715:
Food is a dilemma. There’s too much
promotion of unhealthy but attractive food and too little authoritative
promotion of plant-based foods, which anyway, are not nearly as attractive to
kids. And it’s kids who make the loudest demands. Unlike adults, children have
fewer pleasures and freedoms to distract them, so food often figures large for
them. They’ll make strenuous demands to have what they want, aided and abetted
by the advertisers who heavily direct their messages towards young people.
That
old familiar boast by the Church - “Give us children for the first seven years
and we have them for life” - applies just as well to diet. Raise children on
meat and they’ll always see it as an essential component of every meal. But if
that is true, it simply emphasises how impressionable kids are. Therefore it
lays the onus on the parent to mould the habits of their children. What sort of
mentality do parents want for their children? What priorities should they
emphasise? How much control of their children’s upbringing do they give up, for
fear of losing favour with their children?
No comments:
Post a Comment