Why the Term ‘Healthy Food’ Isn’t Helping Our Children

When you think of ‘healthy food’ what comes to mind? Fruits? Veggies? The food pyramid or healthy eating plate?

When asking Google, the generated response was “healthy food provides the essential nutrients your body needs for optimal health, including energy, growth, and overall wellbeing.” It goes on to define healthy food as nutrient-dense, low in added sugars, saturated and trans fats, sodium, and ideally whole or unprocessed.

Children are often taught, through schools, families and health promotion initiatives, about healthy food to encourage ‘better’ choices. But if it were that simple, a recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report wouldn’t show that 96% of children and adolescents – and 94% of adults – fall short of the recommended veggie intake (1).

What is diet culture?

Diet culture is an ever-changing set of social beliefs and expectations about food and bodies, that essentially at its core values thinness, leanness and musuclarity above all. It links being thin and muscular with being healthy – and wrongly assumes the health status of, and attaches stigma to, large bodies.

It pushes the idea that there’s a ‘right’ way to have a body and a ‘right’ way to eat to get there.

Diet culture ignores the complexity of health – including genetics, social factors, mental health, and chronic disease. We respect that there are important and valid public health concerns in our society, but we also face a mental health crisis, with rising rates of eating disorders and disordered eating. Globally, 1 in 5 children and adolescents are engaging in disordered eating (2). Butterfly’s recent Paying the Price report revealed an alarming 86% rise in eating disorders among 10- to-19-year-olds since 2012.

How do we promote healthy eating while supporting body image in children?

1. Drop the labels. Avoid calling food healthy/unhealthy, clean/toxic, good/bad, or junk. Instead, call food simply by its name. Broccoli is just broccoli or a vegetable, it doesn’t need to be defined as a ‘healthy food’. Chocolate is just chocolate, it doesn’t need to be referred to as a treat or unhealthy food.

2. Encourage curiosity. Explore the sensory properties of food. What does it taste like (is it salty, sour, sweet)? What colour is it? Does the colour change if we cook it? What’s the texture like (crunchy, soft, mushy)? Curiosity supports exploration – and children are more likely to try different or new foods when it’s not a pressure-filled experience.

3. Broaden the definition. No food is ‘unhealthy’ in isolation (unless a person is allergic to it). Let’s talk about nutrition and fuelling our body (which is incredibly important for physical and mental health), BUT also for enjoyment, culture, and social connection. Eating for pleasure is just as valid as eating for nutrients, and encouraging this is likely to foster a far more positive relationship with food and help to reduce the risk of disordered eating.

4. Take the pressure off. Nutrition is of course important for growth and development, but remember that nutritional intake isn’t dependent on each individual meal but spans two

weeks (or beyond). So, take the pressure off children eating a perfectly balanced meal or having a perfectly balanced lunchbox every day, because if provided with enough variety over a longer period, their bodies will absorb the nutrients it needs to grow and thrive. And variety doesn’t mean every vegetable, just a range across food groups.

5. Support regular and mindful eating. Encourage all neuro-typical children to eat at regular intervals and when eating, to tune into their body’s cues of hunger and fullness. More on this at Ellyn Satter Institute or the RAVES Eating Model.

6. Be neuro-affirming. Some neurodivergent children experience food, hunger cues, and openness to trying new foods differently. It’s important to validate their experience and find out what works for them – try to be flexible.

7. Avoid linking food intake to body size. When children view a healthy body as one that is thin, and achieved by eating (or not eating) certain foods, that can cause unintentional harm to their physical and mental health, and lead to disordered eating.

8. Add, don’t take away. Want kids to eat more nutrient-dense food? Add it in. Don’t restrict the other stuff. Adding increases nutrition and promotes a healthier relationship with food without causing cravings and negative feelings that can come with restriction.

References: 1. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/food-nutrition/diet

2. Lopez et al. (2023) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2801664

(Source: Dr Stephanie Damiano, Manager of Butterfly Body Bright, Butterfly Foundation)