The Bowers Family, left to right

Nicholas (4), Larry (50), Lauren (13), Brandon (10), Karen (44), Josh (10)

I started this new way of eating for my daughter Lauren. At the time, she was only 11, and she and I had spent the last year and a half grieving over the loss of my father, and comforting ourselves with food. Lauren, as you can see, is a beauty, but at the time she was overweight and suffering all the emotional trauma that classmates can heap on an overweight child. I knew this was one lifestyle change that she was going to have to make, and she needed support. It was not "do as I say, not as I do." I needed to drop 45 pounds myself!

Lauren, for all her wonderful qualities, is a picky eater. It is not for lack of exposure to new foods!!! I comfort myself, and you may too, with the latest concept in picky eaters: she may be allergic to certain foods (tomatoes) or that she might have hyper sensitive taste buds (she likes French fries but won't do baked potatoes, mashed potatoes or fried potatoes --not as big of a problem now that we are Zoning!) She WILL eat broccoli (gasp!) and most any fruit I put in front of her, but the rest of her life revolves around international cheese sandwiches. Grilled cheese (American Diner?), cheese pizza with no sauce (open-faced Italian grilled cheese), calzones with no sauce or veggies (closed face Italian grilled cheese), and quesadillas with tortilla and cheese (Mexican grilled cheese).

Pasta with butter (no cheese!) is real big with her too, since she still has a "compartmentalized stomach" which requires a compartmentalized plate. I was finally able to persuade her to try chicken that wasn't from a fast food restaurant, but only the kind that comes with breading on the outside. She also likes vegetarian chicken style patties, but won't do the ones I can buy for cheap in bulk rolls without breading. No beef, no turkey, no eggs (except as binders in other foods), and NO fish. She will occasionally try my tofu chocolate pudding, and she has recently fallen in love with the dry roasted soynuts I have in my Kitchen Shop.

If that doesn't make you feel good about your picky eater, then you need to meet my 4 year old Nicholas, "Nico" for short. He is so picky, the only chicken he will eat has to be in the shape of STARS. String cheese he will do, and his litany of grilled cheese sandwiches is even shorter than Lauren's. Peanut butter plays a big part of his diet, but the only fruit he will eat is apples, and that is only occasionally. He'll do fruit flavored yogurt. He loves oatmeal for breakfast, and he likes several kinds of nuts, cashews particularly, which he calls "whale nuts," because that is what he thinks they look like.

My 10 year boys olds will eat most anything, in huge quantities too, except pasta. However between the two of them they will go through an entire loaf of bread or an entire box of cereal in one unsupervised afternoon snack. I have only had them since November 1996, but I haven't seen that their good eating examples have rubbed off on my other two. They want eggs for breakfast each morning, and trying to persuade my darling but skinny and genetically blessed husband that he should cut out the yolks is.... impossible. Eggs are cheaper than meat, he reasons, and since he doesn't have a cholesterol problem, no one else should either.

Second scenario: my sister's kids. She has twins as well, a boy and a girl. She has always been more regimented in her child rearing than I, having to contend with scheduling for two. She has always offered them the same foods, sat them down at the table at the same time, talked to each of them the same way and maintained the same expectations for each of them. Yet Megan will try any food that anyone offers, and Eric eats like Nicholas, much to Janet's dismay. I should note here that "Grandma's Revenge" goes even further: Megan keeps her room clean and Eric's is always on the verge of total chaos. I take certain comfort in the fact that it is not the parenting, it is the child!

So what is a parent to do?

My pediatrician is Dr. Joel Snyder, and he has been taking care of my kids since the day they were born. Here is his advice:

"You can't make them walk.
You can't make them talk.
You can't make them eat.
You can't make them go to the bathroom."

Have we no control?

Addressing only the food issue, yes we do:

