Developing Healthy emotional Eating habits in Kids!

This article "Top 10 reasons to bring your kids to the farmers market", reminds of our trips to the Market and what a fun and positive experience it was for us as a family. 

In the photo above, Asher (2 1/2) had selected his own red pepper from one of the booths and began eating it before we had even paid! 

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Reason #1 on the list is: Develop Healthy Emotional Eating Habits

One of the biggest myths about emotional eating is that it's prompted by negative feelings. Yes, people often turn to food when they're stressed out, lonely, sad, anxious, or bored.

But emotional eating can be linked to positive feelings too! It's no accident that McDonald's named their kids deal a "Happy Meal"! They do this to form a lifelong emotional bond between being happy and eating at McD's, and it works!

You can beat the fast food marketing guru's at their own game. Simply swap out the fast food and replace it with a fun day at the Farmers Market! Do this on a regular basis and your kids will start to equate healthy real food with those happy family days at the market.

Last year I took both boys to the farmers market and Asher got to use his own money to purchase whatever he wanted (usually a cheese stick from the baker there).
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If you think about it, many happy occasions in our lives have a strong link to food, usually unhealthy overprocessed food. Consider camping for example, we typically allow our children to have "camping food" which includes, hot dogs, marshmallows, sugar cereal etc. But does this really make our family camping trip MORE fun?

Last year on our camping trips, we strived to eat REAL FOOD on each trip, and you know what, we had a blast! Real food tastes great and makes your body feel great too! It's not about not enjoying food, or depriving the kids of treats, because there are so many real unprocessed treats we did enjoy on our camping trips. Asher isn't deprived, if anything he is lucky that we care enough to spend the thought and  We just chose to eat the way we normally do at home rather then associate our family fun with Junk food.

What are your thoughts?