We sit in the kitchen and eat our breakfast as a family. Before my 8-year-old daughter starts eating, she lines up everything on the table. I ask her what she is doing and she says, as if it is a matter of course, that she puts the packages in order according to how much sugar each product contains. On the far left is the unsweetened almond milk and on the far right is Dad's orange juice...
I smile and glance at my husband who is also smiling and once again we get proof that we as parents are role models for our children, they take after what we do. We don't talk too much about food in our family, but apparently Miss O has picked up on the fact that sugar is best avoided.
The whole situation brings my mind back to my own childhood when keyhole marking (a way to label low fat products in Sweden) was a new invention and my mother taught me that what you shouldn't eat too much fat. And as long as you don't eat too many calories in one day, you're fine. Then it didn't matter if there were ultra processed products, sweeteners or a lot of sugar in the food. The main thing was that it was keyhole labelled, then it was good food!!
This article is about trends in nutrition, the belief that one's parents possess the right knowledge, the lack of questioning the norms built up in society and the power of media over people.
It's interesting about trends in diet and the power of media to reinforce beliefs about whether different diets are good or bad. Out of interest, I go online and search for "keyhole labelling" and at the top of the search results is the Swedish Food and Drug Administration's page on the subject. I thought that keyhole labelling was basically extinct by now or at least red-listed, but instead I read that a collaboration with Denmark and Norway started in June 2009 and that the label now covers 2500 products on the Swedish market. Further I read:
"The Swedish Food Administration registered the keyhole as a trademark in 1989 under the Swedish Trademark Act (1960:644). The symbol was developed to show consumers the way to foods with less fat and more fibre.
Since then, the label has evolved to include pre-packaged and some non-packaged foods, meals on the go, recipes and restaurant food. The conditions for labelling foods with the keyhole have also evolved and now include fibre and whole grains, fat quality and quantity, sugar and salt."
Apparently what you do when you start to realise that certain trends don't last, you develop your trend to fit in better...
Imagine how many years I spent believing what my mother taught me about food when I was a child, and neither I nor she questioned why eating a lot of calories or a lot of fat was not good. On the sandwiches was margarine, then a light liver paste and the milk I drank was of course light milk. My family was no different from anyone else. It was how you ate back then.
It seems that some parts of that trend still persist today and unfortunately the standard diet is generally worse today compared to 25 years ago, I would say. It is not as if semi-manufactured and ultra processed products, products with too many strange letter combinations on the ingredients list and fast food are declining on the market. To be honest, I find it difficult to find real food in the grocery shops, I really have to look for organic produce in the meat, fish, fruit and vegetable counters.
Now that I've experienced for myself how important diet is, how much the food you eat actually matters, I'm genuinely worried when I realise that the Food Standards Agency is still preaching the diet that broke me down.
I have now managed to rebuild my health with real food (i.e. no ultra processed or semi-manufactured foods, light products, sweeteners etc). It has taken over a year, but oh what I have learned along the way!!
Why do we make it so difficult for ourselves when it comes to food? A varied diet with lots of protein, real fat, vegetables and fruit feels pretty unfashionable and of course doesn't get much media attention. What is there to write about and discuss?
It is more interesting to write about the 5:2 diet, dieting in different ways and how someone managed to lose 20 kg in two weeks. I wonder what the long-term results are and how these people really feel, what happened after...
I don't like to use the word diet, I like the word lifestyle. Because it's a lifestyle to take the time to cook from scratch with organic ingredients. It's something you choose to do and then choose to stick with because it brings results in form of better health. I would never ever want to go back to keyhole diets, week-long diets and periods of just salad and light milk. I know better now and I'm happy in my heart that my little daughter comes to me asking the same questions I asked my mother when I was her age. The difference is that I'm not caught up in the media's writing, or in some here-and-now trend. I simply explain to my daughter that the more organic ingredients we use when cooking, the better, and if you eat a lot of protein and fat, you won't crave sweets and other sugary treats so much. The body is so cleverly designed.
I find it very difficult to see that my approach to food could be a trend. I find it hard to see that my daughter will answer her daughter differently in about 25 years when she is asked the same questions, or that there will be new trends that bite so hard on the average person that even the educated will once again not actually understand what real food is. That remains to be seen.
The kids don't always cheer about the food served, and sure, we sometimes eat cereal and biscuits from the shop (but always gluten-free) and other semi-finished products, but the more we cook ourselves, the better for everyone.
Tonight we serve grilled salmon with ratatouille and herb butter. We drink water or almond milk with it. Just another Tuesday in our family.