Welcome to MomCave LIVE, the place where sanity takes a vacation, but our laughter refuses to check out! Today, we're diving headfirst into a topic that's as mysterious as finding matching socks in the laundry – kids' nutrition. Brace yourselves, because we've got the brilliant Heidi Schauster on board, ready to sprinkle some wisdom on the chaos that is our attempt at feeding the tiny humans in our lives.
Spoiler alert: processed foods, Doritos, and the occasional truffle salt might just be the unsung heroes of our culinary escapades. So grab your snacks, preferably not hidden under the couch cushions, and let the MomCave shenanigans begin!
Her Books:
Nourish and Nurture: https://www.anourishingword.com/the-book
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Transcript below:
Jen: Welcome to MomCave LIVE where we may have lost our minds, but we haven't lost our sense of humor. I'm Jen and I have a really fun guest. That's not only fun, but informative for you today, and I hope you guys will take advantage of all of her expertise. This is Heidi Schauster. Welcome, Heidi.
Heidi Schauster: Thank you so much for having me, Jen.
Jen: You are very welcome. Um, Heidi sent me an email a while back. And it took us a while to connect, because Oh, my God, kids schedules school life, right. But what caught my eye on Heidi's email, Was it it said in the subject line. Kids need to eat processed foods. And I was both thrilled, mystified, and I don't know. So I wanted to talk like start there as a jumping off point. I always feel like my family doesn't eat healthy enough. But I love food so much and ...
Read More: https://www.momcavetv.com/nurture-how-to-raise-kids-who-love-food-their-bodies-and-themselves-heidi-shauster-momcave-live/
Spoiler alert: processed foods, Doritos, and the occasional truffle salt might just be the unsung heroes of our culinary escapades. So grab your snacks, preferably not hidden under the couch cushions, and let the MomCave shenanigans begin!
Her Books:
Nourish and Nurture: https://www.anourishingword.com/the-book
Join our email list for exclusive content, new videos, giveaways, and free nannies. (Okay, that part's a lie...): http://eepurl.com/SJxVj
⚡️Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MomCaveTV
us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MomCaveTV
Pin with Us: http://www.pinterest.com/MomCaveTV
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/momcavetv
Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@momcavetv
Our blog/giveaways: http://www.MomCaveTV.com
Find the MomCaveTV App on:
Amazon Fire - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BH3JHQZS
Apple TV - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/momcave/id6443647663
Android TV: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=quickcast.tv.mom_cave
Roku - https://channelstore.roku.com/details/6f6be4b40df791dc95eb1ab5ee7b32d8
Binge Networks: https://trybinge.tv/programs/momcave?category_id=179492
Airy TV: https://live.airy.tv/Airy_TV_3/39_MomCaveTV
Our Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/momcavetv
----------------------------
Transcript below:
Jen: Welcome to MomCave LIVE where we may have lost our minds, but we haven't lost our sense of humor. I'm Jen and I have a really fun guest. That's not only fun, but informative for you today, and I hope you guys will take advantage of all of her expertise. This is Heidi Schauster. Welcome, Heidi.
Heidi Schauster: Thank you so much for having me, Jen.
Jen: You are very welcome. Um, Heidi sent me an email a while back. And it took us a while to connect, because Oh, my God, kids schedules school life, right. But what caught my eye on Heidi's email, Was it it said in the subject line. Kids need to eat processed foods. And I was both thrilled, mystified, and I don't know. So I wanted to talk like start there as a jumping off point. I always feel like my family doesn't eat healthy enough. But I love food so much and ...
Read More: https://www.momcavetv.com/nurture-how-to-raise-kids-who-love-food-their-bodies-and-themselves-heidi-shauster-momcave-live/
Category
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FunTranscript
00:00 (phone ringing)
00:00 (dog barking)
00:01 - Honey, hurry!
00:02 (children yelling)
00:04 (upbeat music)
00:07 - Welcome to MomCave Live,
00:13 where we may have lost our minds,
00:15 but we haven't lost our sense of humor.
00:17 I'm Jen, and I have a really fun guest
00:20 that's not only fun, but informative for you today.
00:23 And I hope you guys will take advantage
00:24 of all of her expertise.
00:26 This is Heidi Schuster.
