Let them eat… everything
The sheet pan chicken and roasted broccoli are out of the oven and the white rice is steaming on the stove. Virginia Sole-Smith, who has spent a decade writing about how women think and feel about their bodies — and how they convey those feelings to their children through food — is about to serve dinner to her daughters, Violet , 10 years old, and Beatrix, 6.
Sole -Smith tries not to be a short-order cook. “Respect the work,” she says, reminding her children that if they don’t like what she’s made, there are other things to eat at home. A pull-out shelf in the pantry holds Tate's Chocolate Chip Cookies, Goldfish Crackers, Split Peas and Chocolate Kisses. There are raspberries and grape tomatoes in the fridge.
What Sole-Smith hopes to model, she said in a five-hour interview at her home in Cold Spring, New York: it’s “that you can be a mother who doesn’t live solely in the service of others.” That “you deserve time for yourself and that you are a person who has needs, that those needs matter.”
She carries the girls' plastic plates up on the porch. table, avoiding the miniature Bernedoodle, Penelope. A year ago, Sole-Smith published "Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture," a guide to help parents deal with their discomfort and anxiety about weight and food. As Ozempic-like drugs allow people to lose weight, Sole-Smith has become one of the country's most visible activists, speaking out against the prejudice and discrimination faced by larger people, especially from doctors and researchers. /p>
She asserts her own right to be "fat", the preferred adjective in her corner of the Internet. In Sole-Smith's house, there are no "good" or "bad" foods, nor "healthy" or "unhealthy"; donuts and kale have equal moral value and no one controls portion sizes. By freeing herself and her family from food rules, Sole-Smith believes she will have a better chance of raising children who are proud of their bodies, who have the confidence to enjoy their food and who will leave the table when they are satisfied. She serves desserts and snacks, like Cheez-Its, with the main course of dinner; her children can eat their meal in any order.
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The sheet pan chicken and roasted broccoli are out of the oven and the white rice is steaming on the stove. Virginia Sole-Smith, who has spent a decade writing about how women think and feel about their bodies — and how they convey those feelings to their children through food — is about to serve dinner to her daughters, Violet , 10 years old, and Beatrix, 6.
Sole -Smith tries not to be a short-order cook. “Respect the work,” she says, reminding her children that if they don’t like what she’s made, there are other things to eat at home. A pull-out shelf in the pantry holds Tate's Chocolate Chip Cookies, Goldfish Crackers, Split Peas and Chocolate Kisses. There are raspberries and grape tomatoes in the fridge.
What Sole-Smith hopes to model, she said in a five-hour interview at her home in Cold Spring, New York: it’s “that you can be a mother who doesn’t live solely in the service of others.” That “you deserve time for yourself and that you are a person who has needs, that those needs matter.”
She carries the girls' plastic plates up on the porch. table, avoiding the miniature Bernedoodle, Penelope. A year ago, Sole-Smith published "Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture," a guide to help parents deal with their discomfort and anxiety about weight and food. As Ozempic-like drugs allow people to lose weight, Sole-Smith has become one of the country's most visible activists, speaking out against the prejudice and discrimination faced by larger people, especially from doctors and researchers. /p>
She asserts her own right to be "fat", the preferred adjective in her corner of the Internet. In Sole-Smith's house, there are no "good" or "bad" foods, nor "healthy" or "unhealthy"; donuts and kale have equal moral value and no one controls portion sizes. By freeing herself and her family from food rules, Sole-Smith believes she will have a better chance of raising children who are proud of their bodies, who have the confidence to enjoy their food and who will leave the table when they are satisfied. She serves desserts and snacks, like Cheez-Its, with the main course of dinner; her children can eat their meal in any order.
We are having difficulty retrieving the content of the article.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode, please exit and log in to your Times account, or subscribe to the entire Times.
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