Junk-Food Junkie It Takes Real Strength For This Parent To Step Back And Let His Child Help Himself

It’s hard to say exactly when my 10-year-old son started drifting away. I guess it was a couple of years ago when he started spending a lot of time in his bedroom with the door closed. After he came out, I found the candy wrappers on the floor. Then there were the times he’d come home and the smell on his breath was unmistakable french fries. The signs were obvious my son was experimenting. But I shut my eyes to it. Not my family! Not my son! But it had already happened. Now I must face the cold, hard facts. My son hangs out with the wrong food group.

My wife and I got him into treatment right away. Though progress is slow, we have time and hope on our side. We serve plenty of fruits and vegetables. We cut out the junk food. We limit sweets. But it’s impossible to control his diet. All his friends are addicts. They deal candy, chips and pop. They throw parties and share stuffed crust pizza!

My main problem is, my son believes food is something manufactured, not grown. Anything in a natural state is unfit to eat. Putting something into your mouth straight from the farmer’s field is like picking cotton from the stalk and trying to wear the puffy balls. Food must be processed, shaped and made tasty. It must be wrapped in plastic, or come from a box or can. It cannot be green.

Our toughest problem is getting him to eat vegetables. To him, vegetables are ornaments. Eating them is unnatural. They belong in landscaped beds outside office buildings. In his mind, eating a broccoli crown is analogous to me eating a poinsettia.

I’ll admit, there are a few vegetables he’ll swallow. He’ll eat corn from a pool of melted butter. He’ll munch a few carrot sticks now and then. About once a month he can be compelled to eat a salad - as long as it consists of no other vegetables but lettuce, and there’s enough dressing to turn it into soup.

The fruit group is a phobia for my son. He thinks fruits have an evil purpose. When we encourage him to eat some, he becomes frightened and rebellious, as if we’re trying to seduce him in some plot akin to “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

Once, I set a beautiful, plump, bright red strawberry before him. It was firm, juicy and tantalizing; the embodiment of a perfect strawberry.

I took a five-dollar bill from my wallet and set it on the table. I told him it was his if he ate the strawberry.

Now, my son knows what $5 can buy. For several minutes he stared at the red morsel, temptation dancing in his eyes. But in the end, my ploy had no effect. The five went back into my wallet.

Faced with continued resistance against a better diet, my wife and I have adopted a new strategy. We have recognized the fact that he likes fat and sugar. He recognizes our wish that he eat better. This has led to a compromise. Our son can eat our version of the foods he likes.

His beloved hot dogs are now fat-free. Even the cheese he wraps around the wiener is made from skim milk.

The high-fat pancakes he used to crave have been replaced with a buttermilk and oatmeal version. At first he sneered at them. Now he loves ‘em.

The high-sugar breakfast cereals are history. He used to polish off a box in two days. Now we buy the low-sugar, low-cost, grainy type. He complains, but somehow he manages to stay alive. And a box of cereal lasts two weeks now.

The fight against our son’s dysfunctional diet rages on. But sometimes there are bright moments. Recently, he graduated from eating cheeseburgers to Big Macs. Coming home from McDonald’s one evening, he announced that he ate his Big Mac without removing the pickles. “They even tasted good!” he said.

I nearly fell out of my chair. Removing the pickles from my son’s burger has been a ritual since his earliest days. Sure, a pickle surrounded by two meat patties and special sauce isn’t exactly a meal for vegetarians. But it’s progress. He ate something that he used to regard as poison. Eating a pickle means there is hope in the vegetable kingdom.

Next time we go to a fast food restaurant, I won’t mind ordering him the biggest burger there is. And after sending him away to find a place to sit, I’ll ask the counterperson if they can’t slip some cauliflower under his beef patty.

MEMO: James P. Johnson is a Spokane teacher and free-lance writer.