I wouldn’t dismiss a study just because it was done on mice. My understanding is that scientists have tested and respected ways of transferring findings in mice to insights for humans.
Anecdotally, I've found this to be surprisingly impactful. One of my brothers was a bodybuilder/athlete who ate clean and exercised a lot early in life. The rest of us were typical "mountain dew and warcraft" types. As we all enter our 30s, fit brother is able to do things the rest of us can't get away with, like eat a box of donuts a day for a weeks straight and keep an impressively lean figure, even when neglecting his fitness routines. Surely this would take a toll if he did it constantly, but his metabolism appears to have a "buffer" that my other brothers don't/didn't have at the same age.
Really makes me regret all that young stress eating, and a crazy example of how "The body keeps the score" w/r/t early life experiences.
I was a fat kid and I'm hit by the same regret every now and then (mice studies or not) when I compare myself with early-thin people. Two ideas cheer me up:
-Our starting point does not determine where we end up. An early lead is a big advantage but plenty of people have overcome the hand they were dealt through work and forming good habits. Being in the top quintile (at lots of things, fitness included) is not that hard once you get in the groove.
-We probably traded that early edge in fitness for some other capacity that we see ourselves as more "naturally" gifted in. Maybe you're better at abstract reasoning? Computers in general? So yeah, that negative might be balanced by a quality you developed in your early years by playing all the warcraft. Looking back I can see lots of good things in my life came from hours and hours of online gaming and forums - being fluent in English is probably one the largest (and easiest to acquire) edges I have over most Europeans and it came from umpteen late night CS sessions with Americans.
> Your starting point does not determine where you end up.
First sentence of the article: "Eating too much fat and sugar as a child can alter your microbiome for life, even if you later learn to eat healthier, a new study in mice suggests." So yes, eating bad as a kid means that you'll always be worse off and never get to where others are.
I have seen plenty of obese childhood friends transform themselves into thin people through discipline and hard work. Is it harder for them to keep the weight off than for other friends who have had six-packs since 10? You bet. Are they doing it anyway? You bet. Am I one of them? Not at all :)
Most of research shows that doing that is hard and very few people are able to keep it up so yeah, congrats for those able to do it, but it would be better not to place such burdens on people from the get go if possible.
You have to pay for this cost forever. I've been going through it for 10 years now and I'd rather just not have to care about this or invest on it as much :)
No doubt! I wish I hadn't grown up obese, it was probably the most damaging thing to ever happen to me psychologically. It's not fun being the fattest kid in school. But there's only so much your parents can get right - I was loved, well-cared for, never abused or molested. I'll never know what sort of burden someone who grows up in extreme poverty or around violence carries.
Could my parents have fed me a few cheeseburgers less? Absolutely. But it's a very small tarnish all things considered.
The end of that sentence says, "a new study in mice suggests." It later suggested that the effect may last up to 6 years post-puberty, which is a more than a few decades shy of claiming that it remains true for all humans for their entire life. And even later, it said that exercise may compensate for it by building up other similar bacteria.
IIRC, the "buffer" is because your body has to expend extra energy to make more fat cells if they aren't already there. Even if you lose weight after being fat, the extra fat cells are still there, so it takes less energy for your body to get fat again.
Nah it depends how you loose weight. If you properly do some kind of body re-composition diet where you gain muscle and loose fat mass and also change your BMR a bit, you can go in and out of this "metabolic buffer" state. My metabolic buffer lasts for about a month and a half and then I notice muscle mass going down and fat going up and my BMR changes.
I'm the opposite - I was thin as a kid, and gained weight only in my 30's, for no reason that I could figure out.
My diet did not change, I rarely eat junk food, no sweetened drinks except tea, and I prefer vegetables over other food, and all my meals are cooked at home (no restaurant food, no pre-made food - not even cereal).
And yet, I keep gaining weight. I attribute it to eating too much of the healthy food I do eat, but I can't help it, I'm too hungry otherwise - but of course that doesn't really answer the question of why.
Oh, and if I exercise my hunger skyrockets and I gain even more.
> I was thin as a kid, and gained weight only in my 30's, for no reason that I could figure out.
That's pretty commonplace. But there are things happening that nobody tells you about. I can't fit into the pants I wore in my 20's anymore (not for a long time). But I don't weigh that much more. Being observant, I noticed that men over 30 simply did not have the slim hips that younger men do.
