Dear all Well Intentioned Parents out there;

I’m here to tell you; being the sugar and processed food police doesn’t work.  

I have a 15 yr old daughter.  Believe me when I tell you, I had REALLY lofty ideas about what she was going to put into her precious little body.  I nursed her until she was 2, she ate organic everything, we fed her what we were eating, we got her in the kitchen cooking with us from the age of 2 on...ya know all the hippie cool natural baby stuff.  It worked, for a while.

Then……..she met some other kids.  Guess what?  Not everyone feeds their kiddos kale and sweet potato enchiladas with a fruit leather as a treat.  Nope.  She got a taste of the good stuff.  Oreos, doritos, soda, doughnuts. 

OH HOW I FOUGHT IT.  

Knowing what I know about food and how it affects the body, I went into panic mode.  I created rules about how many “treats” she could have per day, what kinds of sugar were allowable, how much “real” food she had to eat before she could have anything else, etc.  NONE of it worked, and I realized what I was creating was not a healthy relationship with food, but one of deprivation and shame.  There’s an awfully fine line between being a nutritionist and knowing about what good food can do and demonizing the so called “bad foods” and potentially giving my kid an eating disorder.  Ouch. 

Thankfully, my daughter is a kick ass strong willed young lady.  She didn’t buy into my dogma and you know what?  She is really great at making smart decisions for herself when I get out of her way.  Imagine that!  

She’s amazing in the kitchen and for Easter she made this beautiful lemon cake with berries. I asked her to make it gluten free (with almond flour) so her grandma and I could eat some.  She obliged.  Lucky me!   I ate half the cake.