Spike TV’s Surviving Disaster Ended My Worries About Picky Eaters

I was a relatively relaxed first-time mom, but that doesn’t mean that I had no worries. And maybe it’s my genetic heritage talking my mom is Ukrainian but months before it was time to start introducing solids to Ben, I started thinking about the importance of feeding a real live baby human being. What would it be like? How much would he need? And gulp the whole balanced diet thing. Would my kid be the one who refused to eat anything but cheese sandwiches?

My parents always had a relaxed attitude about food, and I wanted to be the same. They had a ”one bite” rule where you had to try things, but you never had to clean your plate, or finish every bite of your vegetables before you were allowed to have dessert. Food never became a fight in our house, and I didn’t want to be fighting over eating with my kids without an extremely good reason. But how would I know when we had reached ”a good reason”? When would it be enough, and when would it be not enough, to keep them healthy?

So I did what I always do: I started researching. A lot. This is how I deal with stress, which is why I had a fairly enormous library of parenting books before we were even ready to conceive. So, the books came off the shelf, the Google searches began, and I started reading about kids and diet.

I found some tips that appealed to my laziness quotient, especially making home-made baby food out of whatever we were eating for dinner. Squish peas with a fork? I can do that! I did make some fruit purees to freeze ahead of time stuff like peaches and plums that I needed to cut up and steam for a few minutes. But for the most part, I knew that my husband and I ate well, so if Ben ate what we ate, he’d be getting a good mix. IF he ate what we ate.

I found some great recommendations about quantities, because man, it’s easy to forget that our notion of ”serving sizes” are out of whack for adults, let alone infants and toddlers. My doctor directed me to a brochure that pointed out that the adult guidelines could easily be scaled for children. So, an adult sized meat portion is the size of a palm; a child sized meat portion is the size of the child’s palm. And I looked at my son’s hand and thought, ”Wait, that’s IT?! That tiny little palm is one meat serving? His thumb equals a cheese serving? That fist is a serving of fruit?” It was such a tiny, tiny amount.

The same brochure pointed out that little kids balance their diet over longer than a day so, today he might eat ten fruit and veggie servings, tomorrow fifteen grain servings, the day after five servings of protein. Okay, I can handle that.

At this point, Ben was starting to eat solids but secretly, I was still fretting. I mean, we were still introducing foods, but what if he just wouldn’t eat something? Like what if my kid hates cheese and yoghurt? Aside from wondering if I should be getting a DNA test to confirm he’s mine, what do I do?

And of all places, the reassurance that everything would be fine came from a Spike TV show called Surviving Disaster.

If you don’t know this show, I highly recommend it for putting your problems in perspective. Former Navy SEAL Cade Courtley gives you advice for dealing with a wide variety of disasters. Really, nothing will take your mind off of your day-to-day difficulties keeping the house clean, the fridge stocked, and the kids thriving than watching actors survive an earthquake or a nuclear bomb detonation. It rapidly became my favourite show to watch at the stupid hours of the night that my son wanted to nurse.

The last episode to air was Pandemic which featured both a nerve gas attack and a dangerous flu pandemic. Sounds like fun, right? How to survive when you’re going to isolate yourself for three straight months to avoid the spread of a fatal disease what a great place to pick up parenting advice! But weirdly, it helped. And here’s why.

Step one in preparing for the pandemic quarantine, according to Courtley, is to get your supplies. Off to the grocery store you go, ready to do battle with other shoppers for food to last you for months. And what does Courtley recommend? ”Rice, oil, tuna. The average guy needs 1,800 calories a day. You stock up on one hundred 8-ounce cans of tuna fish for protein, three gallons of canola oil for fat, and a twenty-pound bag of rice for carbs. You’ll be set for three months. It’s boring, but it works.”

I stared at the TV screen. Rice, tuna, and oil? That’s it? Granted, Courtley acknowledges that you wouldn’t want this to be a lifelong diet, but this makes up the basics of what your body needs.

I started thinking about the pickiest kids I knew. What did they eat? Carbs, fats, and proteins. Sometimes the carbs came from bread, or rice, or noodles. Sometimes the fats came from butter or cheese. Sometimes the protein came from peanut butter or chicken (PLAIN chicken) or eggs. But in the end, especially considering what constitutes a serving size for a small child, I couldn’t think of a single picky kid I knew who wasn’t getting the basics.

This was an amazingly freeing realization for me. Ben didn’t eat any fruit for a day, or a week, maybe a month? He’d come out of it okay. If he insisted on nothing but noodles for dinner, no biggie. We had time. We didn’t need to force the issue or push vitamins down his throat or argue over whether he’d had enough bites of something. We could work towards a balanced diet without worrying if all he wanted, three meals a day, was macaroni and cheese.

The irony of my secret worry is that Ben has turned out to be one of the most omnivorous kids I know this is a kid who asks for asparagus and broccoli for dinner and says things like, ”I don’t feel like ice cream”¦is there any watermelon?” His few occasions rejecting a food group have been short and easy to overcome. (His sister, on the other hand, is a more traditional preschooler, who regularly goes on food jags and whose fruit and veggie consumption principally happens in smoothie form. Proof to me that some of it has to be personality, even if some parents claim that if you just parented like they did, your kid wouldn’t be so picky.)

We’ll still work on a healthy diet with both of our kids, of course. Balanced meals turns up on their plates, and we offer and reoffer (and reoffer again) foods that either of them have rejected before. And we talk about the different ways that different foods help your body grow and get strong.

But if one or both of them refuses a type of food for a while, I’m not getting worried any more. I know it’ll be okay, thanks to Surviving Disaster parenting.

(Image: SpikeTV)