Thursday 29 May 2014

What Sprout Asked For on the Shopping

A common remark in response to the radical unschooling idea of children not having their choices restricted in the things that they eat, is something on the lines of, "Oh they'll just eat sweets all the time." A close relative of ours is convinced that children will choose food based on the sugar content. If they choose yoghurt, it's because there's sugar in it. Sweets? Sugar. Chocolate? Sugar. Cereal? Sugar. Fruit? Sugar. 
Anyway. I know a number of things from watching the food choices my children do make over time.
1. They absolutely do listen to their bodies.
2. They might have long periods of time where they want one particular thing or type of thing, but this does change and as such is based on themselves and not some type of control by whichever foodstuff it is.
3. If there are always sweets available, there will always be sweets available. And by that I mean children will leave sweets uneaten. *gasp*
4. Food boogeymen have no power. You can read all over the place that any number of food ingredients are so completely terrible and addictive that children aren't physically capable of not eating them if they're available, but... *coughbullcrapcough*

So, in the spirit of documenting that if children get actual choice in the things (and amounts of things) that they eat they will indeed choose things that aren't Doritos or McDonalds or Skittles (although all those things are good too!), I'm going to start doing an occasional brief post with what Sprout has asked for on the grocery shopping order. (Squidge and Moppet currently are mostly happy with whatever we get in, including the usual sort of things they eat plus the odd thing they ask for. Sprout is now more specific about the things he thinks about and asks for, so his asks are more relevant for this type of post at the moment.)

So this week on Sprout's shopping list we have:

Oranges
Sushi
Plain cod fillets
Pineapple
Broccoli
Strawberry and banana smoothies
Pasta
Coca-cola 

Nom nom :)

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