On the heels of Father’s Day, the Health & Fitness section of yesterday’s New York Times featured a not-so-revelatory story about the difficulties parents face in feeding their children healthy food.
That’s right: little tykes will not eat peas and kale without a fight. Not only that, but trying to convince your small offspring to eat what the rest of the family is eating is stressful!
For all of its stating-the-obvious quality, this story was #1 on the Times’ most-emailed list all day. Not surprising — after all, it takes a look at a headache that is all but universal for young parents. But that doesn’t mean the article itself, riddled as it is with self-evident and age-old truisms, is not in need of a lot of help. It is.
To wit:
“Picky eating among toddlers and preschoolers appears to be widespread. Experts say that about half of all 2-year-olds are picky eaters, and some research suggests that the pattern continues into childhood,” we learn, not to mention that “Nutritionists say that in most cases children are not getting their nutrients from the healthiest sources.” Topping off the journalistic cream puff is this McNugget: “Picky eaters who only eat high-fat high-sugar foods may also be at higher risk for obesity, experts say.”
And we can’t forget the nut graf, following the tidbit of how harried Millburn, New Jersey mother Christine Ferrara “caved in to Charlotte’s endless pleas for pasta”: “Across the country, other parents of young children are also surrendering, serving macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, pasta and hot dogs rather than endure the mealtime stress of having their children eat well-balanced meals.”
We may not be nutritional gurus here at CJR Daily, but even those of us who are childless could have told you that.
The piece does make a few interesting points. There has been little research done on the long-term effects of a poor diet in young children, for example, and picky eating, according to some evolutionary scientists, “may have developed as a protective mechanism.” Overall, though, the quoted experts and doctors unnecessarily explain what readers — unless they’re completely clueless — already knew.
Instead of these scattered bits of ephemera, the section could have benefited from an in-depth feature examining the advertising onslaught that urges young children to eat high-sugar or high-calorie manufactured foods — or one on poorer parents in America who have little choice but to feed their kids such foods on a regular basis. As far as we can tell, those are two pieces the Times hasn’t touched so far this year.
In short, CJR Daily — age one-and-a-half itself, and a very picky eater — found this once-over-lightly treatment the journalistic equivalent of Froot Loops, instead of eggs and toast, for breakfast.
–Edward B. Colby
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.