Nursery World - Health & Wellbeing: How not to use food as a reward

Using food as a reward can set up emotional ties to certain foods and promote a problematic idea of food hierarchy. By Annette Rawstrone

Healthy eating habits start early

If you eat all your peas, you can have pudding.’ ‘You can’t have ice-cream if you don’t tidy up your toys.’ Or, ‘You’re looking sad, let's have a biscuit to cheer you up.’ How many times as a child did you hear comments like these? The majority of us will have done, but is using food as a reward or bribe something that we should be continuing to do with young children?

‘We live in an environment where foods and drinks high in fat, sugars and salt like sweets, chocolate, doughnuts, crisps, sugary drinks and cake are readily available. This can make it really hard to teach children healthy eating habits and behaviour and to always make the right choices,’ says Helena Gibson-Moore, nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation.

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