00:28 Welcome, Heidi.
00:30 - Thank you so much for having me, Jen.
00:32 - You are very welcome.
00:34 Heidi sent me an email a while back,
00:38 and it took us a while to connect
00:39 because, oh my God, kids, schedules,
00:42 school, life, right?
00:45 But what caught my eye on Heidi's email
00:48 was it said in the subject line,
00:51 "Kids need to eat processed foods."
00:55 And I was both thrilled, mystified, and (laughs)
01:00 I don't know.
01:01 So I wanted to start there as a jumping off point.
01:05 I always feel like my family doesn't eat healthy enough,
01:08 but I love food so much,
01:10 and everything that I love is not that healthy.
01:12 So that's how it is in our house.
01:16 And I always feel guilty about that.
01:18 Maybe you have a reason
01:20 that will help the rest of us out there
01:21 not feel so guilty.
01:23 Why do kids need to eat processed foods?
01:25 Heidi?
01:26 - Well, first of all,
01:28 unless you're going into your backyard
01:32 and growing all the grain and milking the cow,
01:36 just about everything that we eat is processed.
01:40 - True.
01:41 - So there's this idea that we should avoid processed food.
01:46 A lot of it is really born from
01:48 this sense that there's a moral imperative
01:55 around what we eat.
01:56 And I think we have to be careful about that.
01:58 We have to be careful about it with ourselves as adults,
02:01 but also particularly with kids.
02:03 This idea that there are good foods and there are bad foods,
02:07 I think can be really dangerous for young people
02:10 because it sets up a system
02:13 where they're really thinking about food in their mind,
02:16 as opposed to feeling it in their bodies
02:18 and approaching eating with self-regulation
02:23 instead of this more brain kind of way
02:27 of thinking about food.
02:29 So that's kind of where I'm coming from.
02:31 - Yes.
02:32 You and my husband would get along so well
02:34 because whenever somebody says anything
02:36 about processed foods,
02:37 he goes on this rant.
02:39 He's like, "Everything's processed.
02:41 If you pick this, it's processed.
02:43 You put it in a box, it's processed."
02:45 Of course, sometimes I think that's our excuse
02:49 for eating more processed foods in the house.
02:52 - Well, I mean, I'm a big fan of gardening, farming,
02:57 supporting the local economy, supporting local farmers,
03:03 taking care of our soils.
03:06 I'm certainly the first person to appreciate food
03:11 in its purest form, right?
03:15 But that said, life happens.
03:19 We do need to eat.
03:22 Convenience is there for a reason.
03:25 It's certainly much better to put food on the table
03:30 that's balanced and has been processed
03:34 in some particular way,
03:36 whether somebody helps you out and chopped those vegetables
03:39 or you did it yourself,
03:42 you're still serving good food to your family.
03:46 So I just think this demonizing of processed food
03:50 can be insidious and dangerous.
03:55 It really gives this message that, again,
03:59 some foods are good, some foods are bad.
04:01 I'm really wanting kids to feel very neutral about food.
04:05 And in terms of how to do that,
04:11 it's to not give food those kinds of labels around kids.
04:16 So that they can make choices
04:18 from a more internal place of regulation,
04:22 as opposed to other people telling them
04:24 what to eat or not eat,
04:25 which they may or may not rebel against too.
04:28 - Right, that's what I was thinking as you were saying that
04:30 it's a little of the reverse psychology thing with kids.
04:34 Like if they know I really, really want them
04:37 to eat broccoli, they don't wanna eat broccoli.
04:39 - Absolutely, absolutely.
04:43 - Yeah, and if you really want them to eat certain things,
04:48 I mean, really don't want them to eat certain things,
04:51 they may crave them as well.
04:53 I feel like when I was, my kids are now in college.
04:59 But when my daughters were growing up,
05:03 their friends who were from sugar-free households
05:07 would always come over and raid our cabinets
05:10 because sugar was not off limits in my house.
05:14 Whereas my kids really didn't have a lot of charge
05:18 around those kinds of foods at all.
05:20 So I do think there's something to be said for neutralizing
05:23 and making food just, again,
05:29 not like a moralistic kind of piece around it.
05:34 - So say we are able to successfully neutralize
05:37 all feelings about food in the household.
