Food fight

One of the challenges in this Project has been getting the other people living in my house to get onboard with the healthier food program. This is not easy. I have two kids at home who would happily eat ice cream three times a day if I didn't nag them about eating healthier. And they are thin and athletic, the little devils, so I can't make the excuse that they need to watch their calories and fat. They are tweens and teens in their prime competitive eating years, with metabolisms that blow through food like mutant hummingbirds.

Over the weekend I put a bowl of grapes out on the kitchen counter for them to snack on. My daughter absent-mindedly eats them while she yaks on her phone, which is good -- kind of stealth-health attack on mom's part. My son, the observant one, does not.

He picks up a grape from the bowl and looks at it closely. "Ew. It looks gross. It's sticky and there's a little HOLE in the end that's leaking." This complaint is from the boy who once ate a desiccated gummy bear off the floor of the car.

I say, "Yes, that's because it's fresh off the stem. Eat it, it won't kill you." He wrinkles up his nose and says "Gross, mom. Don't we have any M&Ms?"

Here we go: the debate.

I said, "No, we do not have M&Ms. I can't have them, and they're not really good for you guys either. You need to eat more fruit if you want something sweet, or you can have some fat-free chocolate pudding."

"But aren't we having dinner? What are we having?"

"We are having grilled chicken and rice with veggies and spinach."

He makes a gagging sound and his eyes roll back in his head. You'd have thought I electrocuted him.

"OHMYGOD mom WHY do we have to have spinach? I HATE spinach and it's GROSS and I WON'T EAT IT."

I say to him, through my clenched teeth, "You WILL eat it. At least a bite."

He flops his arms disgustedly and wanders out of the kitchen, muttering under his breath about the unfairness of life.

At dinner we all managed to sit down and eat together, and everybody ate the rice with veggies and spinach, even my crabby but obedient son. For my kids dinner is more like a snack, followed by another small dinner of peanut butter sandwiches, then maybe some popcorn, followed by ice cream and a couple of glasses of juice or milk with Girl Scout cookies, after which they open the refrigerator door and say "MOM! Don't we have ANYTHING decent to EAT?" as I slice an almond into six pieces so I can stretch out my evening snack without overdoing the calories. If they weren't my kids, I'd hate them.