The pressure on parents to feed their children chocolate at Easter is enormous. It comes from television, grandparents, friends and children themselves, so is it any wonder good sense goes out the window?
In a recent article from DietAssist, 5 Tips to Survive the Easter Holidays if You’re On a Diet, they highlight some serious concerns about eating chocolate and the damage that occurs to the body from its high sugar content.
But that’s not the whole story. DietAssist, an online diet support programme, says that far more problematic for children are the behavioural lessons they learn.
Anyone who has watched children eat chocolate understands the pleasure they derive from eating it. But most parents are blissfully unaware of the long-term behavioural conditioning that is occurring right in front of their eyes which can affect children through adulthood.
Paul Howard, co-creator of DietAssist says, “Most people have been programmed since childhood to view chocolate and sweets as a reward. Parents say things like ‘You’ve been a good girl, you can have some chocolate’ or ‘Behave yourself or there’ll be no chocolate’.”
“Anyone who is overweight or obese can understand the lifelong difficulties that are associated with losing weight, and thinking back, can probably also recognise the conditioning they received as children and how it is still affecting them now.”
With the growing level of obesity in children, DietAssist suggest that parents should start focusing on changing their children’s behaviours towards food. Figures show that around one in three children in the last year of primary school are either overweight or obese.
Obese children have an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke.
DietAssist say that parents need to be far more conscious of the long-term goals when they make decisions about how much and when they allow their children to eat sweets and chocolate. Otherwise they will be helping their children to become DietAssist customers in 20 or 30 years time.
Although the DietAssist programme is designed to correct the inappropriate conditioning in relation to food that people receive in their lives, they say it is much better to give children a life where this conditioning does not occur in the first place.
The DietAssist programme is the result of over 20 years experience of helping people to lose weight effectively, and uses the latest psychological techniques to avoid the self sabotage and demotivation that dieters commonly experience.
The DietAssist programme helps dieters strengthen their motivation and resolve, and creates the optimum psychological state for success. It is designed to work alongside any weight loss programme or sensible eating plan.