Are You Teaching Your Kids the Wrong View of Food?

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Hello, friends. Today's podcast question says: "In a recent podcast, you mentioned your parents training you with wisdom in how to handle eating and food. There are so many confusing and conflicting messages when it comes to this topic. Would you please share the principles your parents instilled in your family that can help us raise our children?"

Well, this is a really interesting question and an important one for us to think through because food is part of our everyday lives. Along with every other component of our lives, we want to make sure that we are thinking biblically about food and that we are therefore helping train our children to think biblically about it as well.

Our Approach for Today

In this episode, I'm going to share some basic biblical principles that I think we need as the foundation of understanding a healthy view—a biblical view—of food. Throughout, I will mention some of the things that my parents did, as well as things I've seen other parents do well when it comes to helping kids think biblically about food.

Four Key Biblical Principles About Food

I think that there are four key biblical principles that we need to understand and then help our children understand to have a distinctly biblical view of food.

Principle 1: God Designed Us to Need Food

It is impossible for us to survive without food. God has designed us in such a way that we need it, and this is true even before the fall. Even before Adam and Eve rebelled against God, they were still designed to need food.

This is clear in the first chapter of Genesis, verse 29, which reads: "And God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food."

Even before the fall, food was a part of our design. So we need to recognize that God designed us to need food, and God's design is good.

Principle 2: Food Is a Gift from God

In his design for us, God could have designed us to get the nourishment and the sustenance that we need through any means. He could have designed us to get nourishment through sleeping or through exercising or through doing any other task, but he chose to create us to get nourished through food, and he's the one who designed our whole digestive system.

Think about how amazing it is that God created us to need food for nourishment. How much less exciting would it be if we just had to sleep or had to go for a walk to get nourished? Instead, God has designed us with a mouth that has taste buds and then has put all of these different types of flavors in the world and has given us the minds to be able to figure out how to create different types of flavors from different ingredients.

Genesis chapter 2, verse 16 says: "And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden."

Now we know that in the next verse, God commands Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was the one tree that was off limits to him. And when he chose to partake of that, the world has never been the same since and will never be back to how it was originally created until Jesus comes and makes heaven and earth new.

However, God, right in the second chapter of Genesis, gave humans every other tree in the garden for food. He gave them food as a gift to delight in. So we need to make sure that we understand this: food is a good gift from God.

Principle 3: As with All Good Gifts, Food Can Be Abused

Just like every other good gift that God has given us, we can abuse food. We can overindulge in food in general, or we can overindulge in the wrong kind of food.

Proverbs 23, verses 19 through 21, say: "Hear my son and be wise and direct your heart in the way. Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty and slumber will clothe them with rags."

Now, this verse doesn't say to the son, "Stay away from all types of food and drink." God has given us food and drink to be enjoyed, but this passage is warning against the abuse of those good gifts.

We need to know that we can overindulge in food. We can be gluttonous, where we are eating to the point that it's not just nourishing our body—it's just trying to satisfy this never-ending desire.

Now, conversely to overindulging in food, we can also under-indulge in the gift of food in order to meet some certain beauty standard set by our culture. We know that our culture very much prizes being super thin, even in an unhealthy way. Now, that has changed a little bit in recent years, but ever since the 1960s, the super thin silhouette has been in. So we can not indulge in the gift of food, not even nourish our bodies to the point that we are starving them in order to manipulate the size of our body to meet some certain beauty standard.

So those are two ways in which the good gift of food can be abused: overindulgence and under-indulgence.

Now, we can also overindulge in food in that we can become obsessed with healthy eating to the point that it stifles out other things that God has called us to. I have seen this in many different people's lives who get into really healthy eating. Now, healthy eating can be a really good thing, and here in the United States, it can be very difficult to eat in a healthy way simply because of all the different ingredients that the FDA allows in our food here in the US.