05:40 How do we get them to eat the good ones?
05:43 Well, I mean, yeah.
05:45 - Yeah, well, and so are, yeah, I know, see,
05:48 we all do it. - That's just the good
05:49 that's supposed to be neutral.
05:50 But you know what I mean.
05:51 - I totally hear you.
05:52 And I'm a nutritionist,
05:54 so I was sort of trained with nutrition science
05:57 and I understand kind of how the body works.
06:00 One of the things though,
06:01 like when I went to nutrition school,
06:04 that was many decades ago,
06:06 that I thought was so useful to me at the time,
06:09 partly 'cause I was recovering from my own eating disorder,
06:13 was that like all the food that we eat
06:16 breaks down into these basic building blocks
06:19 that our body can use.
06:21 And it doesn't actually matter
06:23 whether you get it from pasta or bread or fruit
06:27 or vegetable, all the carbohydrate that we eat
06:31 breaks down to glucose and then our body uses it,
06:33 our cells use it.
06:35 So there was something kind of comforting
06:37 in learning about the actual science around nutrition
06:42 and realizing that like,
06:43 oh, we actually don't have to be so particular
06:48 about what we eat.
06:48 Like our body can take care of that.
06:51 And yes, we do get more vitamins
06:53 and beautiful phytochemicals that are good for our health
06:58 from things that are colorful, like vegetables, for example.
07:02 But we also need nutrients that are in all the foods
07:06 that are options to us.
07:09 So diversity is really best for the body.
07:14 And we're learning now,
07:14 as we learn more about the microbiome and our gut health,
07:18 diversity is really important for our guts too.
07:22 So I think that like, you're right,
07:25 it's hard to like, to not have moral language
07:30 like of good or bad around food
07:33 because that's sort of how we've been trained.
07:36 And I've been really working on untraining
07:39 to really think about food much more neutrally,
07:45 both so that we can prevent problems like disordered eating
07:49 and binge eating that kids can start to exhibit,
07:54 teens can start to exhibit.
07:56 That's my field of study,
07:59 but also so that we can enjoy food.
08:03 Like food is meant to be pleasurable.
08:05 And like broccoli is actually pretty yummy
08:07 if you like put it with a nice sauce, especially,
08:11 that like enhances it, the flavor.
08:15 So I think that like,
08:16 if we can approach food with excitement and enjoyment
08:19 and like, look how colorful it is
08:21 and look how interesting this diverse plate is,
08:25 then I think that we're gonna encourage that diversity
08:29 in our kids eating more too.
08:31 - Yeah, so much is in the preparation.
08:32 And my mom will be watching this
08:36 and knows how much I love her before I say this.
08:38 And she knows this is true.
08:40 I hated vegetables pretty much until adulthood
08:43 because in our house, mostly it was like,
08:46 you took a can of green beans and you put them,
08:48 you heated them up and maybe,
08:50 my grandmother used to add a beef bouillon cube
08:53 to her green beans.
08:55 And that was thought of as high cuisine in our house.
08:57 So, when your vegetables are just like blah,
09:03 you're not gonna love them.
09:04 I got older and I started going to restaurants and things
09:07 and experiencing, oh my God,
09:10 like you could have amazing green beans
09:12 or Brussels sprouts or broccoli,
09:14 depending on how they're prepared.
09:16 And with my, especially my little one,
09:19 she is in love with truffle salt.
09:22 We put truffle salt on our vegetables
09:25 and that's like, makes all the difference.
09:27 So that's a good one.
09:29 - I love that you have your background
09:32 in all of your accreditations
09:35 and all of the research and the learning that you've done,
09:37 but you've also had some personal experience
09:40 in this whole field.
09:42 So I was wondering if you could tell people like,
09:46 what are some of the signs you look for
09:49 to detect disordered eating early in children?
09:53 What might you see that would make you
09:55 have a cause for concern?
09:58 - Okay, no, it's a great question.
10:00 I would be concerned about a child
10:03 who seems very obsessed with food.
10:06 And I don't mean like that they enjoy food
10:09 'cause food is meant to be a pleasure,
10:11 but that they seem like very preoccupied with food,
10:15 that they're talking about it all the time,
10:20 maybe even researching it all the time.