Googling it confirmed my suspicions - your hip bones grow wider as an adult, by a fair chunk.
Muscle mass, itself, plays a big part in metabolism. Two people with similar builds, weighing the same, but with very different body compositions (say a weight lifter versus couch potato) will burn different amounts of calories both at rest and when performing various physical activities. The weight lifter going on a 5-mile walk will, typically, be burning more calories than the couch potato. Even just overnight while sleeping, the weight lifter will be burning more calories.
From my armchair, the microbiome aspect of this study seems like something that would vary significantly between mice and humans (when the bacterial environment over a few months in mouse-time is being extrapolated to many years in human-time).
Might be wishful thinking since I didn't eat very well as a teenager.
>We studied mice, but the effect we observed is equivalent to kids having a Western diet, high in fat and sugar
Is there any evidence beyond correlation that high fat diets are unhealthy?
Also the researchers measured mice intestinal biome at 14 weeks, given that the lifespan of bacteria is probably similar whether in mice or in humans, I wonder if the comparison to human lifespan is valid, considering that a transition that takes x mice-years may only take y human-months, so to speak.
we have good evidence that partially hydrogenated oils are directly responsible for cardiovascular disease, I believe. "High healthy fats" diets? Probably not as much of a well-studied link there.
I would 100% agree that a high-sugar low-fat diet is more dangerous than eating high-fat low-sugar, but high-fat high-sugar is a hell of a lot worse than either of the other combinations - and a more common diet in the population at large. That's probably more relevant to this study, as limited as it is.
What kind of fats are we talking about exactly. Trans-fats? Rancid fats. Fats in cured meat? Fats from seed oils? What kind of seeds? Vegetable fats? If so again what kind? Maybe you think olive oil is okay. What if I told you 90% of olive oil is adulterated? Animal fat? What's that animal been eating?
The last one is interesting. Before WWII frozen chicken really wasn't a thing because frozen chicken tasted rancid after it was thawed. Someone figured out you could fix that by switching the feed from linseed to corn.
Well, that's depressing, especially since parents make most of the choices for children. "Your parents fed you bad food so I guess you're screwed." Yay.
I wouldn’t think of it that way! Think about the control you have now.
My mother was so into sugar and had other medical issues and had all her teeth pulled and dentures by 35. I was born into an extremely high insulin environment and was morbidly obese by 8.
I just hit my 4 year anniversary of carbohydrate recovery and I’ve made super significant change in my weight, cholesterol, A1C and tons of other unmeasurables.
Seems like this is something that could be treated, perhaps a slightly more sophisticated version of, stop eating sugar and "take these probiotic pills/foods."
That's mostly true for what the kid eats, but not really how much the kid eats. Childhood obesity is largely genetic, the correlation between an adoptee's BMI is stronger with that of their biological parents than with their host family.
Yes, also if you feed a kid corporate garbage they will believe it is food, i.e. whatever we experience as a child is "normal." Later, these habits are very hard to break. These folks tend to believe you need "will power" to force down actual delicious/nutritious food. Do the opposite and enjoy healthy food from the get-go.
There is more to the story of childhood diet than simple narratives of cheap nutrition, though that certainly plays a massive role. Consider, for instance, eating disorders, including some which may be mistaken for playing into aforementioned narrative, such as binge eating (a common symptom among eating disorders in general and often co-morbid with eating comforting but "bad" food) and picky eating (such as ARFID, also correlated with eating comforting but "bad" food). In neither situation is the consumption of the "bad" food the cause or most even the most harmful symptom.
Speak for yourself. I have some issues with food addiction and have absolutely binged on celery, Greek yogurt, broccoli, etc. in an unsuccessful attempt to eat healthier without fixing the root issue.
Of course I prefer to binge on pizza but I’ll overeat just about anything.
Overeating means eating so much your life is negatively impacted in some way. Gaining weight is definitely an example of a negative impact but certainly not the only one.
I would eat until I felt sick. Sometimes I’d have a food hangover the next day.
These foods are so fibrous it's difficult to have anything resembling a binge, even if the volume seems high.
A large bag of chips contains an average 1200 calories. Anyone can eat that in a sitting. An apple averages 93 calories, it would take you 13 to yield 1200 calories. Broccoli florets have 25 calories; meaning you'd have to consume 48. I don't believe for a second you've ever eaten 48 broccoli florets in a row.
