I was walking with my husband last night to get a coffee. A few feet ahead of us was a lady pushing a stroller. Nothing unusual. Shortly we reach a street corner. She turns to cross to the right. That’s when I see her kid in the stroller, who couldn’t have been more than two years old. As they stop at the corner she takes a Caramilk bar out of her purse, unwraps it, and gives the kid the ENTIRE bar. He proceeds to messily devour it, and they cross the street. When she gets to the other side, to add insult to injury, she flings the empty wrapper into someone’s garden.
What the HELL is wrong with this lady? You don’t give a toddler an entire chocolate bar! You give him a little square! They say the amount of fat in a chocolate bar is unhealthy for adults; does this idiot realize that she’ll probably end up making her baby sick or rotting his teeth out? Not to mention she’s a poor role model for teaching her kid not to litter?
I swear, some people should have to take an exam to be a parent. I bet she would have failed.
That’s awful. Last night I saw a mother give her toddler, about 2-3 years old, a slice of WHITE PIZZA the size of my head. This was a white pizza, mind you–where they use butter or olive oil in lieu of cheese, ramping up the fat and calorie content massively and taking away the one ingredient in a pizza that’s “good” for you. I’ve got a big appetite, I mourn the death of Supersize French Fries, and I would’ve split this slice with someone.
This isn’t a new thing, though. When my mother gave birth of me, she said that she saw a lady feed her NEWBORN baby in that hospital jello & soda.
Proper nutrition for children is something that is very near and dear to my heart. I don’t understand how parents can feed toaster pastries, canned pasta (a la chef boyardee) and most boxed cereals to their children.
I can’t come down on this mom for giving her two year old a candy bar, though. I don’t know how often she does this or if it was just a one time deal. I wouldn’t be caught dead doing it, though.
We feed our kids Chef Boyardee (or the generic equivalent) about once a week.
They’re two year old twins, and they dearly love the stuff. They’re also very good about eating their vegetables, so the nutrition angle is pretty well covered.
As for pizza, our kids will gladly eat that too. They get it every two weeks or so, as a special treat.
Small kids require much more fat in their diets than adults do, and a good active lifestyle is also essential. Our kids are at a playground or on our swingset in the backyard every day. If there’s a rainy stretch lasting more than a day, my wife will bring them to an indoor recreation center, so they can run around.
Neither of them have a weight problem, and they’re very muscular and have great motor skills.
Guess we’re doing something right. If we’re screwing up, I’d like some recommendations. But I don’t see haow Chef Boyardee, pizza, or a candy bar is a problem if it fits into an overall healthy eating and activity pattern.
Of course, such things are parts of unhealthy patterns too. But I think the focus should be on the big picture. Criticizing people for one meal or one treat seems to miss the mark.
I agree with Mr. Moto. You simply don’t have enough information to judge this woman’s parenting skills. If the child is living off of chocolate then that’s obviously a problem, but we don’t know if that’s the case. There is nothing that’s inherently bad about candy bars.
One of my dad’s favorite stories about me is the time he gave me a Charlestown Chew – I must have been less than one years old, because it was shortly before my brother was born. I devoured it pretty messily, too, so the story goes. It was summertime in San Diego and I was just wearing a diaper and an undershirt. By the tiem I finished with it, I looked like a chocolate baby. They had to take me directly from the car and put me right in the bathtub.
Unless the woman fedds her baby nothing but candy at all times (which I doubt), I don’t see the problem. It was a candy bar, not arsenic.
She definately shouldn’t have pitched the wrapper into somone else’s yard, though.
Yeah, I have to agree with the “don’t judge until you’ve seen the diet for a whole month,” especially with a 2 year old.
Even when you’re dealing with nutritious foods, 2 year olds are weird. Mine ate nothing but carrots for a week. Nothing but whole grain toast with butter the next week. Week after that, nothing but turkey. It took me a few weeks of panic and food journalling before the doctor pointed out that over a month, he was eating a very healthy, nutritionally complete diet. He was gaining weight slowly -as two year olds do, because the rapid growth of infants stops nearly dead at 24 months, he was never sick, he was happy and learning well, so I stopped worrying about it. But anyone peeking in my windows to see the kid with nothing but toast for 7 days would have been appalled.
Now, I certainly wouldn’t have let him eat nothing but chocolate for a week. But I would let him have chocolate if he ate all his good food, was a good boy at the hairdressers or was otherwise a spectacular 2 year old. Never underestimate the power of bribery. The kid won’t be struck dead of coronary disease from a treat. I prefer to teach my son that moderation in all things is best. This includes, sometimes, moderation. Some days, you just eat the whole candy bar.
