5 Tips for Talking with Your Kids About Food

Food is complicated, to say the least.

We need it at least three times a day. This can be an opportunity for delicious delight! But it can also be a form of stress—especially if you’re dealing with allergies, picky eaters, or just toddlers being toddlers.

We learn a lot about food from our parents. We especially learn a lot through the subliminal messages about food that are communicated in our eating habits.

Here are 5 simple tips for talking with your kids about food so that they can properly understand its role in our lives.

1. Talk about food as a gift!

God gave us the incredible gift of delicious things to eat, and tongues with taste buds that can enjoy them. How amazing is it that our daily need for nourishment can be met in such a yummy way? Let your kids know that food is a gift we were given from God.

2. Talk about food as a need

Food is not just a yummy gift, but it is necessary for us to survive. God made us to be reliant on something outside of ourselves, and this is good. It means that we can thank God for providing for us, and we can also thank God for the ants, bees, earthworms, farmers, and grocery store clerks who help us eat too.

3. Talk about food as a way to tell stories

Food is not just a collection of nutrients that we eat to meet our daily quota. It’s a way that we pass down stories from generation to generation about the places we call home. When you serve a meal that has some kind of meaning in your family, tell your children about it. “This is a yummy dish my mommy used to make for me. Every time I eat it, it reminds me of her and how much she loves me.” Or “The ingredients in this dish come from the country our ancestors called home. We don’t live there, but it’s still a part of us, so when we eat this dish, we get to taste a bit of home in the place we live now.”

4. Use food to celebrate our bodies

Our bodies, like food, are gifts from God. We live in a broken creation, which means these bodies ache and do not always behave like we want them to. But they are still a beautiful gift and worthy of celebration. Kids learn to critique their bodies when they hear their parents do the same—but they can also learn to praise God for their bodies! Make a practice of thanking God that each meal gives us the strength to run and play with friends or to swim at the pool, it gives us the brain power to read books and have fun at school.

5. Do not talk about food in terms of good or bad

There is no such thing as morally good food or morally bad food. We live in a broken creation, which means that brokenness will always be intertwined with everything we eat. That means there will always be something to celebrate and something to lament, no matter how we eat. You might have particular convictions about what you purchase and serve in your home. This is good! We ought to be discerning about how we best navigate this broken world. But be careful not to teach your children that certain foods are bad—this ultimately communicates to them that those who eat it are bad too. This can be personally conflicting when you allow them to have a treat, and it can be concerning when they witness those they love eating something deemed “bad”. Instead, be honest with your kids about why you don’t eat certain foods:

For example: “These sugary snacks give us lots and lots of quick energy, so much that we don’t know how to handle our bodies! But then that energy dies really quickly and our tummies start to ache. We can sometimes enjoy sugary snacks because God made them so delicious, but we want to really enjoy them so we don’t eat them very often.”