I almost didn’t do this video.
I honestly thought it would be too wacky and out of the box for some readers to handle.
My change of heart occurred when one of my children said, “Mom, you HAVE to do that video”.
Out of the mouths of babes.
So here I am posting a video about the best trick I know for teaching your kids about the dangers of fast food and hopefully keeping them far far away from it forever – even once they are out of the house and making their own decisions.
While this trick won’t work for older children, if your kids are still quite young, it should work well.  My three kids want absolutely nothing to do with fast food and that includes my teenager who has more freedom away from his parents and has the opportunity to indulge if he chose to.
So here it is.   What do you think? Too wacky or totally on target?
Mom Versus Fast Food (Mom Wins)
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
I have taught my daughter how to make good choices and about moderation when eating unhealthy foods. We will end up at a fast food place every so often and when we do we talk about healthy choices and eating food that will help us grow big and strong rather than unhealthy foods. Fast food is modeled in moderation just like all other junk foods- ice cream, candy, chips, soda and so on.
I think your approach is a scare tactic. I would rather my child know how to make good decisions for herself when it comes to eating.
I’m puzzled by your response. You want your daughter to have only moderately good heath? And you are discussing healthy food choices while you are eating junk food? What kind of message does that give to a child? I believe fast food is modeled on profits for the fast food companies. And I think a scare tactic would be to show children the effects this type of “food” has on the human body even when consumed in “moderation”. Not a pretty picture.
Really. I don’t think that the health of a child Is dependent on if the have a cheeseburger once a month. Seriously. People can be so judgementel and ignorant. Milk over soda, apples over fries and oh no a hamburger. I am sure some of you feed your children worse at home. Moderation and brains.
We are certainly not discouraging kids from eating burgers. We’re discouraging them from eating food prepared and sold at McDonalds and other fast-food chains that don’t give a rat’s patoot about the quality of what they’re slinging. Again, McDonalds should not be confused with REAL FOOD and their burgers and their chicken nuggets should not be confused with REAL MEAT. It comes from tortured, sickly animals. Again, why would anyone want to “treat” their kids to that? I mean — seriously. Why? Blech.
Respectfully, had you said once a year I might have been able to hear what you are saying but once a month is a habit. I think that gives really mixed messages to a child one is trying to teach about real food health. The chemical reactions (free radicals & much more) that are going on in your body and your childs body last for hours and take days to repair. Dr. Catherine Shanahan’s book “Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Foods” is excellent at explaining these physiological changes in laymans terms. Good luck to you in your pursuit of health. Small changes are not to be taken for granted. It is a process.
Well Sarah, you really challenge me to THINK for myself! Thank you! Wish so badly that my kids were little again and I could do this once or twice. Generally, I think that IS all it takes to drive home the lesson. Sometimes we have to do things that others may not value, but that is ok. Each family has to decide what their values are and go from there. This was a lesson, not a moral one, a health one. Everyone spends money on what they value; it is respectful when commenting to remember that and not make a moral judgment, less that pointing finger turns back on the person pointing! My main job is to teach my children how to survive this culture and it’s many errors in health, wellness, spiritual understanding, etc. Less than 4 bucks for such a life changing lesson….EXCELLENT! Thanks!
Here, hear watchmom3! I hear what you are saying here and it was well said!
I understand that you want to teach your children a lesson about healthy eating but throwing the food away is ridiculous. I am certain that there was someone in that area that would have loved a hot meal regardless of where it came from. I have lived in India now for almost six years and what I saw in your video was just wrong.
“It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.”
But, but……it’s NOT FOOD!
I think that the majority of people that go without food everyday would disagree with you. It might not be healthy food – but it is still food.
Would I give a starving person a bag from McDonalds? Sure I would – for the calories.
(By the way, I have a frame of reference for hunger and poverty – I lived in India myself at one point).
From reading comments here, I’ve noticed some people filter things through an ‘absolutest’ framework. By that reasoning: you have a bag of this ‘type of food’ in front of your child (someone who isn’t in a situation of starvation).
Are you going to go ahead and give something not good for the health or are you not going to ‘waste’ it and give it to your child instead. I would say, people reading this blog would be of the mindset it’s NOT wasting it: it’s called food, but it’s only mimicing it.
This isn’t my idea: here’s an a book by Thomas Dunker – “That’s Not Food!: Straight Talk About Your Choices and the Real Enemy: The Corporate Food Giants”
I just do not agree. I can totally agree with wanting to teach your children about healthy living and eating. But I believe this is the wrong way to go about it.
The only thing this video does for me is reinforce exactly how wasteful our society can be.