Oh, but tossing the wrapper? Bad mommy. You might have crossed the street and picked it up and handed it to her, smiling sweetly, “Oh, you dropped this! I know you wouldn’t want to litter - so it’s a good thing there’s a garbage can on the next corner!” She’d probably glare at you evilly, but at least you’d have some ground to stand on.
I remember an old infomercial for some crap food processor type thing- The format was modelled after a cooking show, obviously.
The woman demonstrated how you could use the “Kitchen Genie” or whatever to make baby food. She purees a bunch of stuff and blends it together, and then says “Now, store-bought baby food is full of sugar. Ours doesn’t have to be: We’re using Sweet & Low!”
Jesus Christ! Three little pink envelopes of Sodium Cyclamate in a tiny portion, maybe a little bit bigger than a jar of Gerber’s. Sure, you might totally destroy your infant’s reproductive health or give him cancer, but what the hell, at least it’s not refined sugar. Sugar’s evil. Never mind that warning label on the package that says cyclamates should only be taken on the advice of a physician-- give an infant three times the amount an adult would use. It must be safe for babies, look how pink the package is!
Anytime I take a stroll through the frozen food section, and the Poptart section of the store, I want to throw up. Chocolate french fries? Watermelon Poptarts?
Well, she was on the right track. She missed on the Sweet 'n Low and the fact that you needed the Kitchen Geenie to do this.
We made tons of baby food for the twins, and all it took was a little effort and a Waring blender. Just mash up cooked vegetables with boiled water, then freeze the puree in ice cube trays. When frozen, transfer to a plastic bag.
Meal prep was simple - just thaw the cubes.
I even made baby cereal by throwing oatmeal into the blender and running it until it was powder. The resulting oatmeal needed to be stove-cooked, but it was tons cheaper than “dust in a box”.
I would be more upset about that than giving the kid a whole chocolate bar, though I would probably give the kid the bar in small pieces rather than the whole thing.
Now *that * annoys me. Why on earth would you need to add sweetener to baby food? I made all WhyKid’s baby food, but there was never a need to add sugar or Sweet and Low (although if you forced me to, of course sugar would be my choice.) He thought frozen pineapple rings were “candy” for years. Whole grain Graham crackers are “cookies” in our house.
And you certainly don’t need a special food processor for it, my goodness! A plain old blender worked just fine. Add a little water for blendability, then smoosh the goo into ice cube trays and freeze. Pop out the food cubes, and two cubes makes a perfect meal! It’s even self-refrigerating for short trips. By the time it melts, it’s lunch time.
They say the amount of fat in a chocolate bar is unhealthy for adults; does this idiot realize that she’ll probably end up making her baby sick or rotting his teeth out?
Kids up to the age of 3 need lots of fat, it’s good for their brain development.
I used to give my daughter … WHOLE MILK! cues scary music
I’ll go ya one better, not only do we *still * drink whole milk, but when WhyKid was a baby, I made him eat homemade plain yogurt from whole milk. (This was before you could find it in stores. And I was surprised to discover that yogurt is really easy to make!)
Yeah, I’m THAT mom. :rolleyes:
But my own mom was worse! She used to bake bread with only whole wheat flour she ground in her own homemade mill! And only with wheatberries grown in naturally flouridated water!!
Well, milk is good for you, though…it has protein and calcium, and little sugar…
The point I’m trying to make here is that there’s a problem not with the fact that she gave the baby chocolate…it’s the fact that she gave him an entire adult-sized bar. Yes, children do need more fat in their diets than we do…but that should be unsaturated fats, the heart-healthy kind that are found in lean meats, olive oil, canola oil, etc. There is no way that a 6 inch long, 3 inch wide chocolate bar filled with caramel can possibly be nutritious to a child, espacially one of that age. A couple small squares of it wouldn’t be a problem, but a portion of this size all at once is simply not healthy, any way you cut it.
But my point is that not everything *needs * to be healthy. (And this is the fruit=candy, graham cracker=cookie makes her own yogurt health nut mom.) The reason I eat well, and teach my children to eat well, is so that once in a while we can have the whole chocolate bar and we don’t suffer for it. Once in a while, I want a Big Mac. And while a black bean burger on whole grain toast might be the “healthy” option, it ain’t a Big Mac. I am fully aware that the Big Mac is nutritionally devoid and doesn’t count as “food.” It’s a treat, and because I generally eat in a healthy way, my body can tolerate the food-like product, flush out the poisons therein and I can enjoy my Big Mac in peace.
I’m not saying you weren’t right to send up red flags. Yes, *if * this is the toddler’s steady diet, *if * he eats nothing but chocolate bars, *if * the mom is a total dipshit about nutrition, than it’s A Very Bad Thing [sup]TM[/sup]. I think what we’re saying here is we just don’t have enough information to make that decision, and neither did you.
