[PREVIEW] "If We Could Care Less about Nutrition, Our Kids Would Have a Healthier Relationship with Food."

Hello, and welcome to another audio version of Burnt Toast!

For this episode, I thought it would be fun to both answer some of your questions and just talk a little bit about a recent piece I did on Division of Responsibility and Instagram.

The response to this piece was very interesting. I heard from so many dietitians and other kinds of kid food influencers on Instagram saying, “Thank you for articulating this. This is a conversation I’ve been afraid to have on here. I’ve been afraid to talk about this.” I’m even seeing a few folks changing the way they talk about Division of Responsibility and admitting more openly when it’s not working for their own families. I’m excited about that. And I want to be clear: That’s not because I think Division of Responsibility is evil. I will be forever grateful to the role DOR has played in my own family and I think has a lot of potential to help families. But I do think there are some problematic elements baked into it that we need to reckon with.

As I explained in that piece: The way we talk about DOR on social media both distorts it and focuses on some of those problematic elements. And so I think people are starting to rethink when they are being rigid for rigidity’s sake. When am I refusing to question my family’s mealtime structure? Is this a plan that I jumped on, is it something that I have decided on, or am I considering how my kid is responding to it and is this really working for them?

I’ll be honest and say I am still figuring this out in my own life. One example I can give you is my preschooler’s feelings about wanting snacks before dinner. I feel like we’re never getting this right. She obviously is hungry before the rest of us. She’s smaller and goes to bed the earliest and she would probably prefer dinner to be at 4pm every day, and we’re trying to make her last till 5:30. So we have a snack when she gets home from school at 3-3:30pm. She’s allowed to have a big snack, as much as she wants to eat, but inevitably in that half hour before dinner, she gets cranky again. I think it’s really about wanting attention, particularly attention from me when I’m distracted with cooking dinner. So we’ve tried using lines like, “The kitchen is closed, but it’ll be open really soon,” and hoping that doesn’t feel restrictive. We’ve tried having rules like, “you can have a fruit or vegetable now,” and that’s not because I’m pushing fruits and vegetables hard on my kids, but just because I know if I give her another snack, she will not be hungry when we sit down to dinner.

But ultimately, maybe I just have to be okay with the fact that she would like to be eating earlier. She may not fully participate in our family dinner right now. Maybe that’s not the end of the world. It feels deflating to me personally if I let her have snacks right before dinner and then we sit down and she’s done in one bite and doesn’t want to eat the meal that I’ve worked hard to make, even if it’s got foods that she really likes in it. But that might just be where we are.

If I was rigidly following Division of Responsibility, the answer would be absolutely no snacks. Let’s get her to come to the table hungry and then she’s more likely to try new foods. But if I’m recognizing where my kid is and what my bandwidth is at 5:00pm on a Wednesday night and how much I’m willing to die on that mountain with a four-year-old, the answer for us might be something different. And that’s my big takeaway from this whole conversation: There are going to be times when not following DOR makes the most sense for you. We need to get away from this idea that there is an external answer and instead empower parents to say, “This is where my kid is and this is what makes sense to them.” At the same time, we still need to give guidance and structure, so it’s such a tricky conversation to be having.

Q: I’ve got a question inspired by your newsletter on DOR. How do we balance eliminating diet culture with nutrition? You highlighted how a lot of the kid-feeding advice out there still feeds off diet culture, like in wanting to keep dessert portions small. But when I want to give my kid or myself “healthy” meals, how do I root out diet culture? This occurred to me when I was making a pizza for myself for lunch today and thinking, well, there are some diced tomatoes on there, that’s a vegetable. Is that diet culture? Or is that trying to include nutritionally dense foods alongside foods that are tasty and satisfying? I don’t give my toddler juice. Is that diet culture or just sound decision making? This is starting to feel more like a question for therapy. How do I identify my motivations? I’m curious about your take. If my child were in charge, he’d be eating Raisin Bran and milk and raisins for most meals. Though DOR folks might tell me his body would eventually inspire him to make other choices, I know that’s not the case for picky kids. So for him and for me, how do I make choices for our meals that aren’t steered by diet culture, but also aren’t steered by cravings for the tastiest foods?

We need to care about nutrition way, way, way less. So much less. We live in a culture of abundance around food. We live in the modern era of white flour fortified with vitamins. Many foods offer many different nutritional profiles. If you are not food insecure—meaning if you are able to feed your child as much food as they’re hungry for—the odds of your child being malnourished are really, really, really small.

