Food should be one of the simplest things in our lives. We’re hungry. We eat. We’re full. We stop.
Except…that’s not really how it works, is it? By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have collected decades’ worth of messages about food and our bodies. Eat this. Don’t eat that. Carbs are bad. Sugar is toxic. You earned dessert. You need to work that off. You’d look better if you lost five pounds. And now we’re raising kids in a world where those messages aren’t disappearing. In many ways, they’re getting louder. On this week’s episode of Parenting Shrink Wrapped, Melissa and I talked with Christiana Cortina, founder of Nutrida, a family-focused nutrition practice that helps kids, teens, adults, and families develop more positive relationships with food. One of the things I appreciated most about this conversation was that it wasn’t about creating the perfect family diet. It was about helping our kids learn to trust themselves around food.
Your Kids Are Listening to How You Talk About Food
Parents don’t usually set out to make their children anxious about food. We’re trying to help. We want them to be healthy. We want them to eat foods that nourish their growing bodies. We don’t want them surviving exclusively on Cool Ranch Doritos. And yes, I have some personal experience with the Cool Ranch Doritos. Listen to the episode to hear the cautionary tale. But Christiana pointed out something important: young children tend to think very concretely. So when we label food as “good” or “bad,” they don’t necessarily hear the nuanced nutritional lesson we’re trying to teach. They may simply hear, This food is bad. And eventually, that can turn into, If I eat this food, am I bad? That’s where guilt and shame can start creeping into something that should be a pretty ordinary human experience.
Restriction Can Create Scarcity
Here’s another parenting strategy that can backfire: restricting the foods we’re worried our kids will overeat. No cookies. No chips. No sugar. Dessert only after you’ve eaten everything else. The problem is that heavily restricting a highly desirable food can make that food even more desirable. Your child doesn’t necessarily learn, “Cookies are something I can enjoy when I want one.” Instead, they may learn, I don’t know when I’m going to get another cookie, so I better eat every cookie available right now. Christiana described this as a scarcity mindset. And it explains why some kids sneak food or go to a friend’s birthday party and practically set up camp next to the dessert table. They’re not necessarily incapable of regulating themselves around food. They may not have had enough opportunities to learn how. Christiana explains that children ultimately control what goes into their mouths, and overly restricted access can make it harder for them to trust their own hunger and fullness cues when they eventually have more freedom.
What About the Teen Who Doesn’t Eat Enough?
We also talked about the opposite problem. I hear this one from parents in my coaching and therapy practices all the time: “My teenager won’t eat breakfast.” “They skip lunch.” “They barely eat during the day.” And my response sometimes surprises parents: Make them food.
Yes, your 16-year-old is technically capable of making a sandwich. But there’s a difference between being physically capable of making a sandwich and having the executive functioning necessary to stop what you’re doing, figure out what you want, find the ingredients, prepare everything, assemble it, eat it, clean up, and move on with your day. That’s a lot of steps. If your teenager isn’t eating enough, this may not be the moment to make sandwich preparation the hill you die on. Make eating easier. Christiana suggested involving teens in deciding what accessible breakfast foods they actually like. A microwaveable breakfast sandwich, smoothie, yogurt, or another convenient option may be more realistic than the breakfast we think they should eat.
Because, as Christiana shared, “Fed is best.”
Model Instead of Lecture
Want your teenager to eat breakfast? Start by asking yourself: Do they see me eating breakfast? This applies to so many areas of parenting. We can lecture our kids about healthy behavior all day long, but they’re watching what we actually do. Christiana encourages parents to model the behaviors they want their kids to develop. And if your teen suddenly stops eating breakfast or starts skipping meals, get curious instead of immediately lecturing. You might say, “I’ve noticed you’re not eating breakfast lately. Is there a reason?” Maybe they’re genuinely not hungry first thing in the morning. Okay. Could they take something with them and eat when they are hungry? Maybe there’s another reason entirely. The point is to open the conversation instead of turning breakfast into another parent-teen power struggle.
Know the Warning Signs of Disordered Eating
Not every teenager who skips breakfast has an eating disorder. Not every teenager who wants to eat healthier has disordered eating. But parents should know what to watch for. Christiana shared several behavioral warning signs that can appear before obvious physical changes. These can include increasingly rigid food rules, cutting out entire food groups, guilt or anxiety around eating, feeling like exercise “earns” food, excessive exercise, frequent body checking, increasing dissatisfaction with their body, anxiety around eating, and significant weight changes. And there’s one misconception we really need to get rid of: Eating disorders don’t have a “look.” A person does not need to be extremely thin to have an eating disorder or a disordered relationship with food. These issues can affect people in different bodies, and they can affect boys as well as girls.
If you’re noticing concerning patterns, early intervention matters. Look for a therapist and nutrition professional who specifically understands eating disorders and disordered eating. This is a specialized area, and it’s okay to seek specialized help.
What Does a Healthy Relationship With Food Actually Look Like?
I loved where Christiana took us at the end of our conversation because after spending an episode talking about what not to do, we need to know what we’re actually working toward. A healthy relationship with food isn’t perfect nutrition. It isn’t following food rules flawlessly. And nutrition shouldn’t become your whole life.
Nutrition should contribute to your life.
Food is nutrition, yes. But it’s also birthday cake. It’s your grandmother’s cookies. It’s culture. It’s family traditions. It’s celebration. It’s connection. Sometimes you eat four of Grandma’s cookies because they taste amazing and then realize your stomach isn’t particularly pleased with that decision. You notice it. You learn from it. You move on. No punishment required. A peaceful relationship with food means being able to notice hunger, respect fullness, enjoy food, attend celebrations, and eat without constantly calculating what you’ll have to do later to compensate for it.
We Get to Choose What We Pass Down
Most of us inherited messages about food and bodies that we never consciously chose. That doesn’t mean our parents were terrible. And it doesn’t mean we’re terrible parents if we’ve accidentally passed some of those messages along. It means we have an opportunity. We can get curious about what we learned about food growing up and what we believe now. We can pay attention to what our children hear when we criticize our own bodies and ask ourselves what we actually want them to believe about theirs. We don’t have to carry every belief we inherited into the next generation.
We get to decide what stays. And we get to decide what ends with us.