However, I have seen some people get so trapped down the rabbit hole of eating all things that are organic or all things that are homemade, doing everything from scratch, to the point that they neglect discipling their children or caring for their spouse or being involved in their community. So again, eating in a healthy way can be a good thing, but we can overindulge to the point that it becomes an obsession and everything else falls to the wayside.

We can also overindulge in the opposite way—that we so neglect any nutritional standards that we fail to treat our bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit. If we're not giving any thought to what is going in our bodies and we're just picking up whatever is easiest or whatever we enjoy the most, it's really easy to have this good gift of food become one that is abused.

Principle 4: As with All Parts of Creation, Food Has Been Affected by the Fall

In Genesis chapter 3, verses 17 through 19, God is speaking to Adam after Adam has rebelled against him. This passage says: "And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For you are dust and to dust you shall return."

This passage makes clear that part of the curse of sin, part of Adam's punishment, was that God cursed the ground. The ground was now going to be producing thorns and thistles, and man was going to have to bring forth food by the sweat of his brow.

So this passage makes clear that because the ground is cursed, because of the curse of sin, growing food is now going to be difficult. There's going to be droughts and cold snaps that ruin crops. There's going to be insects that ruin crops. There's also going to be a certain point at which crops spoil. Animals, which are also part of our diet, are going to become sick. And then meat and other animal products will spoil very quickly without proper preservation.

And even our attempts to work against things such as famine and insect destruction and food spoilage backfire. Think about pesticides. Now, I know, especially in the United States, the word pesticide is a big no-no because pesticides, which were designed to kill pests, also greatly harm our human body and its systems.

However, think about why pesticides were developed—because of famine, because insects were destroying crops. I remember going to Nebraska one year to visit a good friend of mine, and we went apple picking to an apple orchard that we would traditionally go to every year. However, there were very few apples to pick, and the apples that we picked, when we got back home with them, they all had worms inside of them. And the man who owned the orchard explained that they had had an infestation of a certain type of worm and a few other different types of insects that just destroyed their crops.

So pesticides were invented to combat that, but now we see the terrible effects on our body as humans.

Or think about just the lack of food in certain regions. Now we have genetically modified seeds and different types of food, and the purpose for genetically modifying these different types of seeds is to enable them to produce more or to produce larger amounts of crops, which is great for fighting against famine. But science through experiments has revealed that many genetically modified organisms in our food don't give us the same amount of nutrition, or they harm our body.

Similar with food spoilage—nowadays, it's really popular, I know in certain circles, to drink raw milk, milk that is not pasteurized. Well, why was pasteurization invented? Louis Pasteur invented pasteurization because so many children were dying of infections after drinking milk that had certain kinds of bacteria in it. So that's why pasteurization was invented, but now it's backfired on us in that it does take out some key nutrients.

So even our attempts to work against the effects of the fall—they can be helpful in some ways, but we are never going to reach utopia here on this earth. We are always going to be combating the effects of the fall, and even the ways in which we work against those effects of the fall are going to be fallen in and of themselves, as we see with pesticides and genetically modified organisms and pasteurization and other means of preserving food.

Summarizing the Four Principles

As we think through training our children to think biblically about food, I think we need to help them recognize these four foundational truths about food:

1. God designed us to need food
2. Food is a good gift from God
3. As with all good gifts, food can be abused
4. As with all parts of creation, food has been affected by the fall

These are the four principles that we need to make sure we have at the forefront of our minds as we're thinking about food and that we train our children to have at the forefront of their minds as well.

Practical Suggestions for Training Children

Now, what I'm going to do is get into some practical suggestions for helping our children develop a healthy and biblical understanding of food. I'm going to give some of my suggestions, which are based on things that happened in my family growing up and things that I have seen other people do well. But if you have other ways in which you are helping your children develop a healthy and biblical understanding of the good gift of food, if you're watching on YouTube, in the comments, please just type out some of the things that you have done. I think it's always helpful for us to hear from others who are being intentional at discipling their children—what things they're doing in their home to help their children think and live biblically.