There are exceptions to this; poverty is the biggest exception. If you can’t afford to feed your kid, then yes, nutrition is a concern. And there are definitely kids with ARFID or other feeding disorders who aren’t taking in enough calories and nutrients to grow and to thrive, because of their struggles. And I don’t mean to downplay the severity or complications of those situations. But: Anyone with a garden variety picky eater can relax knowing that their child not going to be malnourished, even if they’re living a life of Raisin Bran, milk, and raisins. Or mac and cheese, Uncrustables, and Cheerios, as is the diet of the picky eaters in my household. At the baseline, if you have enough food, you have nutrition. Anything beyond that, to be honest, is a little bit diet culture.

This is not to say that fruits and vegetables aren’t great, but they aren’t what’s going to fill you up in terms of hunger, right? They don’t give kids enough calories to grow, by themselves. In and of themselves, fruits and vegetables are nice to have, but they are not essential for human survival in the same way that carbohydrates, fat and protein are.

[Virginia Note For Dietitian Readers: Yes, I know many vegetables provide some, if not all of those macronutrients. But if your kid won’t eat them, you can cover those bases in lots of other ways.]

We need to re-evaluate the importance we put on kids eating vegetables. Is really because they are so nutritionally important, or is it because diet culture has convinced us of their importance? This is not a hard and fast thing. I do think kids should be exposed to different foods to help them develop different preferences. I like vegetables, I eat them at many meals, but definitely not every meal. When I’m having a pizza lunch, vegetables are not a huge concern.

So often, when we talk about nutrition, we’re talking about diet culture. When we are trying to escape from diet culture, putting nutrition aside is really important. When we are thinking about how to feed our kids, as counterintuitive as it sounds, putting nutrition aside is important.

And I always say we shouldn’t give parents hard and fast rules, but I’m about to give you a hard and fast rule. What really matters around family meals is connection. It’s kids feeling comforted by the experience; feeling confident that they are going to be fed enough and trusting that they can feel emotionally connected to caregivers.

If you start from there and continue to prioritize that, then the meal that you are serving will meet nutritional needs because you will be assuring them that they have enough food and foods they can eat. You don’t need to get hung up on vegetables or juice or no juice or any of these other questions because the primary purpose of the meal is met. From there, a child can grow up to be an adult who eats vegetables or they might not grow up to be an adult who eats vegetables. That’s not really your job as a parent to ensure. I realize that may feel uncomfortable to a lot of people, but that’s what I keep coming back to. We have overemphasized nutrition. If we could care a lot less about nutrition, our kids would have a healthier relationship with food.

Q: My husband is really struggling with food waste. My daughter eats a very limited range of foods, which is totally fine, but the list of acceptable foods changes weekly—and sometimes daily—usually right after I’ve bought it in bulk at Costco. So, a packed lunch that delighted her Monday is completely rejected on Friday. I’ve gotten into the habit of packing pretty much all her favorites every day, and just hoping that something gets eaten. My husband can’t bring himself to pack foods that he knows will just get thrown away or composted at the end of the day. It’s not a cost thing for him, it’s just a real, ingrained reaction to waste. My daughter often overhears his negative reaction when her food returns uneaten. Ideas?

The food waste thing comes up a lot with DOR because we are taught that we need to keep offering, offering, offering this wide variety of foods. And that means, at every meal, you’re putting food on the table that your kid is probably not going to eat. What I would say is if you’re sending lunch to school, take the pressure off that. School lunch is not the time you need to expose a kid to new foods. School lunch is a stressful eating experience for many kids. Them feeling comforted—again, I’m coming back to this idea of comfort—by familiar offerings in their lunchbox is more important than them eating a vegetable at lunch. If the meal is comforting and familiar, it increases the odds that they will actually eat lunch when they’re feeling anxious or worried. That’s really all you want them to get out of lunch: Food that they can eat and enjoy.

If it is coming back rejected, even when you’ve put in something that’s a favorite on Monday and by Friday it’s not, I would involve your daughter more in the planning of what goes in her lunch every day. I didn’t get an age, but even with a preschooler you could be doing this. Involve her in a no pressure way and make sure she has space to say if she no longer likes this food, even if you’ve already bought it and are hoping that was the thing you could pack. Really involve her in that process. If she’s older, you can even start involving her in packing the lunch.

In a follow up comment this mom did say, “We try to ask her what she wants in a given day, but if she doesn’t eat it, my husband will bang dishes and angrily scrape stuff into the compost all while asking her repeatedly why she didn’t she eat the lunch she specifically asked for.”

