Why Is Nutrition So Stressful? The challenge of navigating “good” food choices

ParentData with Emily Oster

Nutrition, along with sleep and screens, is one of the most contentious parenting topics there is. And questions about nutrition are particularly hard to answer with data, because disentangling correlation from causation is nearly impossible. What we eat is so wrapped up in everything else we do that it’s very challenging to point to a particular food or even a particular eating pattern and say that it’s healthy or unhealthy. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we know nothing.

Today on ParentData, Dr. Robert Davis is here to talk us through what we do know. Robert is a medical doctor and an award-winning health journalist, and, most importantly, he’s a voice of sanity who realistically explores the nuances of nutrition, the food industry, childhood obesity, and how challenging it is for individual parents to try to parse it all. We talk about diet versus eating habits and the importance of language around that issue, food fads in the recent past and what we keep not learning from them, what Robert calls “nutritionism” (like obsessing about omega-3s instead of thinking holistically about our diets), whether ultra-processed foods are really as bad as we’re led to believe, kids and Ozempic, and how heavy a hand parents are supposed to take when it comes to their kids’ nutrition.

This is a tough topic. We need to eat, we need to feed our kids, and we don’t fully process how stressful it is to feel responsible for our kids’ health and, as they get older, their body image. Hopefully this conversation can help alleviate some of that stress.

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Listen to Emily's article on ultra-processed foods.