What's my reward for an "A"?

It is very common to give rewards and punishments for jobs well done or to discourage undesirable behavior. While the news keeps talking about Hillary Clinton offering North Korea the stick or the carrot, but most kids, it's the cupcake, cookie, ice cream, Coke or trip to McDonalds instead of a carrot. And while we frown on sticks these days in child-rearing, and don't tend to use food as punishment, so to speak, things like eating your vegetables are often attributed to something you do against your will -- like work, if you will. The scientist and author, Brian Wansink discusses the deep roots this all leaves in us for life in his book: Mindless Eating (Why We Eat More Than We Think). (First, I will say I totally disagree with his views on fast food, etc. -- basically that they give us what we want and if everyone wanted to buy fresh fruit McDonalds would be lining up to sell it. What we're forgetting is that they prey on our natural taste for certain things (salt, etc.), hook us in through arguably unethical advertising and product placement to children so young they cannot differentiate ads from non-ads, and god could I go on.)

But more on point, Wansink shows us that a food used as a reward -- let's take ice cream -- is always going to have a special place in our hearts. Foods that we felt forced to eat -- let's take broccoli -- is always going to be dreaded and resented. We may not realize it, but his studies are pretty overwhelming. This is something that should be in our parenting books and in our teacher's training sessions. It seems to make sense then that if you need your kid to eat his greens, give him less food and then tell him he can't have more until he finishes his plate, and if you want to give rewards, make them unrelated to food. The sensitivities we have to food growing up go on and on. Deprive someone of something and they crave it. The theory being that those of us who are always raiding (or wanting to raid) the cookie jar were kept pretty locked down on sweets growing up.

I think we're far from the answers to how to perfectly integrate food into the lives of our children, but we should at least be aware that we need to be very careful -- that everything we do to make a food seem good or bad is absorbed and retained, whether we know it or not, for the rest of our lives.

PS. I have nothing against ice cream -- so long as it's all natural (go on, eat the full fat stuff). If it's made from the milk of grass fed cows then you're really going to heaven. Check out Nice Cream from Green Grocer, Black Dog Gelato at the Logan Square Farmers Market or served at a number of restaurants in the Chicago area (they have an amazing spicy Mexican chocolate), or an artisan producer near you.