Eat Your Veggies!

We've tried and failed for years to get our boys, who are now 12 and 14, to eat more fruits and vegetables.  Nagging them hasn't helped, and it is counter to everything I've been reading about motivating kids--or anyone for that matter--to take action.  I keep reading in The 10 Greatest Gifts I Give My Children: Parenting from the Heart and in other books that I need to get the kids to believe that what I'm asking them to do is really something that they WANT to do.

So, a few months ago, I told my oldest that I didn't want to just nag him to eat better.  I wanted eating better to be something that matters to HIM so that he keeps doing it when he moves out of the house in a few years.  I asked him why it isn't important to him yet.

His answer surprised me.  He said he thinks he gets plenty of protein from milk, he's obviously got enough calories, and then takes vitamins to complete his nutrition.  Protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals--what else is there?

I started to do some research and finally came across the book Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating.  The chapter called, "Eat Plenty of Fruits and Vegetables" says it all.  Just 12 pages long, and he may forever have a new appreciation for why fruits and veggies matter.  The author, Walter Willett, describes all the research showing how a diet high in fruits and vegetables is associated with longevity and lower rates of cancer, cardiovascular, digestive, and eye diseases.  He points out that human diets were dominated by plants until only very recently and that we seem to have evolved high dependence on a huge variety of plant substances.  But best of all for addressing my sons vitamin pill challenge, Willett says that we've only discovered a small fraction of the plant nutrients that lead to all these health benefits.  These nutrients are NOT in our vitamin pills.  There are way too many of them.  Even if we isolated them all in years to come, it is likely that we couldn't pop enough pills to really cover them all.

Further, there isn't just one or even just a handful of fruits and vegetables that will cover all the health benefits for your diet.  There are many classes of these foods that each seem to provide different benefits as shown in different studies.  You have to mix it up.  Mix up the colors, the textures, the roots and the fruits.  Sorry, son, there are no short cuts, no Flinstones vitamins that are going to do this for you.

His diet hasn't changed much yet, but he's been more willing to try things and I think he's really convinced now that a change will do him good.