10:24 Also, if a child or a teen shows evidence of hiding food,
10:29 perhaps there's some shame around their eating,
10:36 which would be useful to know about.
10:38 So if there's like, you know,
10:41 wrappers hidden and things like that,
10:43 like it's worth asking about that.
10:44 It might just be that they like to like,
10:47 hang out in their bed cave and with their book
10:50 and talk about it, which is fine.
10:54 But sometimes there's like shame in eating,
10:58 like whether maybe they've been teased
11:00 or something about their eating or their body.
11:03 And so when they want to eat something yummy,
11:06 they feel compelled to do it in secret.
11:09 So that could be a sign that maybe there's something
11:11 going on in the relationship with food potentially,
11:14 or that food is like being used as a soother significantly.
11:19 Like we all eat emotionally.
11:23 Like if we eat a cake, we eat emotionally.
11:26 But if it seems like food is being used
11:30 as a reward or a soother a lot,
11:35 that may be a learned behavior,
11:36 perhaps from other family members maybe, or peers,
11:41 but something to sort of like, just, you know, watch.
11:46 - Yeah.
11:47 - Yeah.
11:48 You know, show extra love and concern
11:50 when you see someone's like relationship with food
11:52 might be going a little off.
11:54 - Yeah.
11:55 And then if a parent is concerned, where do they go?
11:58 Do they, is it the pediatrician?
12:00 Who do you go to?
12:02 Where do you start?
12:03 - Yeah, no, that's a really good question.
12:05 And it like, there's no like right answer to that one.
12:08 Unfortunately, there's like, I think if you're concerned
12:12 that your child is either, you know,
12:15 not fueling themselves well with food
12:18 or their relationship with food could be troubled,
12:22 certainly you could bring that up with the pediatrician.
12:25 It's always good to get a sense if there's like,
12:28 if they're dropping off of their normal growth pattern,
12:33 that's, you know, a little bit of an alert.
12:35 And, you know, there are therapists, psychotherapists,
12:41 and, you know, nutrition therapists like myself
12:44 who specialize in working with kids
12:46 and with disordered eating.
12:48 That can be consulted.
12:51 Often if somebody's like under 12,
12:54 like the child is under 12,
12:57 the parents will just be, come in for a consultation
13:01 because it's sometimes you don't want to give
13:03 too much attention to the food issue.
13:05 But if it's, if the child's over 12,
13:08 then they might be worked with individually as well,
13:12 since they're starting to make some of their own decisions
13:14 about food and their autonomy is shifting
13:17 in their adolescence.
13:18 So that's definitely people available,
13:21 but I would like look for, I'm gonna add this,
13:24 insert this before you move on,
13:26 which I would look for professionals
13:28 who have a health at any size orientation
13:31 or a H-A-E-S orientation,
13:34 which means that they are specifically oriented
13:39 to not shaming individuals around their body
13:45 because some young people are just designed
13:48 to be larger bodies than others.
13:50 And I think we have to be really careful
13:53 about weight stigma and healthcare.
13:56 So I'll just put that out there.
13:58 - Great.
13:59 And so that kind of segues into my last question for you.
14:02 And you were just talking about autonomy in this.
14:05 The kids get a little older.
14:06 How much autonomy should we give younger children
14:10 in what they have to eat or allowed to eat?
14:14 Do we, how do we give them some autonomy,
14:19 but make sure that they're healthy?
14:22 - Yeah, super great question.
14:24 It's such a hard one.
14:25 And I have like a lot of compassion around this topic
14:27 'cause I raised two young women now as well.
14:32 And I think I love Ellen Satter's
14:36 division of responsibility.
14:39 He says that the role of the parents
14:43 is to make a diverse amount of healthy food available.
14:48 And the role of the child is to eat it.
14:53 So it's like pretty straightforward
14:55 that when we start crossing into the lane of the child
14:59 and start telling them what to eat or how much to eat
15:02 or don't have that, or do have that,
15:05 then we're actually like crossing a boundary there
15:09 that ultimately our goal is to make good food available,
15:14 to put it on the table,
15:16 or if it's a young child, obviously on their plate.
15:19 As they get older, I'm a big fan of having kids
15:21 sort of self-select from what's on the table,
15:25 like family style as much as possible.
