Mrs Dunitz-Scheer, do our children need to eat more vegetables?

Mrs Dunitz-Scheer, are we thinking too much about food?

In any case. That's because we've lost our intuition and our everyday eating and cooking culture. On the one hand, we cook less often than ever before, while on the other we attach more importance to individual foods than ever before. This oscillation between two extremes shows that we have lost our normality when it comes to eating.

How could this happen?

There are many reasons for this. Take a look at the past 70 years since the Second World War: Europe has turned into a food abundance society for the first time in human history. The food industry is necessarily offensive to the point of aggression. It not only feeds the supermarket shelves with offers, but also our heads with ideologies and far too much information. As a result, people see food as a substitute for religion and identity.

That sounds like we're behaving quite absurdly.

You bet. However, this huge supply also means that, for the first time, we live in a society in which daily food procurement is possible with minimal effort: buy a sachet, tear it open, heat it up, eat - done. If you don't want to, you don't have to worry about food at all. Behind this is the loss of an entire culturally specific sensual world.

«If you set a good example of moderation in your diet, you will hardly have any children with eating disorders.»

Marguerite Dunitz-Scheer , paediatrician and nutrition expert

But it's not just the food manufacturers who are to blame, is it?

No, of course not. There are numerous social changes that cannot be blamed on any one individual or group alone. When I was growing up in Switzerland in the 1960s, no mother went out to work. Today, perhaps ten per cent of mothers stay at home. As a result, the culture of cooking has changed into an event that often only takes place once a week. Mum stands at the cooker and cooks - that's an exception, not the norm.

What does this normality look like?

Quite unspectacular: provide your children with a varied meal and cook at least once a day. In this way, the children also learn what a fun and good eating culture is. And cooking, of course. But ask ten-year-olds what it's like at home. Most of them can't even fry an egg or cook pasta for themselves and a sibling. Later on, they are sent to special children's cookery courses. Something is then artificially introduced into their lives that they could have learnt automatically at home.

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Is the family the key to healthy eating behaviour?

Absolutely. Parents - and not just the mother - have a role modelling obligation. If they manage to set an example of sensible, pleasurable moderation in nutrition, we will hardly have any children with eating disorders. The culinary family culture is the first social stage on which children experience and learn eating behaviour - it is sensually present almost throughout their lives and is absolutely crucial. Eating is an interactive and social developmental achievement, and if this works well at home, there is no need to explain the importance of carbohydrates or food pyramids at school.

«Children learn to like what they are served. It's a question of education.»

Marguerite Dunitz-Scheer

Many parents find that children are simply difficult eaters.

Children learn to like what their parents serve them. This is also a question of education. Just as we pay attention to hygiene development and teach children to comb their hair, brush their teeth or wash their hands. The daily development of eating must also take place as naturally and without discussion. We have twelve or thirteen years to do this.

And when is the best time to start with food education?

There is no age at which you could say that children are not receptive to the food culture around them. Strictly speaking, it all starts before birth, with the diet of the pregnant woman. And even a three-month-old baby, who is being carried by its father in a baby carrier, can tell whether its father is spooning up a bowl of soup or biting into a sausage.

However, many children who are described by their parents as difficult eaters or who actually have eating disorders are not noticed at all in the day care centre.

I make the same observation. They eat completely normally there, and the teachers are amazed when they hear that there are supposed to be problems with this at home. The problem is actually that parents tend to analyse the food and make half a science out of what the child eats or refuses to eat. This creates a power potential, a conflict zone, where an important part of eating is destroyed: the pleasure part, which is strongly determined by the environment.

But what if my child strictly boycotts vegetables? That's a situation that I have to deal with.

The delusion about vegetables comes from the adult world, mostly from people who are often fighting obesity themselves and have perhaps been dieting all their lives. Only around five per cent of children of primary school age are real vegetable lovers. This means that the minority of all healthy children love vegetables, but this changes from puberty onwards, which doesn't matter at all - no child needs to be forced to eat vegetables. In the worst case scenario, this could even ruin the development of taste preferences and at best ensure that this person won't like vegetables in later years either. Of course, no one should eat pure sugar, but you can give vitamin drops to those who don't like vegetables, and no child can grow on vegetables alone anyway.

From what then?

From a mix of all nutrients: Carbohydrates, protein and fat. Plus vitamins and minerals. No extreme is good. A monotonous diet is the worst thing you can do to your child. As a rule of thumb, a growing child should consume one gram of protein per day per kilo of body weight - and it doesn't matter whether this comes from wholesome cereals, cheese, meat, fish, sausage or chocolate milk. Even if a child has phases in which it absolutely does not eat certain things, there is no need to worry - with a simple mixed diet, this will balance out again over weeks and months. Once again, the diet should be as balanced as possible.

How do I manage that?

By not just bringing one food to the table, but a variety of foods. And giving the child a choice. They may only want two or three of the items on offer, but that's totally fine. Why should children be any different to us? We also choose what we like. I can't control what the child chooses, but I can control what the choice is.

Will the child be allowed to choose what they want to eat when they go shopping?