• LIMIT their choices. Granted, limiting their choices did not help my two picky eaters try more foods, but at least the Mother's List of EXTREMELY UNFAVORABLE foods (candy, more candy, and massive amounts of sugar coated cereals) are not readily available in our household.
• Educate them. Nico was only 3 years, 3 months old when Lauren and I started Zoning. Within a month, I had started limiting the dense carbohydrates (Nico lived on chocolate coated granola bars) and making sure I always said to him "Yes you can have that --after you eat some string cheese because you can't just have carbohydrates and fats, you need some protein as well," so that one day he came in and instead of telling me he was hungry, he announced, "Mom, I need PROTEIN!!!"
• Enlist their participation in menu planning. I designed my Block Food Poster more for Lauren than for me. I can think about what the inside of my pantry or fridge looks like within an hour of finishing a meal. Lauren can stand in front of an open refrigerator until mold starts to grow, and still not be able to figure out what to eat! I have a blank chart that tells her how many food blocks she gets for each meal, and then she sits down with the chart (instead of an open refrigerator) and plans her menus for several days in advance before I go to the supermarket. She gets fewer blocks than I do, so I base my menu for the rest of us by adding more blocks (and more variety) to what she has chosen. Then I plan my shopping list from that, or have Lauren assemble the list for me.
• Exercise them and limit TV and video. People ask me why I don't have a dog. "Because I have children!" I reply in a rather frantic voice. Kids, removed from these wonderfully effective electronic baby-sitters, will burn an amazing amount of energy just making the house a mess. (Conversely, I swear I am going to put a pedometer on me some day just to see how much mileage I put on each day chasing after kids. I call it "aerobic housekeeping," and wonder why yard work is listed as an acceptable form of exercise, but housekeeping isn't!) Kids need exercise even more than we do, and the bane of my existence is "Cartoon Network." When I was a kid, we didn't have television, and later when we did, there were only cartoons on for a few hours in the afternoon. The same with video games. It took a great deal of discipline on my part, because both these are such great baby-sitters, but when I determined that it did not harm my children to be bored, and that it actually made them use their creativity to figure out how to entertain themselves, I put a daily limit on TV and videos. I also gave each of them a room they were to be responsible for keeping clean each week, and so now not only are my kids healthier, but my house is cleaner, too!

Benefits of Zoning with Children

• They need the extra protein to BUILD lean body mass and brain cells, not just maintain them.
• It focuses them and stabilizes their blood sugar, preventing that "before dinner meltdown" and crankiness.
• If they tend toward ADD or ADHD, research is indicating that the increase in protein consumption and the decrease in carbohydrate consumption helps them gain self-control and focus and reduces or eliminates hyperactivity. This works for non-ADD/ADHD kids too !
• It starts them developing healthy habits which will last a lifetime --a LONG and HEALTHY lifetime!
• Your own menu planning will be easier if you feel you are only making ONE meal instead of a separate one for you and then your family!

How do I start?

Compute their protein needs.

For children, it is assumed that they have only 10% body fat, regardless of their shape, size or sex. The definition of a "child" in girls is one who has not started having her periods , because up to that point, they are still developing their lean body mass at a rapid rate . In boys it is a little harder to determine when they have entered puberty, but somewhere around 12 years old you will notice things like hair beginning to grow under their arms, body odor, "zits," and finally their voice beginning to change. In all kids you might consider just balancing their foods and letting THEM determine how many blocks they are needing that day/meal. My personal goal has just been to get them to cut back on the carbohydrate consumption and increase their protein consumption, i.e., eating a lunch meat or piece of cheese with that piece of toast for an afternoon snack instead of eating ½ a loaf of bread!

Child's weight = ______________ lb.. X 0.10 (10%) = __________ Pounds Body Fat

Child's weight = ________ MINUS Pounds Body Fat = ___________ Lean Body Mass

For each pound of Lean Body Mass, you need a certain number of grams of protein to support it. Use the above table to figure out how many below:

______________ Child's Lean Body Mass (LBM from above)

x _____________ Child's Activity Factor (Table below)

= _____________ Child's Daily Protein Requirement, Divide by 7 =

__________Daily Blocks

Multiply child's LBM by their activity factor. This equals the number of grams of protein they will need to eat each day. Divide their daily grams of protein requirement by 7 grams to equal protein blocks. This gives you the Daily Blocks of Protein required to maintain their lean body mass each day.

Table for Child's Physical Activity Factors

(NOTE: This is for CHILDREN, which is two points greater than that for adults to ensure adequate amounts of protein for growth)

For every block of protein (which is 7 grams of protein), you get a block of carbohydrates (which is 9 grams) and a block of fat (which is 3 grams). So for instance, my a child weighs 97 pounds. 10% of that is 9.7 pounds, and that weight is considered body fat. Subtract that from their weight of 97, and that equals 87 pounds Lean Body Mass (LBM). If they are moderate in their activity level, multiply the 87 LBM x 0.9 = 78. Divide that by 7 = 11 blocks of protein. Therefore, each day that child would get 11 blocks of protein, 11 blocks of carbohydrate and 11 blocks of fat, or 11 complete food blocks each day.

Where do we go from here?

Make the child aware of their nutritional needs.

• Show them a Meal Planning Chart and how to fill it out.
• Discuss why we eat and how food works in our body.
• If you have a child that is overweight, discuss how sometimes we get bored and end up eating, or how sometimes we feel bad about ourselves and comfort ourselves with food, or how we may have learned (or we taught them) that food is a REWARD for good behavior. Talk about alternative ways to comfort and reward ourselves, and YOU may learn a thing or two as well!
• Discuss how Zoning works. Trying to simplify it so your child will understand will help YOU understand!
• Encourage them to eat in a balanced way, even if they don't eat a specified number of blocks. Give them good protein options for snacks, like string cheese, Gobblesticks, lunch meat (vegetarian also!), dry roasted soynuts (you can flavor them yourself with seasoning powders), natural jerky, and Chocolate Decdence Pudding. Check out my Snack page for some good ideas for quick snacks.
• Have THEM figure out recipes, and if you think it is good, send it with a photo of your child to me and I will put it up on the Kid's Recipe Index!

