Overeating can lead to obesity, which can trigger life-threatening illnesses such as diabetes, certain types of cancer and coronary heart disease. As any parent knows, mealtime can turn into wartime when you try telling your children how much they should be eating. Adults and children do better at controlling portion sizes when they serve themselves. Children as young as 3 or 3 can serve themselves, Rolls says. The dinner table should not be a battleground.
Parents are responsible for bringing in healthy food, and putting it on the table.
Then parents need to stop, and give children the responsibility for deciding what, how much and even if they will eat, says licensed nutritionist Frances Berg, editor of the Healthy Weight Journal and author of several books on eating. Talk to your children so they can learn from their own bodies how much to eat, and to stop eating when they feel full. Berg says too much parental control over how much a child eats can be a factor in causing eating disorders. We need to help children trust their own bodies, says Berg. There are no bad foods .