Yes, emotional eating / stress eating is its own problem which isn't dictated by a given food, but is absolutely facilitated by food, to the extent that in absence of ultra-processed foods binge-eating is far less likely, and drastically reduced.
> these foods are so fibrous it’s difficult to have anything resembling a binge
You’re talking about eating too many calories, I’m talking about overeating and binging. They are related, but not the same. It is absolutely binging to eat broccoli to the point where you feel sick and can’t sleep and contemplate making yourself vomit (speaking from experience here), even if calorie-wise it’s less than a donut.
True in some cases, but most people are not willing to eat to the point of suffering and will adjust to avoid this. I remember eating a 16” pizza once as a kid and lying in the car afterwards feeling sick, but I never did it again to that extent. Leaving ned a valuable lesson ... still love pizza though ... gluten-free pizza that is.
Food has a different purpose in your state than enjoyment and taste. Did you have siblings that stole your food as a kid? Any ideas why the compulsion to fill your stomach to that point?
Broccoli is not a "trigger food". That's usually simple carbs, sugar, fat. These facilitate binge-eating in every way. I don't think binge-eating is defined specifically as eating to the point of it being painful, it's overeating to the extent it's habitual and difficult to stop.
My point is that "overconsumption" has a very different meaning inside the context of "underconsumption" to the point that binge eating is a substantial source of your calories and might not be considered "overconsumption" at all. If you don't eat the apple in the first place avoiding junk food doesn't do any good. Furthermore, there are probably hundreds of millions of people silently malnourishing themselves through fad diets that non-doctors prescribe and overexercising. Such a rigid view of nutrition as the parent poster implied (e.g., health problems in america are generally traceable back to high availability of food high in sugar and fat but low in fiber and a culture of non-exercise) obscures deeply complex ways that people consume food and how this is informed through the media and social norms.
Anyway, I'm not gonna stop chugging milkshakes any time soon; I need the nutrition to gain weight.
I'm about 30 years old now and my diet is pretty much shit. It's actually kind of funny/embarrassing when my shopping cart has bags of pizza rolls and hot pockets. I take full responsibility, but I must say I'd have a much easier time if I had grown up eating healthy foods from the beginning.
Luckily, I don't overeat, so I'm skinny and somehow have good cholesterol and blood pressure, but I know this will come back to bite me at some point.
There is hope. Tipping my vintage, my mom used to buy 14 boxes of King Vitamin cereal every 2 weeks. My siblings and I ate a full box each day, most at breakfast, with whole milk, the rest after school. We were very popular because we had so many toys that came in the cereal boxes, we'd just hand them to the neighbor kids.
As an adult, I started discovering foods that were startlingly delicious. For example, a fully ripened pear, when all the pears I'd eaten were harder than apples. U-pick cherries in season. Strawberries that you didn't need to dip in powdered sugar. Darker and darker chocolates to the point I can't eat milk chocolate any more. The way my wife prepares salmon, simply broiled with a little salt, pepper and soy sauce is fantastic. Fast food is Chipotle, which for fast food is as fresh and healthy as you're going to get.
Make a point of exploring quality flavorful foods. It's enriching in many ways.
Yes, this is exactly what I was getting at, that it is something "difficult."
Imagine trying to convince a person from the stone age (or even the early 1900s) that an amazing plate of sauteed vegetables, rice/beans, sliced fruits, and steak/fish/chicken were something you had to force yourself to eat.
They'd probably punch you in the face.
> I'm skinny and somehow have good cholesterol and blood pressure, but I know this will come back to bite me at some point.
Yes, our bodies can tolerate almost anything in while young. But if we want to make it thru our fifties and not be miserable or dead, I urge a different tack.
It extends all the way to not only consuming healthy foods but also learning to prepare/cook them as well.
I found out the hard way about the cooking part in College (ate healthy @ home but didn't care for the cooking bit, and it was considered "for girls" so my parents didn't press). Then I tons of allergy and other diet related issues after I moved out until well into my 20s.
I'm now committed to not only cooking healthy for my kids but teaching them at an appropriate age to learn how to make (and procure) the dishes as well.
It is true that cooking is not a focus when raising boys. However, the best cooks in my family were men. Anecdotal of course, but Most chefs are men too, which seems like a contradiction of sorts.
Maybe like the above poster (and myself) men learn to appreciate the benefits of cooking like lower cost, fun family activity, and usually healthier.
