My parents were big "eat everything on your plate" types.  My father, in particular, had--and, truth be told, still has--an allergic reaction to wasting even the tiniest morsel of anything passably-edible. 

When my sister and I were kids and didn't finish what was given to us at dinner, sometimes he'd refrigerate the offending item and give it to us again at our next meal in lieu of what everyone else was eating (italics mine).  So if I hadn't finished last night's Swiss chard with vinegar, he'd give it back to me--cold--the next morning while Virginia was happily eating her Frosted Flakes. 

One time my sister practically went on a hunger strike because she didn't want to eat an omelet my mom had made her.  The offending item showed up at three subsequent family meals, getting more and more sorry-looking, until (I'm told) I reached over and ate the bloody thing myself, thus ending the conflict. 

In the words of Tommy Hearns, I like eggs.

I thought of my family's childhood-food battles when I read this piece about mistakes parents make in feeding their kids, and apparently we're doing everything wrong.  I expected another "cut out trans fats" article but actually found some novel information--not so much about changing the of content of what they're eating as changing--my new favorite word--the context in which the food is offered.  Example:  despite what your instincts--and the 'diet disciplinarian' in all of us--may tell you, don't keep the desserty, sugary foods out of reach:

...a large body of research shows that if a parent restricts a food, children just want it more.  In [a]...Penn State study, researchers experimented to determine whether forbidden foods were more desirable. Children were seated at tables and given unlimited access to plates of apple or peach cookie bars — two foods the youngsters had rated as “just O.K.” in earlier taste tests. With another group, some bars were served on plates, while some were placed in a clear cookie jar in the middle of the table. The children were told that after 10 minutes, they could snack on cookies from the jar. 

The researchers found that restricting the cookies had a profound effect: consumption more than tripled compared with when the cookies were served on plates. 

Other studies show that children whose food is highly restricted at home are far more likely to binge when they have access to forbidden foods.

This seems right to me--we crave what we can't have, in the words of Tacitus, "the mysterious is magnificent," and on and on.  Yet almost every parent I know, myself included, does the "keep it out of reach" trick with their kids' treats. 

And there are plenty of other shockers in there:  don't reward a kid for taking a bite of broccoli, don't insist that they try everything (it just makes them hate it more).

The broad point seems to be that it's a mistake to imply to your kids that some foods are 'tantalizing and mysterious, but forbidden' and others as 'no fun to eat, but morally correct.'  Well intentioned though this system may be, the result is an ongoing mealtime angel-on-devil struggle, with our will power and inner pleasure-seeker locked together in a death-grip.  It's the "abstinence-only" approach to food-education.

It's probably too late for those of us over the age of two:  we've been brought up on this good foods/evil foods nonsense, it's been drilled into us by virtually every diet book and program out there, and we've swallowed it hook, line, and Twinkie.

As Alan Aragon has said, moderation isn't sexy, and it doesn't sell diet books, but it's probably the best, sanest, and most effective watchword for dieters.  Now maybe it's time we started trusting our kids with this more nuanced, and infinitely more realistic, approach.