1. Give Thanks Before Meals

Now, the first thing, which may sound like a no-brainer but I think is really important, is that we give thanks before our meals. I think most Christian families who are trying to disciple their children probably do this already. So making sure that we're giving thanks, but also thinking: Are we specifically thanking God for our food?

This is something that I realized several years ago. I was like, "I always pray before I eat, but a very small portion of that prayer is actually giving thanks to God for the food before me." So what I've started doing when I'm just by myself in my house eating a meal alone and praying before my meal—I actually tend to look at the food on my plate and thank God for specific parts of that.

If I'm eating chicken, I'm just like, "Thank you, God, that you invented these animals and that I get to partake in this and that this gives me protein to help keep my muscles strong." Or if there's a certain vegetable or fruit, just thanking God for that specific food and all that he has done to create and then sustain that type of food.

So really being intentional in giving thanks before our meals, specifically for the food in front of us.

2. Be Intentional About Healthy Eating and Healthy Enjoyment of Treats

Another thing that I think is just really practical that we can do in our homes is to be intentional about healthy eating but also healthy enjoyment of treats. This is something that I think my mom did so well growing up.

Now, my mom did not cook perfectly. Sometimes my siblings and I kind of give her a hard time about how many times per week she would fry up chicken cutlets, which we all loved. But now my siblings and I don't eat nearly as much fried chicken as my mom would make growing up.

However, with every dinner that we had, my mom was very intentional that we always had a vegetable with that dinner and we always had salad. Now, I know my sister has asked my mom, "How did you do that?" And my mom was like, "You probably don't remember—I just bought frozen veggies and stuck them in boiling water every night." And so it was really simple for her to do that because she tried to make it easy for herself.

Now that my parents are empty nesters, I know my mom cooks a lot more fresh veggies, but back then she just had tons of frozen veggies and made sure there was one veggie with the meal every night. And she'd make a big, huge salad at the beginning of the week, and then we'd have that with dinner every night.

So establishing these healthy patterns of eating really helps establish for our kids what their bodies are going to crave. I know that now as an adult, I have just different friends who have struggled a lot with their eating, and they've shared with me, "My parents just let me eat whatever I wanted for breakfast. I was always having sugary cereal, or I was having Oreos for breakfast."

I mean, you grow up having Oreos for breakfast—of course, in your adult years, you're going to struggle with an addiction to sugar because that is what your body was taught to crave.

So just making sure that the majority of what our kids are eating is healthy, but also to be able to enjoy some treats. I think, again, this is something that my mom did a really good job of. We were never allowed to drink soda except for three times. We were allowed to drink soda if we had pizza, we were allowed to drink soda if we had tacos, and we were allowed to drink soda if we had popcorn.

And I think that just helped to create a really healthy rhythm in that we knew soda was not an everyday thing. In fact, I'm pretty sure that now as adults, none of my siblings nor I drink soda. We've just decided we don't want that much sugar. However, we were able to enjoy it as kids at certain limited times.

So I think just having a good balance of intentionally eating healthy but then also having time to enjoy treats—that really helps establish the biblical basis that we are to steward our bodies well and we are to enjoy food as a good gift from God.

3. Set Healthy Boundaries Around What Can Be Eaten Between Meals

Another thing I think we can do practically, and this is another thing that I think my mom did so well, is to just set healthy boundaries around what can be eaten in between meals.

Now, different kids are going to need different amounts of food, and different families are going to choose to set different types of boundaries. There's not just one "this is what you need to do, this is what is healthy." But this is again where I think my mom did such a great job in that when we came home from school, we were allowed to have one snack before dinner, and then we had dinner, and then we were allowed to have one snack after dinner.

And sometimes the snacks were healthy snacks and sometimes they weren't. We were allowed to eat Oreos or other things like that. But my mom always set a limit around this. When we were allowed to have Oreos, we were allowed to have three Oreos and no more. And that was just really good.

