You and your partner need to get your heads together on this. If you’re enthusiastic about a food, it's likely that the children will pick up on that. Even if you don't like it, put on a good face. Your enthusiasm and enjoyment will be communicated to them and they’ll adopt it early. It's often said that children may not try very hard to be just like their parents, but they almost always turn out accepting their values. If you value good, nourishing food in an enthusiastic way, your children will catch it.

Don't wait until they’re in Middle School and you’re appalled at their food choices before you begin to establish your values about food. If they understand that you have strong convictions about what a person should eat, they’ll come along, but you need to start early. For example, if your child says, “My friend's mother gives us cookies and ice cream after school,” you’ll need to respond with, “She does what she thinks is right and good for you and your friend, but we don't do that in this family. We believe that good raw food will make you stronger, healthier, and smarter.” Make it a family stand that you take, and the family's world-view, and if you start early they’ll pick it up. I'm not saying there won't be any conflicts about it at some points, but hey! nobody ever said that bringing up kids was going to be a rose garden.

The apple-sticks trick of the fast-food chain is a good clue. In the first place, you can do this at home. Be creative. Find other kinds of things you can do that suggest the more popular foods that kids eat and want. You know that very often it's not the food–it's that everybody else is doing it, and kids don't like to seem different. So help them. If you’re sending their lunch, then try to make it look like other kids’ lunch. You can make raw food crackers and spread them with peanut butter. Make raw-food cookies so the kids will seem to have a dessert that is similar to what the other kids are eating. Tucking a loving note in the lunch box also takes away a lot of the hurt if the other kids do make fun. It's important that your children understand why you've chosen your way of life. You don't need to be defensive. Just establish your position and hold it. They will grow up respecting it and you.

Raw foods are not inferior in taste or attractiveness, so you shouldn't need to defend serving it. Especially if you go to some extra trouble to make it attractive and to keep it varied and interesting, who's to say the children won't like it? They will like smoothies if you’re careful about taste. These are good after-school treats and if other children come home with them, those children will probably like them, too. Add apple sticks or a banana you have spread with peanut butter, and they will be the most popular kids on the block!

A controversial book, Deceptively Delicious, a cook book written by Jessica Seinfeld (Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld) proposes that camouflaging foods children might not like by including them in dishes they do like is a way to insure that they get all the nutrients they need. Mrs. Seinfeld has been called all kinds of names and her ethics have been challenged. She has been accused of giving children the wrong message–that vegetables are not good. Lying to children in this way will lead to distrust in the long run, say her critics. I'm not involved in that controversy nor do I wish to be, but it does seem better to me to introduce children to vegetables early as food that is desirable. This should forestall the need for them to be deceived into eating them. That doesn't say that dressing up a carrot or a radish stick to entice your child to eat it is wrong. Offering small bites of the things they may not like along with plenty of the wholesome things they do like will, hopefully lead to a lifetime of healthy eating. Pretending that apple sticks are French fries is not actually deception. How are your children going to feel about food as adults? You have the opportunity to shape that right now.

By TTS Health Consultant Gabrielle Gingras