Customer Reviews

Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Ellyn Satter seems to direct this book at parents with minimal cooking experience or desire. This is probably justified based on her topic, but I am a happy and experienced home cook and I really enjoyed the book too. She explains useful tips for adapting foods for little eaters and how to round out meals with appealing vegetables and desserts. I love this book! A great companion to Child Of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense, because it provides lots of recipes to help apply the very sensible eating principles from Child Of Mine.

Ellyn Satter understands kids, parents and the pressures of modern life, and shows us how to navigate our way to a healthier diet! No guilt here, either. Just common sense and good advice.

This is an excellent primer for parents (and maybe even just young singles or couples starting out on their own) who need help with basic feeding skills like cooking and grocery shopping.

Ellyn Satter's advice is always very down-to-earth and her attitude toward food is relaxed. Where else would you find a Registered Dietitian recommending a menu of hot dogs, potato chips, and ice cream?? (Of course, not ALL her menus are like this, because she really understands the concepts of balance and moderation, which are so sorely lacking in these diet-crazed times.)

An excellent companion to "How to Get Your Kid to Eat...But Not Too Much,' both of these books speak to nutritionally-challenged adults as much as they do to children.

If you've been grappling with the Food Pyramid for the past 20 years, this book will put the pleasure back in mealtime, eliminate guilt, and get you back in touch with your own feelings of hunger, satiety, and fullness. Have you ever noticed how people who are worried about their own health are no fun, and often less healthy than those with a more relaxed attitude? Read this book, relax, and enjoy your food!

This book is a must have if you are interested in feeding your children well. I think the style is friendly and easy to read and the ideas are terrific. I would recommend to anyone who has trouble knowing what to feed their family.

This is a treasure of a resource. It is a comprehensive guide that, as a parent, I find myself turning to regularly. We are Californians who cook with fresh food for our family, and Ms. Satter's book speaks to us as well. I have learned so much from it!

This book was written with a very simply and easy approach to help understand a healthier diet. The style is simple, has some really great ideas and advise. There are recipes also. The book was just on so matter of fact without all the glitz it applies common sense instead which was this a wonderful book.

I LOVE this book! Here are the Chapter headings:

Ch 1- THE SECRET IN A NUTSHELL- The secret of feeding a healthy family is to love good food, trust yourself, and share that love and trust with your child. When the joy goes out of eating, nutrition suffers. [I have tried some crazy things w/what I feed my family. I was SO happy to find someone who is common sense and not extreme about foods we should eat.]

Ch 2- ADJUST YOUR ATTITUDE- Competent eaters enjoy food and eating and they are comfortable with their enjoyment. They feel it is okay to eat food that they like in amounts they find satisfying. [YES!!!!]

Ch 3- HONOR YOUR APPETITE- Appetite is a natural and life-giving inclination. Appetite is compelling, but it can be satisfied. It is normal to get enough and to stop eating, even of highly enjoyable food.

Ch 4- EAT AS MUCH AS YOU WANT- Essential to eating's rich reward is having enough to eat. The irony, in this land of plenty, is that most of us fear hunger, not because we risk food insecurity, but because we obligate ourselves to undereat.

Ch 5- FEED YOURSELF FAITHFULLY- To develop the meal habit, priorityze pleasure. To keep up the day-in-day-out effort of regular meals, those meals must be richly rewarding to plan, prepare, and eat.

PART II- HOW TO RAISE GOOD EATERS

Prologue- Provided parents do their jobs with feeding, children eat as much or as little as they need and grow predictably in the way nature intended for them to grow. [Love this!]

Ch 6- THE FEEDING RELATIONSHIP- Effective feeding depnds on a division of responsibility. Parents do the what, when, and where of feeding; Children do the how much and whether of eating.

Ch 7- STUFF TO KNOW TO HAVE FAMILY MEALS- How to have pleasant mealtimes; how to orchestrate snacks; how to make wise use of planned substances; how to manage family meals in restaurants.

Epilogue- The name of the game with rasing children is to give it your best effort, find out if it works, and then tinker with it.

PART III, HOW TO COOK

Prologue- To celebrate eating and take good care of yourself with food, you have to cook--and keep on cooking.

Ch 8- HOW TO GET COOKING- Build a foundation for being a good, fast efficient, and wholesome cook. [I'm actually already pretty good in this area, but she had soom good tips].

Ch 9- HOW TO KEEP COOKING- Like eating, cooking can be a creative act that gives you a change of pace and restores your energy.

Ch 10- ENJOY VEGETABLES AND FRUITS- To get the vegetables and fruits you need, eat them because you enjoy them, not because you feel obligated. [LOVE THIS! Lets get rid of the guilt!]

Ch 11- PLANNING TO GET YOU COOKING- Planning can be used or abused. Use planning to lower your stress level, not to pile on jobs. [Yes!]

Ch 12- SHOPPING TO GET YOU COOKING- To position yourslf to plan and cook a meal- or to grab the ingredients to throw one together- you have to shop. It is not always fun.

Ch 13- CHOSING FOOD- Negativity, fear, and avoidance are not good motivators. Optimism, self-trust and adventure are good motivators. This chapter blesses the food.

Epilogue- Mastery in any of the three areas- how to eat, how to reaise good eaters and how to cook- increases your mastery in the other two.

APPENDIXES
A- Interpreting and Using the ecSatter Inventory (ecSI)
B- What the Research Says about Meals
C- What Surveys Say about Our Eating
D- BMI, Mortality, Morbidity, and Health: Resolvfing the Weight Dilemma
E- Energy Balance and Weight
F- The Story of Sharon
G- Select Foods that Help Regulation
H- Nutrition Education in the Schools
I- Children and Food Regulation: The Research
J- Children and Food Acceptance: The Research
K- Iron in Your Child's Diet
L- Deit and Degenerative Disease: It's Not as Bad as You Think
M- Children, Dietary Fat, and Heart Disease: You Don't Have to Panic
N- A Primer on Dietary Fat
0- Sodium in Your Diet
P- Interpreting the News
Q- Eating Competence and Feeding Dynamics Resources


I have taken many things from this book and have applied them to my daily life. I have seen a drastic improvement in my toddler's eating. I've also been able to get rid of some of the guilt that bombards us in our society about food. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND. A MUST READ!

It's so easy to get in a rut when you are trying to feed your family. Same few dishes, same old fights with the kids. Who has time to try new cooking techniques? Ellyn Satter does, and you can benefit, whether you have kids at home or not. Dip in anywhere. The recipes are simple and tasty. More importantly, this dietitian with a difference is no food Nazi. Her philosophy is positive and enthusiastic: all food is good. Forget the food prescriptions, dump dieting, and "lighten up." She says: "The secret of feeding a healthy family is to provide yourself with enjoyable food and trust yourself to eat as much as you need. Then do the same for your child." Buy it, read it, try it. You'll feel a lot lighter when you let your eating guilt go.

Instead of giving your pregnant friends cute baby clothes, give them this book! It is so important to start your children's relationship with food off correctly - this book will explain very simply how to do it and why you must do it. Personally, I did not care for most of her recipes (I am a vegetarian), but you don't need to use her recipes. You just need to cook regularly for your family!