15:28 So they can learn to self-regulate
15:30 and kind of get connected to their appetite more.
15:34 But in general, having things available
15:37 is the parents' role or the caregiver's role,
15:40 and eating is the kid's role.
15:42 And the reality is in developing countries,
15:48 like developed countries, I mean,
15:50 that the kids don't starve.
15:53 If a child doesn't eat well at one meal,
15:58 they're likely to make that up
15:59 at the next meal or snack period.
16:02 So we don't have to panic.
16:04 It's better if we can be pretty chill at the table.
16:08 And let them do some self-selecting
16:11 of how much of the things to eat.
16:13 It's always great to make suggestions.
16:16 - Yeah.
16:17 - You can say like, "You know, it took me a long time
16:19 "to really like carrots too.
16:21 "Maybe let's give them a try again tonight."
16:26 I think your battles,
16:27 don't get into a huge battle with kids about it.
16:31 Sometimes they need to try things.
16:32 I think my intern,
16:33 when we were doing research for my new book,
16:36 we looked at all the research
16:39 and she found that it was somewhere
16:41 between 13 and 30 times kids need to try a food
16:46 before they actually accept it.
16:49 - That's a lot of times.
16:50 - Yeah, some kids are more cautious than others
16:53 just not to.
16:54 So just exposure is really important.
16:59 - Yeah.
17:00 - Even just touching it is important.
17:02 - I get how it works for meals
17:05 because I'm a big like,
17:06 "Well, this is what we're having for dinner.
17:09 "I don't like this.
17:10 "Well, this is what we're having for dinner."
17:11 Like that I got.
17:13 And like you said, I never worry if they don't eat,
17:16 then they'll eat more tomorrow.
17:18 But it's the snacks that get me
17:21 because when we're talking about what's available,
17:24 like I wanna have Doritos available in the house, right?
17:28 Because I wanna have those later when I'm watching TV.
17:31 But if those are available in the house,
17:35 my kids are never going to go and pick the banana to eat.
17:38 So what do you do?
17:41 - I'm a big fan of having the bananas and the Doritos
17:44 and like letting them select
17:48 what they're into from time to time.
17:53 And maybe sometimes the Doritos aren't available
17:55 because they ran out and they try something different.
17:58 And then they realize,
17:59 "Oh, I really like this snack food better."
18:02 But I'm a big fan of like,
18:03 especially if it's something that you like to eat.
18:06 Like at some point, someone will come downstairs
18:10 and be like, "Mom's eating the Doritos.
18:12 Why did she say I can't eat them?"
18:13 (laughing)
18:14 - Not every girl, but.
18:15 - If you're gonna have a food rule,
18:16 you kind of have to have it
18:17 so the whole family follows it.
18:19 - Yeah, yeah.
18:20 - And there's absolutely nothing wrong.
18:22 In fact, Doritos aren't like usually craved that much
18:27 unless they're seen as being like a special thing
18:31 that we only get once in a while.
18:33 In general, like in general food,
18:36 like loses its charge when it is more neutral.
18:40 Yeah.
18:43 - That's a great way of thinking about it.
18:44 I really appreciate that.
18:46 Heidi's book is called "Nurture,
18:48 How to Raise Kids Who Love Food,
18:50 Their Bodies and Themselves."
18:52 And if you go over to the comments,
18:53 you can see the link of where to find it.
18:57 You can also find Heidi on,
18:59 your @nourishingwords is your handle on all the places.
19:04 Yes?
19:04 - Yes.
19:05 - @nourishingwords.
19:06 Well, thank you.
19:07 And thanks for sharing your nourishing words with me.
19:09 I'm going to think of you as I go
19:11 and prepare something healthy for lunch
19:14 and I'll save my Doritos for tonight.
19:16 (laughing)
19:18 But I'll still eat them.
19:19 - Enjoy.
19:20 - Yes, yes.
19:21 Thank you so much.
19:22 And if you all have any more questions for Heidi,
19:24 you can feel free to put them in the comments
19:26 and this will be here for everybody to refer to.
19:28 Good luck with the book.
19:30 It's amazing.
19:31 And thank you for talking with me.
19:33 - Thank you so much, Jen.
19:34 I really appreciate it.
19:35 - You're so welcome.