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When AG was a baby, a friend from church had given me the book Healthiest Kid in the Neighborhood by William Sears. It’s a great nutrition primer for parents – I learned a lot! It definitely has influenced the way I feed my family, although I am not as good as I should be. (ie: I have been snacking on fudge all morning…)

One of the concepts he talks about in this book, along with the kids’ companion book called Eat Healthy, Feel Great, is “Traffic light eating.” He breaks things into red light foods (stop eating these), yellow light foods (slow down! don’t eat too much!), and green light foods (go ahead! eat all you want!). Our friends and family have become accustomed to us discussing red, yellow, and green light foods with AG. Meals are a constant discussion of this: “Is this a green light food?” This gets tricky when we’re eating, say, hot dogs – hot dogs are listed as red light foods, but I bend the rules on a rare occasion just because we like them. :)

I think that these books have given her a great jump-start on understanding nutrition. She will look at a hamburger bun and point out to me that it was made with white flour, and therefore is a yellow light food. We try to be consistent with her at meals – if you’re still hungry, you fill your belly with green-light foods. You can have a special treat, but only after you’ve fed your belly lots of good foods. We talk about juice very plainly, also – juice is made with fruit, but the very best “green light drink” is water, so drink water when you’re thirsty. Milk is also a “green light drink.”

Warning: this is exceedingly convicting. She often asks me if coffee is a green light drink. :| If she sees NP or me have an occasional pop at a friend’s house, we inevitably have the discussion that pop is a red light food and very bad for you. I am frequently glad that she’s shy when I see her observing what other people are buying at the grocery store – I can only imagine the horror if she starts pointing out to others that what they’re buying is bad for them! But, overall, it’s been a great thing for all of us to be more aware of.

Today at lunch she was eating spaghetti, and I was pretending that her belly was talking to her (embarrassing, but true. everything at our house is personified) – “thank you for feeding me all of these good green light foods!” She was delighted by this and turned to me and said, “and next, I will feed my belly some yellow light foods!” Cracked me up.