It sounds like he’s feeling secretly (or not so much!) that she’s doing it on purpose. So right there, we see the pressure coming in, and that’s going to cause her to clamp down more on not eating the food he wants her to eat. The stakes are too high. It is not traditional Division of Responsibility to let the kid take more ownership over her lunch, but I think if you could let her be more fully in charge of the what, then you would find she eats more reliably.

So that would be my tip there, even though I understand it sounds like you’re already doing it. Because I think maybe you’re doing it, but then there’s this pressure coming from her dad that she’s not eating it and she’s being wasteful. That might be taking up some space there. Having your husband say less of those things out loud—maybe he saves that rant and shares that with you after your daughter is in bed at night? Saying less to her and putting her more in charge of the lunch-making process to whatever extent is age appropriate might help there.

This is a great example of, if you’re trying to be a stickler for following DOR, I’ve just broken a whole bunch of rules. I’m not interpreting the “what” to mean “expose them to lots of new foods every chance you get.” You’re giving them more responsibility and more say over the what, but I think that might be necessary right now because this kid’s not eating their lunch and that’s stressful for everybody.

Q: Wow, this hit home! As a fat mother of a picky toddler who was a pediatric feeding disorder baby (so pickiness is quite an improvement) I’m super familiar with DOR and all these Instagram accounts and I’ve been having such feelings. Every time I feed my daughter food that is classified as “unhealthy,” I struggle so much because there is such a big part of me that feels like it’s my responsibility to help her avoid becoming like me, i.e. fat. This is despite the fact that I’m very much into fat acceptance—my whole job is about it. I haven’t dieted in many years, but there’s still the sense that she’s a tabula rasa and if I could just guide her to a healthy diet that she could avoid the stigma and difficulties that come with being in this world in a fat body. Plus, what will people think if they see this fat mother feeding her kids sweet potato fries and ketchup for dinner?

I already haven’t been sticking to DOR because there’s a limit to how many times I can cook something “healthy” for her and put it straight in the trash. So, in reality, I allow her to eat her guacamole and cheese wrap every day for lunch. And after a child who would eat nothing, I actually appreciate it if she’ll eat pancakes and tons of syrup for breakfast because at least she isn’t about to go on a feeding tube anymore. Anyhow, I just wanted to let you know this reporting was spot on and you’re doing a fantastic job. Thank you.

Thank you for that lovely note. I really feel you as a parent of pediatric feeding disorder survivor, that upgrading to pickiness is a major victory. I celebrate that with you. Interestingly, guacamole and cheese wraps were a long preferred food of my daughter, as well. They’re out of favor at the moment, but they were actually a super great lunch. I look forward to them coming back eventually.

I just want to hold space for everything you’re saying here. Feeling like we want to protect our kids from experiencing the stigma we experience, especially for folks in fat bodies, makes sense. It’s completely logical. Also, it is just a reality that if you are a fat mom, you are getting judgment from some faction of the world about that. We just know that fat moms experience a ton of stigma. It’s wrong, and you shouldn’t have to experience it, but it’s the reality. So of course it’s impacting how you feel about feeding your kids! I’m holding space for all the feelings, because that is real, and a struggle that a lot of us can relate to.

But of course, it is not your responsibility to help her avoid becoming like you. Serving her sweet potato fries and ketchup for dinner sounds like a great meal and nobody should be judging you for doing that.

I think what this also speaks to is what Christin Dow said in my piece on Division of Responsibility: Although there are strengths to this method, it is not trauma-informed. DOR doesn’t take into account the stories that parents bring to the table or the emotional toll that trying to follow this protocol might take if you’re struggling with other forms of stigma or other stress. It makes sense that DOR isn’t totally working for you. It is just a framework, and it is not designed to address all these things. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe it doesn’t need to be all of those things. I do think it promises that it will solve almost every single type of feeding issue and every single challenge, and that’s not realistic.

And again, the feelings about waste. DOR does require that you just serve things that your kid isn’t going to eat a lot of the time. One workaround I have for that is serving things family style. Don’t plate your kid a plate full of foods that they are unlikely to eat. Because then they poke around at them and spit on them and sneeze on them, and then you’re not gonna want to save those leftovers. If you instead are serving something family-style, they can decide whether to take it or not and the leftovers are going to be a lot more useful to you.

Also make sure that the foods you’re serving are foods you want to eat, that they’re things you’ll eat as leftovers. There’s such a sadness to parents who sort of end up eating the scraps that their kids leave, and I’m not suggesting you do that. If you’ve made a stew or curry or something you really enjoy and the kids don’t touch it, maybe now you’ve got your work from home lunch sorted for the next three days. That’s sort of a win.