Show this video to any child on the street here and do you think they would be learning about health? They would be taking away the idea that Americans are so so rich and so wasteful that they would buy their children food (for a cheap toy) only to throw it away.
Remember when our parents would hound us about starving children in Africa to get us to clean our plates ~ I don’t agree with this method and I don’t agree with the idea of a child having to clean his/her plate but we all do need to remember that there really are STARVING children in Africa.
Eric in the post before mine had some great ideas, which I will repost;
* teach them that most people in the world live on less than $2/day TOTAL
* work with them to make a whole loaf of PB&J sandwiches and go feed the homeless
* help them understand that their peers don’t set the agenda for them (be stronger)
McDonalds does nothing to nourish the human body. I can think of dozens upon dozens of other foods I would buy for $3 that would be nourishing and not aid the corporate food giants. Homeless people are humans. I wouldn’t give them food I wouldn’t eat myself.
What Sarah is representing when she throws the bag away…….was this was NOT FOOD!
I thought she was going to open it and rip that burger and fries into a thousand little pieces. She actually showed some restraint……
I agree — it’s not food. You (and millions of other people) have been bamboozled unto *thinking* it’s food, but it’s not.
So, you would teach your child that it’s okay to give garbage food to homeless people and those less fortunate? But not okay for them to eat it?
Using this logic, I could…
* purchase a carton of cigarettes every week and throw them away to teach the kids that smoking isn’t healthy.
* buy them a fifth of wiskyy and pour it down the drain to show them the dangers of alcoholism
* get 10-20 lotto scratchers and toss them in the fire as a math lesson on why the lottery is a bad investment
* purchase inappropriate magazines and throw them away as a lesson on why we have to be careful not to view inappropriate material
* get the biggest cable package available so i could reinforce the importance of not watching TV so much by not watching all the channels that were coming in
really? i say do this INSTEAD:
* teach them that most people in the world live on less than $2/day TOTAL
* work with them to make a whole loaf of PB&J sandwiches and go feed the homeless
* help them understand that their peers don’t set the agenda for them (be stronger)
you get the idea… be a stronger influence by teaching them the real lesson you want to teach by not participating in the activity at all….
(or simply keep on swinging by the liquor store after school to keep on teaching with this style…)
Too funny….
You miss the point entirely I’m afraid ….
Good point Eric.
Contrary to most of the hysterical comments here, I would not label commercial food as “poisonous” or “not food”. Kids will figure out themselves that the meat in a Maccas hamburger is the same meat bought in a supermarket and cooked by mom at home. Like anything the food becomes poisonous if you have too much. Even mom’s cooking at home would get poisonous if she cooked burgers and fries at home, everyday. Is Maccas to blame for providing tasty and nutritious food, so conveniently for such a low price? Of giving access to so many calories so easily?
By demonizing fast food, we remove our own responsibility to control what goes into our own and our kids mouths. Lets learn and teach responsibility and self control instead.
fine the hamburgers are junk—but you could get apple slices instead of fries and milk (which you threw away) instead of soda
for the 3 plus dollars they could of had the apples and milk
Bravo, Sarah!
This should be basic training for every parent.
My daughter is 3 and has never been to a fast food place. We use the words ‘toxic’ and ‘poison’ a lot here in reference to food 🙂 It sounds really cute in Russian, lol, but she knows her stuff pretty well and sometimes when someone offers her sweets she will say “I can’t have sweets, they make my teeth rot”, too cute! I love that at least for now, she always asks me if she can have something someone is offering her (when we visit people) and if I say ‘no’ I explain exactly why and she understands.
When you have a million comments what does one more mean? But I think that spending $4 once or twice or even three times saves hundreds of dollars from going to Mcdonald’s in the future not to mention the health care costs. The toys may be yucky and cheap but there are worse things, like eating it! My best tip is not having TV but Sara’s tip is awesome. Even if it causes some family discord.
Val, I don’t have experience with older kids, but I’d just stop going anyway and tell them it’s not an option. I’d try to perfect a homemade “fast food” meal, like burger and fries, if they miss it sometimes. Works with my DH!
I have a son who is almost three. He doesn’t even know that these places have toys. He never asks for their food either. I think this is because we simply never go there, so it doesn’t exists in his world so to speak. If he watches cartoons is mostly video or PBS so no commercials there. I know it will probably change when he gets older and may see other kids eating it or something. At that time we’ll probably be more intensive with the negative message.
At the very moment I’m more concern about what he sees relatives eating. How can I say “No, you cannot have some of the cereal/soy hot dog/krispy creeme your grandma is having, it’s trash”. Wouldn’t go very well with grandma. That is probably a whole new subject though. It would be very interesting to see your post on this 🙂