Q: How do I get a kid to change from being used to eating junk food to healthy food?  Sugar and fat just make foods so much yummier and I imagine there's some major withdrawal from being used to sweet and fat foods.

A: Sugar and fat make foods yummy not because God hates us and wants us to look bad in bathing suits and spandex, but because these substances are chock full of easily digested calories. For most of history, living beings faced two big problems: getting a date on Saturday night, and getting enough food to stay alive during the famine. In those days, it made sense to load up on the calories you found in a big slab of animal fat or  hanging from an extremely ripe fruit tree, because who knew if that was the last food you'd see in a week.

Nowadays, of course, this "if you can catch it, eat it" strategy doesn't work so well. But not for the reason you might think. It's not because we live in an environment where we can get all the calories we want - lots of animals spend their whole lives in that situation and never need to tape nasty notes to their refrigerator doors - but because we're being fed unnatural foods.

We all have a body fat thermostat inside us. And when it's functioning properly, it tells us, "Lay off the coconuts, you're starting to get a little heavy." So we throttle back and soon reach a comfortable and healthy weight. But when we consume junk foods, manufactured from artificial ingredients, unnatural concentrations of empty calories, and combinations of substances that never existed in nature, our "eat less" feedback mechanism goes haywire.

Plus, as you hinted in your question with the word "withdrawal," these substances are literally addictive. We need higher and higher doses of sugar and fat and salt to feel satisfied as time goes on.

So when you're trying to break your kid's addiction to junk, you need to be strong, strategic, loving, understanding, and extremely clever. Here are some tactics I recommend:

1. Get the bad stuff out of the house

Make your house a junk-food free zone. When your child is at home, they need to know there's no chance of eating garbage. Because greasy chips and cookies and frozen pizzas and ice cream all have the ability to whisper, "Here I am, you know you want me, I'm waiting for you…."

2. Be a role model

Don't ask your kids to do anything you won't do. Even out of the house, even on special occasions - if you still are addicted to junk foods, you'll have no leverage and no credibility. Even if it requires 6 months of watching your kids poison themselves with junk food while you transition to a healthy diet, you don't have a choice. Until you've climbed the mountain, you can't be an expedition leader.

3. Figure out what your kids like and give it to them

Thanks to Chana Citron for this insight, adapted from the philosophy of Appreciative Inquiry. Make a list of what foods your child really likes, and step back and look for patterns. Look for flavors (sweet, salty, sour, spicy), textures (crunchy, gooey, smooth, frozen) and other clues. If your child is a pretzel and chips eating maniac, they're in the salty crunchy camp. Don't try to tempt that child with fruit. Instead, go for raw nuts, celery with almond butter, and other items with a crunch and a decent amount of sodium.

4. Talk honestly with your kids

Explain what you're doing, and why. Help them learn how to choose wisely. After all, you don't want to be following them around when they're in their 40s, nagging them about their eating habits, do you? It's much more fun at that point to nag them about their child-rearing inadequacies and their financial irresponsibility.

5. Ask your kids to pay attention to how they feel after eating

Touch the hot stove and you're likely to experience what jealous professors of education call "one-trial learning." You've got it for life, that the hot stove is something to avoid with fingers. But we can eat foods that make us cranky and sluggish and nauseous all day long, and never figure it out because of the delay in the feedback loop.

When you ask your child to pay attention to how they feel 10-30 minutes after eating certain foods, you're removing moralism from the equation. You're just asking them to discover what's best for them, not what you think they should be doing because you suddenly starting reading this newsletter. (Kids, Howie is NOT the enemy. Howie is your friend. Send Howie ten dollars - oops, sorry, my marketing personality took over for a minute there.)

6. Cook with your kids

Great marginal benefit to spending time with your kids, helping them prepare healthy snacks and foods that they like. At first, cooking with kids will take much longer than just doing it yourself. It's messier, you have to explain everything, and you can't lick the beater blades when they're looking. But eventually, it gets easier, not least because they begin to take the initiative.

7. Discover a couple of healthy substitutions for their favorite junk foods and play with them until your child approves:

Chocolate:
Date-Nut Chocolates
Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chips and fries:
Baked Guiltless Gourmet Chips with Salsa or Guacamole
Pita chips
Baked french fries or sweet potato fries
Celery with almond butter (can add raisins for "ants on a log"

Ice cream:
Frozen fruit smoothies

8. Be persistent and expect "backsliding"

Food is all around us, and it's not something we can give up completely, like cigarettes and alcohol. So "just say no" is not a strategy - things aren't that black and white. The best gift you can give your child, aside from an iPod and a Xootr, is the ability to be strong and make their own good choices in life. And they learn that from observing you, from rebelling against you and discovering the natural consequences, and from gradually connecting their choices with the results they get.

Got other tips or experiences to share regarding weaning kids off junk food? Share them in the Comments box for this article.

The most useful Kid-Food tool I own is the Vitamix. I make smoothies, creamy soups, tangy and sweet sauces and dressings, and oat flour for cookies and cakes healthier than store-bought breakfast cereal. The Vitamix Website, www.vitamix.com, has lots of demos. I've got to say, the product really does what they say it does. Stay away from most of their recipes, though. Lots of dairy and fat, and of course they have a whole section of alcoholic drinks (hey, if you want to use a $400 blender to make a pina colada, fine, but don't forget the point is getting lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains into your kids without them complaining).

When you call, tell them the following code and you'll get free shipping: 06-001400.

Until next week, wishing you health and happiness,

Howie Jacobson, PhD - FitFam.com
Helping Parents Struggling to Raise Fit Kids in a Crazy-Busy World
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