Reframe exposure to mean they’re watching you eat something. And if they ask for a bite, give it to them, rather than putting a lot of food on their plate or encouraging them to take stuff that they don’t want. They can just be around you eating something. They can be eating something different. It’s okay. They can be eating just the rice or just the bread, and you’re eating the rest of the meal. Maybe you’ve pulled out some strawberries or some cheese sticks or something else. That’s not short order cooking. It’s not creating a lot of extra stress for you, but it’s just other things you can throw on the table so you know they’re going to get enough to eat.

Q: This. Newsletter. I am jumping for joy, shedding tears of frustration, and feeling so validated. Thank you, again, for what you bring into the world. I’ve been at this for 20+ years and often wonder why no one is talking about XYZ, and then you talk about it! I have a few questions and I am hoping you might have a moment to consider them. I am a Mom, RD, and Parenting Educator who works with families and individuals, mostly in the Seattle area. As you’ve mentioned in podcast interviews and in writing, Satter’s DOR is great in so many ways (theory, validated tool), but HARD to implement in the real world. I, too, want to be clear that Satter’s contributions to this work are indispensable, and yet I have questions.

Have you written about or are you interested in conversation about why BIPOC practitioners aren’t talking about DOR (or why am I not finding them)? What does the fact that the Instagram sites you so eloquently write about are all run by thin, privileged white women say about DOR? I’ve got my own theories here. For example, the Ellyn Satter Institute itself has zero representation or willingness to explore implicit bias and racism as it relates to their work, generalized poor representation in Dietetics, etc. Please correct me if I’m wrong (I so want to be wrong). This landscape feels barren when trying to find people who are willing to talk about openly about the limitations of DOR. I’m just not sure we ought to be using it as the go-to in parenting our children toward body love and food satisfaction. Based on the experiences of families I serve, the model does not feel holistically inclusive. There’s an itch I can’t quite scratch here. I assert that it is time to progress. We can simultaneously offer appreciation for those who came before me without necessarily wanting following in their footsteps.

This is a really key thing that you’re articulating. Yes, dietetics, as a profession, is predominantly white. This is a huge problem. Diversify Dietetics is a group doing a lot of work to try to improve this and support Black dietitians and other dietitians of color. Folks like Whitney Trotter and Jessica Jones are much better qualified to speak to the nuances of this conversation. I need to have one of them on the podcast here to talk this through with us in a broader way—so stay tuned for more on that.

The fact that the Instagram accounts are all run by privileged white women is not at all an accident. Kid food Instagram is very, very white. It is performing an ideal of white motherhood that is problematic and very much considered the norm in parenting. And yet, it is not representative of so many parents and so many families. My guess is the reason DOR is not a bigger part of the conversation with BIPOC practitioners is because it, too, is articulating a sort of white parenthood that doesn’t work for other families and other cultures.

I was just chatting with Naureen Hunani of RDs for Neurodiversity for book research. And Naureen, who is South Asian, explained that DOR is not culturally sensitive to her family. It doesn’t acknowledge the fact that they eat with their hands or that it would not be culturally appropriate to use a line like “the kitchen is closed” to a child. That is not language that would resonate with that family. That is, frankly, a very white way of talking to your kids about food and having rules around food. That wouldn’t work for a lot of other cultures.

I’m a white lady here. I can’t speak with a ton of the nuance about this, but I’m really glad you raised this question and I’m going to look into having more conversations about this on the podcast soon, with folks who who can speak to more of what’s happening here.

But one takeaway, as a white mom thinking about this, is a note to self to diversify my own feed. I need to look for food accounts that are not run by thin, white women. And: I need to think harder about which elements of DOR resonate because they make sense for my family and which elements resonate because they reinforce internalized white supremacist ideals about motherhood.

For all of us who’ve gotten swept up in the rigidity of Division of Responsibility and needed to back off a bit, this is probably an underlying factor. This is something we need to reckon with. It’s disappointing that the Ellyn Satter Institute hasn’t done a better job of reckoning with their fatphobia and with the race piece of their work. I definitely will be writing about this more and will have more to say on this soon.

As always, if you have a question you want me to tackle on one of these episodes, you can just hit reply on this post or email me at virginiasolesmith@gmail.com and I’ll put your question on the list to answer in an upcoming episode.

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Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. You can find more of my work at virginiasolesmith.com or come say hi on Instagram or Twitter. Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon!

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