A friend of mine once swore that her weight issues were a direct result of being raised to clean her plate. When she had children of her own and swore she'd never lay that trip on them, she found herself cleaning their plates instead, and the next thing you knew she had fifteen pounds she couldn't shake. It took her forever to figure out where they came from and why the treadmill wasn't helping.
Me, my kids eat like birds and I only put three bites on their plate at a time in order to avoid having to throw anything out. But I'm not immune: if they snub half of their cookie because it's oatmeal and not chocolate chip, I'm gonna eat that. If I put out a bowl of Goldfish for a playdate, it's a sure bet I ate half the bag while I was waiting for our friends to arrive.
This, according to British experts as well as pretty much every parenting magazine I have ever had the misfortune to read, is not good. But fear not: you can trick yourself out of all the bad snacky habits that you risk forming when you live in a house of kids, and form some better habits along the way, and maybe say goodbye to that half-bag of Goldfish that's spilling out over your waistband.
I must say though, the upside of Bay Area parenting is the pressure to feed your children primarily "good" snacks, which tend not to be very appetizing to me. I can't remember the last time I ate an organic fruit-and-cereal bar in order to save it from the bin, and I'd rather have bamboo shoots shoved under my finger nails than eat Booty. If I would just commit to buying the vastly inferior Annie's Bunnies instead of the delicious and oh-so-salteriffic Goldfish, I'd probably be muffin-top free and ready to rock.