This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, parents should definitely take their children shopping with them. However, I would mainly go to markets with children. Nothing can really go wrong there. At such a large farmers' market, a child can see the apples next to the tomatoes and eggs, the salads, the cheeses, the meat in the butcher's trolley. They experience the seasonal variations. Shopping like this has a tremendously sensual aspect, and I recommend doing it as often as possible, at least once a week.

Do you have another tip?

As far as possible, you should avoid taking younger children with you to the supermarket, which is inherently designed for seduction. I am the one who actively influences the selection. The children are allowed to let off steam when choosing the yoghurts and mueslis. My children always knew that I don't buy sweets. We never had any at home because I knew that they would get enough on the go, at friends' houses, at birthday parties or when we were travelling. That's quite enough. So I never bought anything that I didn't want my children to eat.

Very disciplined.

I think this is a sensible approach. It saves countless debates and stressful situations. The worst thing I find is sweet reward drawers. Because then you start to categorise food into good and bad, and suddenly the unhealthy things are the desirable ones. The classic: Come on, eat some more of the pasta and broccoli, then you can have the chocolate afterwards. Those who hierarchise food ensure that there are quickly coveted favourites and a fight for them. Once you start using these reward strategies, you have lost and are open to blackmail. Not to mention the fact that a child cannot develop a sensible relationship with food in this way.

What role do shared meals play in food development?

You've hit a nerve, because the current situation is a disaster. One meal a day together in a family - you have to be able to manage that with a bit of organisational talent! But no, one eats at five, the other at six, the third at nine in the evening when he finally gets home. It's quite common for the children to eat at six and then the parents eat alone at eight when the children are in bed. I find that sad. If eating together is a nice, important ritual, even a hungry child will just grab a snack at six and happily wait until everyone is eating at half past seven - because they don't want to miss this event. It's about storytelling, listening, i.e. communication, and yes, also about eating, but this tends to happen in passing and is not overly celebrated.

«Shared meals are hugely important for healthy eating development.»

Marguerite Dunitz-Scheer

How should parents react when their 13-year-old daughter decides she needs to lose weight because she is too fat?

Firstly, you look at the facts of the situation. The mother of a 13-year-old should know whether her daughter weighs 50, 60 or 70 kilos. At this age, a BMI of around 20 is desirable. If the girl is really too fat, tell her: "You, we can manage this together, we'll cook a little less carbohydrate and I'll just make us more salads. It's best if the whole family joins in. The same applies here: the whole thing should be handled as normally as possible. Even with younger children who are too fat, a change in the menu can quickly remedy the situation. This is up to the parents, as is the decision to have dessert only once a week until further notice.

Many teenagers are not too fat, but are still obsessed with the idea of losing weight.

As a parent, I also take a look at the child and their BMI. If it's 18, I'm particularly attentive and weigh the child once a week. From a BMI of 16, you have to speak plainly and take action. Then the child needs to be told: From now on, we're not going to watch you starve yourself to death, we're going to get help from trained people. Nobody has a problem with telling their son or daughter that there's no way they're getting a piercing or soft drugs, but when it comes to eating, we're all going to get in line somehow.

Perhaps because there is so much contradictory information?

That may be the case. However, it is important that parents also understand that eating development is a completely normal part of a child's development, just like motor-sport, academic-intellectual or emotional-moral development. The influence that parents and all family members have on this development is enormous, but slowly decreases as the child gets older. The more I have clarified for myself who I am and what I eat, the easier the child's autonomous eating development becomes. A mother who apologises at mealtimes and explains that she can only eat salad today, and a father who explains that he has only had three slices of sausage all week and can have two schnitzels today - these are the best conditions for a child to develop a complicated relationship with food.

Marguerite Dunitz-Scheer about ...

• organic: As a general rule, all food should be bought as naturally as possible and consumed as little processed as possible. The more preservatives a product contains, the more likely I am to steer clear of it - unless I'm equipping myself for a South Pole expedition.
• vegan: For me, this is an extreme form of nutrition that I would advise parents of growing children against. Parents who want to feed their child a strictly vegan diet should definitely consult a dietician and make sure that the protein supply is guaranteed.
• Vegetarian: Children can easily grow up on a vegetarian diet, which is high in protein and contains sufficient calcium. Vegetarian food can be fantastically tasty, but unfortunately you have to travel to India to experience it in everyday life.
• Taste: A Swiss child can usually distinguish ten different flavours by the age of twelve months, a French child forty. While Swiss and German restaurants offer special menus with supposedly child-friendly fish fingers, chips and spaghetti with tomato sauce, the idea of special children's meals is completely alien to parents in many other cultures. Indian children, for example, grow up with very spicy food, the offspring of Eskimos with raw fish, and in Israel even the youngest children eat intensely flavoured hummus, falafel and olives. Because that's what they know from the grown-ups.

More about nutrition for children:

• «Mum, why don't you buy this too?»
  Children's products are sweet and greasy - because children love them. But they are advertised as healthy so that parents buy them.
• Healthy milk and bad sausage? Nutrition myths put to the test
  What is healthy? And what are we harming our children with? A categorisation.

• The source of energy for my schoolchild
  Nutritionist Marianne Honegger explains what an ideal snack looks like and how parents can motivate little breakfast grouches to eat.