Obesity-proofing our children 169 Giving a child a gift by indoctrinating a healthy habit, like brushing your teeth twice a day or saying‘ please’ and‘ thank you’ automatically, is a truly wonderful gift. To learn these behaviors to the level of unconscious habit as an adult can take a lot of effort that we would rather put somewhere else. Consider the power of the gift of automatically eating in a healthy way that kept you slim for your whole life! I think most people wish they had established healthier habits in their childhood because then they would be already in place for adulthood and life would be much easier. All of the hard work would have been done years ago! For these reasons I believe that some of the greatest gifts we can give our children are indoctrinating healthy lifestyle habits. But to do this we will have to do battle with their natural inclinations. This is the battle of love. For example, my parents left me with both good and bad habits. For me, a meal without green vegetables or salad feels fundamentally wrong. As much as I recall hiding my broccoli in the serviette drawers when my mother turned her back from the table, in the end she obviously won the battle because now this habit is well and truly inculcated. The bad habits for me as an adult become obvious when it comes to everything I was deprived of as a child – particularly sweet food, fries and crisps. Interestingly, because my father was a great white bread eater there was always plenty of this and so, unlike many of my clients, it is easy for me to stop at one or two slices. Is there a pattern here? Does depriving children of certain foods make them more attractive to children? How do we get our children to eat in healthier ways? Should we push the issue? The answer to the last question is easy. Absolutely. Children need parents to introduce them to and guide them through many of life’ s new experiences. Eating a broad range of healthy foods is a central life task. Are parents making things worse? Most parents I speak to think it is important to restrict their children’ s access to unhealthy foods. On the face of it this seems a logical thing to