The Food Our Children Eat: How to Get Children to Like Good Food [Paperback]

Children seem to be bonded by a common culture that fosters resistance to good food. How can this be? There are lots of theories ploughing both sides of the nature-nurture divide. Author, Joanna Blythman points out that one belief is that junk food is basically so appealing that once children have tasted it, that is all they want.

So who is to blame for this? The food industry says it is simply servicing a need for popular food. If children are eating badly, then it is the parents' fault for not balancing the child's diet. Working mothers are the usual suspects.

But as this book clarifies, it is in culture that the prevailing conditions go against children eating well. This enlightening book explores the modern child's diet, starting with how the rot begins, followed by the staggered eating patterns and the flickering screen habits.

It assesses the different attitudes parents have, whether it is the concerned and worried parent who blames themself for the child's eating habits, or the philosophical parent who accepts junk food and believes that it is better the kids eat junk food than nothing at all.

The book also considers other factors which influence the child's food choice, such as the modern school meals: often cheap processed intensively reared meat in a fatty fried crumb coating.

So how do parents break the mould? Well each section of this book deals with ways to improve the child's eating habits in the home, at school and at parties and evaluates the possible remedies to break the viscous circle of poor eating habits.

This book is well written and concludes by providing examples of good snacks, good packed lunches and ways to make healthy foods such as vegetables more interesting.

This book is a handy paperback which is useful for parents who want to encourage good eating habits in their children. --Louise Coyle

'The food our Children eat is a masterly, common-sense treatise on getting kids to respect and enjoy food that is good for them.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'Her book is something of a manual, full of inspiration and information, and just enough fulmination to keep the reader's enthusiasm on the boil.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'This book is a revelation. Blythman puts her points across so effectively that you feel yes, it is quite easy to change things.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

A majority of British children mainly eat processed and junk food. Award-winning food writer Joanna Blythman takes a controversial look at this curious phenomenon and offers parents practical tips on how to improve their children’s diet.

Written in a highly accessible way, The Food Our Children Eat offers practical tips for parents who are concerned about what their children eat and looks at the long term consequences for human health and society of the increase in consumption of junk food. Joanna Blythman suggests strategies for ensuring our children eat more healthily, both at home and at school, with invaluable advice about how to interest children in nutritious food.

This well-researched and fascinating book also discusses the impact of our eating habits on the younger generation and attacks the complacency that surrounds the emergence of separate kids’ food and mealtimes. The Food Our Children Eat explores the decline in the standard of food children eat and is an intriguing polemic on what we can do to improve it.

How to get children to like good food.
How can you produce children who actually prefer a clementine to a cola chew? Award-winning food journalist Joanna Blythman examines how modern children's food has become synonymous with bad food and presents an inspiring alternative approach for parents who want to escape the junkfood treadmill. From weaning a baby to influencing a teenager, she explains how to bring them up to share the same healthy and wide-ranging food tastes as you. No more tantrums, fights and refusals: her strategies are realxed, low-effort - and they work

Joanna Blythman is Britain’s leading investigative food journalist and an influential commentator on the British food chain. She has won five Glenfiddich Awards for her writing, including a Glenfiddich Special Award for her first book, The Food We Eat, and the Glenfiddich Food Book of the Year Award in 2005 for Shopped, as well as a Caroline Walker Media Award for ‘Improving the Nation’s Health by Means of Good Food’, and a Guild of Food Writers Award for The Food We Eat. In 2004 she won the prestigious Derek Cooper Award, one of BBC Radio 4’s Food and Farming Awards. She has also written two other groundbreaking books, How to Avoid GM Food and The Food Our Children Eat. She writes and broadcasts frequently on food issues.