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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: Two interesting articles in the New York Times
I believe our opinions are ultimately the same. Of course there are "not so great" parents everywhere! My agent is from Paris for crying out loud, she lets her children eat Domino's and junk food on a daily basis. The point I was making is that Domino's, junk food and the likes are predominantly available here as opposed to any other form of foods. I mean this in a very objective way, the kind of way that leads to awareness which leads to positive change. As I mentioned in my first post I doubt the French and other european parents make a real decision when it comes to feeding their kids, their environment simply makes generally healthy food available to them, luckily for them. So it's not like they are better parents on the food front, they were just born there.
On the other hand that very availability of healthier foods is what makes the difference (I'm using the word "healthier" in the broadest sense here since I don't think that Camembert and filets mignon are healthy, just better than the highly hormones-injected US equivalent.) Let's say genuine, instead of healthy. And who better than the parents can put into gear a change towards what's really best for their children and everyone else. Believe me I'm not a biased European, if you knew me IRL you'd know that I'm not among those who come here only to get together with other Europeans and criticize everything. I avoid them like the plague, especially Italians. That doesn't mean that I'm blind to the "not so positive" aspects, though.
Sometimes people that have lived in Italy tell me that their impression is that in Italy there's only the illusion of equality, in fact Italian women are still ultimately "put down" by men. Now, this is pretty much the polar opposite of my own experience as an Italian and I'd be inclined to strongly disagree, had I not made the experience of living abroad myself. Instead, I accept that it must be true for one cannot see the ways of one's own culture, it takes either the eyes of the foreigner or to leave.
I used the paragraph above to give a little context to what I'm about to say here... When I moved here I started getting sick. I started having stomach problems, skin problems, suspicious hair loss problems etc. I'm a healthy person so the impact of the new foods I was ingesting has been tremendous. Imagine how bad it must be for children that have only known this type of food. So I started researching for myself and ended up making the attain of my own health a form of knowledge. Just like the author of the article said that the French could learn from American parents how to raise creative kids, I say that the amount of information available to EVERYONE in this country is nothing short of amazing. Here I've really learnt about health and discovered eating styles that I couldn't have known about anywhere else. Organic food, mucus-free diets, super foods etc. I know raw foodists parents that are raising raw foodists children, I have so much respect for their efforts. The concept of raw foodism doesn't even exist in Europe! So what I'm getting at is that if I learnt all this, so can anyone else!
It's also amazing that MH and I were just talking about this last night (!) when we came across a wonderful documentary called Food Matters. You guys have got to watch it! It features some of the world's leading personalities in the health/food field, like David Wolfe. I found the first 8 minutes video on their YouTube channel, but the whole thing must be watched. Not only is it interesting, it's vital!
OK, now I must apologize for the crazy wall of text!
edited for typos
Wait til you have a kid that won't eat ANYTHING. I got lucky that mine will try most things, but I know some that are very picky even with very healthy parents.
P.S. chicken fingers, hotdogs, and fries aren't the only options on a kids meal.
You're late to the rodeo
But point taken
I agree the environment here does make it easier to eat healthier, much less packaged or hormone filled food, though I am seeing more of creeping into the supermarkets (I admit I bought a premade lasagna today :O).
I realized that after I hit post.
look I know I'm REALLY late on the game here (I read this post on my iphone but couldn't reply)
I just want to say don't judge til you're there. Some toddlers are VERY picky and its nothing to do with the parents. I feed G only the healthiest of foods from day 1 and now she is going through this power struggle thing where sometimes she will only eat cereal. And the whole putting them to bed hungry thing just doesn't work - my dd doesn't sleep if she doesn't eat, so I spend an hour each night trying to get her to eat veggies & meat & pasta & healthy stuff. At the end of the day though, if she's too tired or crabby or unwell to want to eat well I just let her have a bowl of cereal or a piece of toast. You can make whatever rules you want, but at the end of the day you do what you have to do, and hope they grow out of it if you keep offering healthy foods.