Discuss the value of Zoning

• It will help you do better in sports.
• It will help you do better in school.
• It will help you concentrate better and give you more energy.
• It will make you healthier and more able to resist diseases.
• If it is an issue, it will help you lose weight without feeling like you aren't getting enough to eat.

Enlist their support

• I need to do it, and need your help and support.
• It will help you understand nutrition.
• You can choose the foods we will eat as a family.

Planning

First realize that kids will need to feel they are not social or food outcasts. You are going to have to realize that they are going to be inundated with junk food. If you say they can't have it, then you are going to shoot this dietary change in the foot faster than you can say "boiled okra." Let them plan to include their favorite treats into the meals that you plan together, but just like you have to do for yourself, show them how much more food they get in bulk when they make their choices from the favorable food lists than the unfavorable.

The GOAL is to get no more than 25% of a meal's nutrients from unfavorable carbohydrate sources, but that blows the spaghetti dinner out of the water! Don't worry about it as much in kids at first. Introduce them to the CONCEPT of blocking and Zoning, letting them make their own choices, then work towards the higher goal from there.

Show them how to get variety. This may not be important to kids who LIKE one dish meals, however! But if it is, consider this: I am pretty astute in my own menu planning, and realize that each block of food I get does not have to come completely from one source. Say I am making a fruit salad, and I get three blocks. Does this mean I only get 3 fruits? No, I can do HALF BLOCKS. When you set up your kids' menus, remind them of this fact and possibly cut the blocks in half with a pencil so that it reminds them to include more variety.

Here is a chart I'd use for a child who was getting 8 blocks a day:

8 Blocks a Day Menu Planner

Further Education

Teach them why the favorable choices are favorable.

You get more food with bulky, favorable choices. You need more fiber, which you get from the favorable choices. You may have seen the Food Pyramid produced by the USDA. It was done to make sure that you get more variety in your life for the foods you eat. It is easier going back to only three food groups to choose from. Dietary fiber is an issue, so keep it in mind that the more favorable and bulky choices are higher in fiber and they give you bigger servings..

Go to food and women's magazines and look for pictures of foods.

Cut them out and paste them onto card stock. Play a game with your kids where they divide the foods into the three groups. You can do menu planning with those pictures, too, when working with younger children.

Find books of children's cookery.

Notice how fun and exciting they make the foods look. Who knows? I have started doing this with Nicholas, and while he still isn't actually TRYING the new foods, at least he will try SMELLING them, and he has even begun to offer them to me. This is a big step because he used to act like even TOUCHING foods he didn't like was tantamount to dipping his hand in boiling water. In fact, last week he decided he liked licking oranges. Wouldn't bite it, but he'd lick it. I think this is progress!

Involve your kids in the actual meal planning and preparation.

I sat down with Lauren and gave her a Block Poster of her own. We simply X-ed out any foods she didn't like! From the remaining selections, we started planning menus. We'd start with the protein she would eat and would plan a meal around that protein selection. This worked wonders for both of us, because her selections are so simple, my initial Zoning Days were very easy and simple as well. I then used HER menus, and just added however many more blocks I needed to get up to my allotment, so by the time I made the entire meal for the entire family, she and I would measure out our foods while everyone else dished up whatever THEY wanted in whatever portions they wanted. Curiosity got the best of the 10 year olds, so they asked what we were doing and why, and decided they wanted me to balance THEIR meals as well!

I have also found that my kids love to cook, and take great pride in the foods they can prepare for themselves. Lauren will cut up fruit and the younger ones will skewer it onto skewers for fruit kabobs. Served with cheese and nuts, it is a wonderful summer evening dinner. Josh has learned to scramble eggs himself, and Nico knows where I keep the string cheese and apples! We are still a little weak in the clean up department, but Lauren, at just 13, has learned how to clean the kitchen better than her dad (don't tell him I told you this, however...).

Zoning is an amazing way of life, and it is done in such a logical method, even small children can learn to do it. I wonder if we were to spend as much time advertising good food that is good for you, if children would be more likely to TRY that good food. Guess I am going to have to come up with a poster that has pictures of blocks of food for kids!

And yes, watch for an upcoming book called Karen's Kids' Kitchen, which my kids are helping me put together. Lauren wants to be a published writer, and I think this is her big break!