How We Parent Is Directly Reflected In How We Feed Our Kids

How we parent our children is dramatically reflected in what we feed them. Filling our kids with fast food, Doritos, coke, ice cream, and cookies is not good parenting.  Many will disagree, I know, but consider the end goal of being a good parent:

• To raise compassionate, aware individuals who can live lives of purpose and responsibility
• To nurture clear minds who can think for themselves and sort good from bad
• To foster a conscious awareness of community, and the interconnected relationship between all people and all things

Conventional foods, aka (those grown with conventional pesticides, in large scale commercial farms, which rely on many poisons and lab-made products to produce “foods” which ultimately cause the death of birds, bees, insects, and soil microorganisms as well as cause damage to local water, air and soil) do not support the above tenants of good parenting.

It is impossible to teach lessons of compassion, strong communities, clear thinking, and social responsibility while feeding our kids with foods that inherently demonstrate and enforce the opposite.  Not only does it send a mixed message, but within their bodies, it is impossible to foster and generate health while the foods they consume are creating serious inflammation. Inflammation which leads to nutrient deficiencies, learning issues, behavior problems, and brain fog, demonstrated by our growing “need” to medicate our children. 

It is of course easier to “feed” our kids without thinking, but at what cost?  What does the world look like when filled with adults who were raised by cell phones, video games, and toxic food?  What kind of humans can they possibly turn out to be if we have never taught them how to live a life of true nourishment?

The food we eat is more than daily calories and nutrients, it is our voice for what kind of world we want to live in.  Choosing Organic, ethically processed foods has much more to do with fairness, equality, compassion, and sustainable life than it does toxicity of nutrients.  Through our actions, we demonstrate a value system which places all life and its inherent position within the planet cycles as being of immediate value to us as well.

Which brings us back to parenting, we have to recognize what our actions and choices inform our children to do.  If we support chemical farming, which works without regard for the lives it affects, we are enforcing a dogma of individualism and selfish choice ahead of community.  Kids raised in a world where self-desire outweighs community benefit will grow to adopt behaviors of self-service ahead of community contribution.  Which is much of what we are seeing right now. 

Eating Organic foods not only feeds the body of the child but also the spirit of life centered parenting.  By choosing foods grown with conscious attention to the lives which depend on this food and the needs of the surrounding ecosystem, we enforce a message of earth community and the inherent connections between us all.  With this food, we can speak of how everything is linked, how an action in one place affects life in many others, we can teach lessons of cooperation, of beneficial action, and of heart-centered decision making.  Thus, we can act as good parents, generating good stewards of our future, who will know how to solve the problems which our generation and those before us have generated.