Kid’s Aren’t Naturally Drawn to Junk Food

No, kids are NOT naturally drawn to junk food!

If they want too much of it, there are emotional reasons to do with their parents’ treatment of them.

Often our parents were able to write off our overeating or junk food compulsions as simply, "What kids are like."

As a culture, we have a belief that left to their own devices, kids will only want junk food, will never want healthy food, cannot self-regulate and cannot be trusted.

This is a convenient excuse for parents whose children overeat, because they can blame it solely on the supposed nature of kids.

The truth is, kids are NOT naturally drawn to junk food or overeating. I have met children throughout my 17 years of nutritional study, who told me their favorite foods were salad or seaweed, who knew how to make their own almond milk and preferred fruit to tons of candy.

Children CAN be trusted, they CAN self regulate, and they DO naturally love unprocessed food. They CAN regulate their amounts of food they eat as well.

Others will say, "But what about the addictive nature of the chemistry of junk food?" Isn't that what gets kids hooked? While this is certainly a factor, it is never, ever only that factor. If it was, every single child would have the same level of junk food compulsions. The variation is an emotional one.

The truth is, if you as a child overate, there were emotional causes as to why you did. It has nothing to do with you being a kid or junk food being addictive.

Your environment must not have felt good for you on some level, and you were seeking comfort and distraction.

You were attempting to emotionally cope with what didn't feel like love in your childhood, and food was an available way to avoid the truth so you could psychologically survive. It is understandable you would have sought comfort in food.

If you had a childhood that gave you all you needed emotionally for your beautiful little soul to thrive, and you had no damage being done to you by the adults around you, you would have been a child who was happy with eating fruit and never had a reason to eat too much food.

We must re-frame our childhood in our understanding, with the truth. And the truth is, kids ARE NOT naturally out of control with food or with junk food.

Kids ARE naturally drawn to healthy eating, if they are not damaged by people around them.

Photo by Anthony Ievlev via Unsplash