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Your Child: The Newest Expert on Nutrition

Teaching Healthy Food Choices (Without Really Trying)

By T. Susan Chang

When we take Noah food shopping, we start with the fruit and vegetable section, pick up the meats and cheese, stop by the dairy case and head to the checkout. Except for an occasional foray into "baking needs" for spices and flour, we basically bypass the middle aisles, with their hordes of packaged foods.

"If possible – big if! – shop with a well-fed and rested child," says Hemmelgarn. "Let them help you go down your list and check things off; and let them choose a new item from the fruit and vegetable aisles instead of the snack aisle."

In the spring and summer, Noah likes to be near me when I work in my vegetable garden. I like to snack in the garden – sugar snap peas, cherry tomatoes, green beans, carrots, you name it. I don't usually make a big deal of asking Noah to try things in the garden, but when he sees me eating something I just picked, he inevitably wants to do the same.

Time and space for a garden can be hard to come by. But even growing one small plant – a cherry tomato plant on a rooftop, an herb plant in a kitchen window – makes the point: Food lives and grows. It doesn't have to be manufactured in a store or factory. It's something real that you can create yourself and care for, just as it nourishes you. There isn't a kid in the world who doesn't consider it a miracle that they can eat something they grew themselves.