Ban fast foods!

Rearing children is a daunting challenge, and I always hope that I'll succeed in it and raise happy, healthy children with good morals and good solid education. There are children who succeed in school academically or are wealthy or famous or have all, and to me that's so immaterial. If there's own thing that I would envy the most about children is this: eating healthily and are physically active. But this wish is hard for me to do when I honestly love junkfood, and hate exercising, so how do I show good examples to my children?

For a start, I thought I should ban them from fast food restaurants. You know what I'm talking about, like those that have the big golden arches, or the big buckets in the sky of KFC. Not sounding like a hypocrite, I admit that I LOVE these foods - the juicy fried chickens plus its gravy and the big fat chips. When I was younger, I used to collect all the toys that they promoted, and enjoyed playing in their indoor playgrounds. Now older and little wiser, I'm still quicker to run to these shops than to head to those 'healthy' salad/sandwich shops. But for my children's sake, I think I should put an end to my visits to these international fast foods that sell food rich in cholesterol and saturated fats.

You see, my reasoning is if you don't expose them now to these fast food restaurants I believe that they'll never look for them in the future or even prefer eating them over a healthier choice. My analogy to my new practice is this: I don't prefer to eat lamb because we were never exposed to eat it when I was younger; so I'm hoping that my children would feel the same from fast foods.

I don't think I'm terrible for doing this, and I'm not going extremes either. I've heard of moms who constantly say, "No, that's too sweet", "too salty" or "too oily" to foods offered to their children. But I can't be there all the time to patrol my childrens' foods. So the best I can do is to let them have a strong foundation on good food choices. Perhaps for a start, the best I can do is to stir them in another direction, like a decent cafe that sells healthier burgers. I am not banning them from eating the burgers and fries, but I'm discouraging them from restaurants that lure them with toys, merchandise and playgrounds to buy their greasy, less nutritious food.

Recently, my son was asked if he wanted to eat McDonalds, and he apparently said no. Both me and my husband were moved hearing he refused, for now we know that our little experiment worked! Hopefully, this would continue until he gets older. When he's older, I'm sure he would be able to understand what the tv/internet advertisers are trying to sell, but if we continue to show him there are better choices than junk foods then hopefully there's nothing to worry about.

Just before I close, a report on the news today says that alarming numbers of fast food advertiserments are found on tv and internet. They attract kids with toys, mascot appearances and computer games.

Thanks to my love for my children, I am finding that I'm eating less of these fast foods too. Hmm, next hurdle is the exercise part....now how do I do that?