Saturday, May 11, 2013

Indoctrinating kids


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?

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