anywhere, that are affordable, accessible and that don't even necessarily involve eating the food, which can also be important in building up this relationship. So often kids are pressured into trying “good” food through parental control and it only backfires — that’s right. This is the tactic I used with my anxious eater, Mariù, when she would only eat a handful of things: we did these activities outside of meal times so there was no pressure about whether eating or not eating was involved. These activities should absolutely not involve any stress over food or about having to clean up. It's about playing, having fun, creating good memories and an experience where they can connect with food.
Why is this important? Because when you learn about food, how it feels, how it moves, what it can do, what it smells like, it becomes familiar. It is also about understanding that food is culture and that it can connect us to the world around us, the people we eat with, the people who make it or grow it, and to nature.
Play with flour.
When Luna was very little all she wanted to do was put her hand deep into a bowl or the tall jars I store with flour and I reckon that must be the best feeling. I just let her do it (the number of people who wrote to me and said they could never do it because of the mess -- it's just flour, it wipes or sweeps up easily!). You can do this with dried lentils or beans too and it's just as fun. Both my babies loved this. When they got older we would draw pictures with ingredients. Spread out the flour on a board and use your finger to draw lines. With the beans, those little fingers are very good at lining the beans up to make squiggly shapes or forms like the sun or a heart.
Play with dough.
Mix together some flour (semolina if you have it is great) and water - better yet, let them mix it themselves. Use roughly double the flour to the amount of water and you have yourself a lovely semolina dough to roll into snakes, shape into cavatelli (see the post below for recipe), roll against a cheese grater for a fun embossed surface, etc. Or add yeast and here’s a post on making easy mini pizzas from scratch (and Luna demonstrates how to throw pizza dough). Cornstarch is also fun as it is “squeaky” and when you add water, it gains the strangest properties, mimicking slime until it is touched and then it’s as hard as a rock.
Draw a recipe.
Before she even learned how to write, Mariù would draw the ingredients that went into a soup (her favourite thing to cook). She’s been doing it ever since. Draw the individual ingredients that go into a favourite smoothie or sandwich, the contents of your vegetable drawer or fridge door, or something you happen to be making in the kitchen right now. She drew this Sicilian watermelon gelo recipe when we were at Anna Tasca Lanza cooking school two summers ago.
Smelling jars.
This is something my mum, who was a Montessori teacher, used to do with my kids when they were toddlers. Place different fresh or dried herbs and spices in jars and teach them the smells then mix the jars up and see if they can smell and name them, like a memory game. We used things like sage, rosemary, cinnamon, mint etc. You could also use garlic cloves or lemon zest, maybe certain special ingredients that have something to do with your heritage or where you live. Whatever you have! Even wine — oh yes. The sommelier father of my girls occasionally gives them a sniff of his wine and asks them what can they smell. It turns into a fun game and they come up with the best answers. Smell is one of our most powerful senses, and it is particularly connected to memory.
Cook an egg
Eggs are amazing. I have always let the girls crack the eggs themselves and still do. It teaches them a life long skill and they become little cooks as soon as they learn what you can do with just one egg. For me the moment I became awestruck with food was when my grandmother Rosemary showed me how to make scrambled eggs. My children are completely fascinated by eggs (when Mariù was a toddler she once made me crack open an egg as she was positive there was a crocodile inside) and what's amazing about them is how they transform completely when they are cooked — so just fry one, scramble one in a pan or boil one with your child. Or try this easy, sweet, fluffy egg, a nineteenth century recipe aptly called “An egg for a child”, it is so delicious and wholesome in the way I think “wholesome” should be (comforting, simple and brings a smile to your face).
Play with "soup"
From the age of 4, Mariù would make minestrone by herself, something that, years later when Luna came along, in turn became her favourite ever. Mariù would cut the vegetables (yes with a proper knife — Montessori mum here), drop them into a pan of water, add a bit of this, a bit of that, some salt, some olive oil, a handful of rice or tiny pasta shapes, I'd turn the heat on and she would amaze herself at being able to make a meal for us.
I remember playing with “garden soups” when I was young too, which was basically the same thing! I was reminded of it recently when a very sweet reader sent me a copy of Mud Pies and Other Recipes (1961), the most darling, nostalgic book of “recipes” which I wish I could share all of right now but I will just share one to give you a taste:
Boiled Buttons: "This is a hot soup that is simple but simply delicious. Place a handful of buttons in a saucepan half filled with water. Add a pinch of white sand and dust, 2 fruit tree leaves and a blade of grass for each button. Simmer on a hot rock for a few minutes to bring out the flavour. Ladle into bowls.”
It’s the same game, but try it with actual food that then you can try together (or just the parents even). There is something so satisfying for a child to be able to “cook” an actual edible thing by themselves!
Make mistakes.
We once (um, more than once) had a bake fail with a batch of cupcakes — I think we let the batter sit too long before it went in the oven and they came out flat and weird. We decorated them anyway, which is the bit that three year old Mariù liked the best, still does, and even though they weren’t pinterest worthy (which honestly what child cares about?) I taught her the phrase brutti ma buoni, “ugly but good,” and she was so pleased with herself that they were still good!
This is just scratching the surface.
When you or they get adventurous, try other things. Cook together or just let them help in the kitchen, if it is a relaxing and fun experience (don’t stress about mess!).
If you find something that they are interested in and curious about naturally, roll with it. If I've got something fresh from the fishmonger, Luna is right there next to me, prodding and asking questions and investigating. Whole fish, prawns, clams, you name it, seeing and preparing whole seafood is Luna's real jam. Just-steamed clam shells become instant castanets and she can study the fish like a forensic scientist.
Look at food in art! I have a watercolour etching of a cut open pomegranate in our living room, the seeds spilling out everywhere, and recently Luna noticed it and said, Mamma can we get one of those? Sure thing, it's even in season right now and I can just see her picking the seeds out one by one and enjoying the pop and crunch! I better dress her in red that day.
Think about other ways you could present and expose your children (or yourself!) to food and stimulate their curiosity and build a connection — because if we can do this early, they can learn as children that food is not to be feared or demonised, it is something to be appreciated, that brings joy, that you can have a great, healthy, lifelong relationship with. I can only see benefits to a life like this, where food is fun.
How about you?
Some more reading on this topic:
Laura Thomas’ newsletter, Can I Have another Snack?
Virginia Sole-Smith’s newsletter Burnt Toast (and keep an ear out for my guest appearance on her brilliant podcast in November talking about, amongst other things, raising a bigger bodied child in the age of social media)
Melissa Hogenboom for BBC, How your family shapes your body image
Molly Forbes’ Body Happy Kids book and website
More links at this recent newsletter, How to Untangle yourself from Diet Culture
Another great and insightful article with lots of brilliant points and ideas--thank you Emiko!
Love all of it! And how precious that mud pies “cookbook” sounds.