How can we teach children and teenagers to eat healthfully without encouraging eating disordered behavior?
A common misconception is that efforts to promote healthy eating will encourage eating disordered behavior. In fact, there is no evidence to support this. The key is to focus on promoting an environment in which it is easy to eat well – children and teens should be surrounded by opportunities to eat healthy foods and should not be surrounded by nutritionally poor foods. It is not helpful to put a bag of chips and an apple in front of a child and say, “OK, choose the right one.” Instead, you should put a fresh and appetizing apple, an orange, and banana in front of the child, and say, “choose your favorite.
