Kid Food: The Challenge of Feeding Children in a Highly Processed World - Hardcover

by Bettina Elias Siegel (Author)

Most parents start out wanting to raise healthy eaters. Then the world intervenes.

In Kid Food, nationally recognized writer and food advocate Bettina Elias Siegel explores one of the fundamental challenges of modern parenting: trying to raise healthy eaters in a society intent on pushing children in the opposite direction. Siegel dives deep into the many influences that make feeding children healthfully so difficult-from the prevailing belief that kids will only eat highly processed "kid food" to the near-constant barrage of "special treats."

Written in the same engaging, relatable voice that has made Siegel's web site The Lunch Tray a trusted resource for almost a decade, Kid Food combines original reporting with the hard-won experiences of a mom to give parents a deeper understanding of the most common obstacles to feeding children well:

- How the notion of "picky eating" undermines kids' diets from an early age-and how parents' anxieties about pickiness are stoked and exploited by industry marketing

- Why school meals can still look like fast food, even after well-publicized federal reforms

- Fact-twisting nutrition claims on grocery products, including how statements like "made with real fruit" can actually mean a product is less healthy

- The aggressive marketing of junk food to even the youngest children, often through sophisticated digital techniques meant to bypass parents' oversight

- Children's menus that teach kids all the wrong lessons about what "their" food looks like

- The troubling ways adults exploit kids' love of junk food-including to cover shortfalls in school budgets, control classroom behavior, and secure children's love

With expert advice, time-tested advocacy tips, and a trove of useful resources, Kid Food gives parents both the knowledge and the tools to navigate their children's unhealthy food landscape-and change it for the better.

Author Biography

BETTINA ELIAS SIEGEL is a nationally recognized writer and advocate on issues relating to children and food policy. Her reporting and opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Houston Chronicle, and Civil Eats, as well as her own widely read blog, The Lunch Tray. She frequently appears or is quoted in national media, including Today, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News, NPR, The Doctors, the Washington Post, The New Yorker, and Parents. In 2015, Family Circle named Siegel one of the country's "20 Most Influential Moms," and she is one of the most successful petitioners in Change.org's history. A graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, Siegel lives in Houston with her husband and two children.