Step up to the plate, dads, and give your kids a better chance in life
CAPE Town musician Dave Goldberg spends as much time in the kitchen preparing meals and lunchboxes for his three sons as he does in his music studio.
“These guys keep me busy: haven’t slept in 10 years,” he joked.
His partner, Niki Rowan, has a demanding job, and although “she does loads of research on what the boys should be eating, I am the one who buys and prepares the food”, said Goldberg. I
He is not the norm, but new studies show that the involvement of fathers in physical activity and food can be a “game-changer in healthy lifestyles for kids”.
At a conference in Cape Town this week hosted by the International Society of Behaviour in Nutrition and Physical Activity, Australian professor Philip Morgan — founder of the obesity prevention programme Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids — said dads were overlooked as a powerful influence on the health of their kids.
“We are not saying it doesn’t work with mothers — it’s just that their influence is well-researched and expected in our society,” said Morgan.
His study found that children who eat lots of high-energy foods but few vegetables are often mimicking their fathers. So, when dads get involved in the family food, it needs to happen in an informed way.
Morgan said programmes that targeted dads should have a message of “come and have fun with your kids” rather than “come and learn how to get more active and eat vegetables”.
Also, it doesn’t help to say: “Dads, get your children off screens because their metabolic health is at risk.”
What works is for fathers to have quality time with their children. Yet dads spend on average 3.5 minutes a week in meaningful conversation with them (compared with the 1 500 minutes the kids are spending on screens).
“Are you too busy to do the thing that you will regret in 10 years?” Morgan asked.
The same goes for food preparation: fast foods are quick and convenient, and in the guise of being treats often become regular meals.
Rachel Toku-Appiah, manager of the Graça Machel Trust’s nutrition programme, said: “Fast foods are aggressively marketed in South Africa, yet nobody is marketing apples.”
Some adverts even depicted fast food as something that isn’t just eaten once in a while when the family is “on the move” but as a hot meal eaten at home off plates at a set table on a regular night.
“The message is that it isn’t just convenient, it can also replace homecooked food. From there it is a downward spiral,” said Toku-Appiah.