That's something that I even think of now as an adult. I'm a fairly healthy eater, but there are also just certain treats that I really enjoy, and I can have those treats around my house because I am not just going to sit down and eat a whole box of cookies or eat a whole container of ice cream, because my mom just trained me when growing up that you have a certain amount and no more.

Now, did I follow this all the time when I was in college? No. When I was in college, I indulged in all sorts of junk food, and then I realized how it made me feel after I ate it. And then I grew up, became an adult, and I have similar limits to what my mom placed around our eating when we were growing up. And in some ways, the limits I place on myself are even more stringent. And I know that it's the same for my siblings as well.

So just setting healthy boundaries—and again, this is going to look different for different families—but just think through: What age are your kids? What is a healthy boundary?

4. Require Children to Eat What Is Cooked

Then I think another really healthy thing to establish is just requiring children to eat what is cooked. Now, I know that this is very, very challenging because sometimes kids are really picky eaters.

In fact, I was just babysitting for a friend's kids for actually an entire week while my friend and her husband were away, and they have two toddlers. And I learned there are certain things that the kids didn't like, but I just kept their parents' expectations that, "Okay, you don't have to eat all of this if you don't like it, but you have to eat a certain amount." And then there's no snacks afterwards.

If kids are just given a continual round of snacks, they're not going to eat at mealtime because, let's just face it, meals—if you're allowed to have lots of packaged snacks—meals just aren't as exciting as the packaged snacks because of how the packaged snacks have been designed to taste.

So I think that's just a really important thing: to require children to eat what is cooked, or at least to require them to eat a certain portion of it.

Now, again, I think there can be exceptions to this. If there's one particular meal that you know your children do not enjoy, you can say, "Okay, this is what we're having tonight." You can't do this all the time, but if it's one meal they don't enjoy, allow them to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for them.

5. Model What a Healthy Relationship with Food Looks Like

And then my final suggestion is just to model what a healthy relationship with food looks like. We just want to model for our kids being good stewards of our bodies, enjoying the good gift of food that God has given us.

And this is a real gift that I think my mom gave me that I really had no idea of until I was in adulthood. I think my mom just has a really healthy relationship with food in that she knows what's healthy. She tries to eat and cook healthy, but she was never really obsessed over what she was eating or even the amount that she was eating.

I remember learning this very directly in high school. There was this one time—I forget what it was, I don't know if there was a men's retreat at our church or a missions trip or something—but there was this one time where we had a number of women over to our house for dinner because their husbands were away at some church event.

And I remember just watching around the dinner table, and most of the women ate such small amounts that I was just shocked. I was like, "How are they going to survive for the rest of the evening with this little amount of food on their plate?"

Now, I have no idea what was going on in their lives. I have no idea if they ate before they got there or if they just weren't hungry or if they had to be really super careful about what they were eating for some health reason. I have no idea. But I just remember thinking after that, "Wow, I'm glad my mom just eats like a normal person."

And I think because my mom just established that, it was so much easier for me as an adolescent and as an adult just to have a healthy relationship with food.

And so again, we can't do this perfectly. We're not going to be perfect at modeling what a healthy, biblical relationship with food looks like. We're not going to be perfect in the boundaries that we set. There's going to be times where we're going to have to tweak things, shift things. But I think it's so important that we have this foundational biblical understanding—those four principles that I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast—just to make sure that we are having a biblical view of food and then to help train that in our children as well.

Conclusion

Well, that's a wrap for this episode. But if you have a question that you would like for me to answer on a future Foundation Worldview podcast, you can submit that question by going to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast.

If you found this episode helpful and want to make sure you never miss practical biblical wisdom for raising the next generation, we'd love to have you join our email community. We'll send you encouragement, resources, and insights to help you equip the children in your care with a strong biblical worldview.

As we leave our time together, my prayer for you is that no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care find yourselves, that you would trust that God is working all things together for your good by using all things to conform you more into the image of His Son.