At first glance this seems very obviously wrong. Can you elaborate why you think there is no value in understanding the impact of things like diet on development and beyond?
I must say as a parent it's pretty frustrating that we battle day in day out to try and maintain something resembling a good diet for our kids, but at least superficially their actual health honestly appears indistinguishable from kids in families where they really don't bother at all. It would be nice to have some real evidence that this is making a big difference.
Look at the obesity statistics by age, this is something that will pay off far into the future imo.
One good thing my parents taught me is that vegetables can be eaten without cheese or salt, and I currently eat healthier than anyone I know, and it's not a struggle at all for me.
It's just "normal" and I'm accustomed to it. I think this can still be trained as an adult, but it's probably easiest if you never have to "transition" or break out of bad habits. Wishing your family the best.
As someone who lived both sides of that situation: you just can't know. If anything, because the minute they leave the home they will be free to eat shit like all their peers do, and might even do it with more passion since it carries an element of transgression.
It's the same with all things in parenting: you do your best and hope they will understand you did it out of love. But there are no guarantees.
I was thinking the same thing. My son is an athlete, but he used to not eat really well. So I tried to get the diet used from other elite athletes, but I quickly learned that they often had terrible diets. So you ask, if Lebron James was raised on this diet then how bad could it be?
Coincidentally, what made him into a healthy eater is that he found that food with lots of sugar and fat made him feel worse. Oddly, it doesn't happen to me at all, but he grew to be sensitive to it for some reason that we never understood. But he eats extremely healthy, if not a bit bland, now -- and is a great athlete.
> Why does it have to be a battle? A balanced diet can delicious with little fuss.
Well, I can only conclude either you don't have kids, live in a very different setting, or you're some kind of super parent :-)
The main reasons are (a) the kids are highly attracted to foods that constitute a poor diet and (b) they are constantly exposed to opportunities to consume those foods.
At its peak we were taking them to 2 - 3 birthday parties a weekend at which they were presented with unlimited candy, giant pieces of cake, sugary drinks, and a humungous bag of lollies to take home. Then at school the same children bring sweets to school and hand them out to the whole class, trade things out of their lunch boxes at lunch time, etc etc. Unsurprisingly they routinely come home having eaten only a small portion of the food we gave them and tell us they "weren't very hungry".
One of the interesting revelations as a parent has been how little control you really have over what your children are exposed to and how much is dictated by the society around them.
That kids are attracted to candy is a constant. I was referring to ease of food preparation, since that was the context.
Notwithstanding the food-swaps at school (I think to liken this all to be candy is hyperbolic), the kids eat what you feed them for breakfast and dinner. Whether this is a battle has little to do with the nature of the food itself. I'm sure you don't believe that perpetually relenting to kids when they whine, piss and moan will make your life easier - they'll normalize the behavior to get what they want and misbehavior will be the norm. Being a parent is the battle and it doesn't end at letting kids eat candy any time they want, which makes healthy eating a moot point.
It doesn't make that big of a difference until later in life. Compare your 30-year-old kid to the 30-year-old kids of the parents who didn't try as hard and your answer will be there.
As a few folks have mentioned it often manifests itself as hyperactivity, depression, and inability to focus. Basically a blood sugar rollercoaster.
Young bodies can tolerate even crappy diets. It's a different matter when older however. If it isn't turned around by their fifties say, they'll be in for a world of hurt. That's why it habits must start young.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] threadReally makes me regret all that young stress eating, and a crazy example of how "The body keeps the score" w/r/t early life experiences.
-Our starting point does not determine where we end up. An early lead is a big advantage but plenty of people have overcome the hand they were dealt through work and forming good habits. Being in the top quintile (at lots of things, fitness included) is not that hard once you get in the groove.
-We probably traded that early edge in fitness for some other capacity that we see ourselves as more "naturally" gifted in. Maybe you're better at abstract reasoning? Computers in general? So yeah, that negative might be balanced by a quality you developed in your early years by playing all the warcraft. Looking back I can see lots of good things in my life came from hours and hours of online gaming and forums - being fluent in English is probably one the largest (and easiest to acquire) edges I have over most Europeans and it came from umpteen late night CS sessions with Americans.
First sentence of the article: "Eating too much fat and sugar as a child can alter your microbiome for life, even if you later learn to eat healthier, a new study in mice suggests." So yes, eating bad as a kid means that you'll always be worse off and never get to where others are.
You have to pay for this cost forever. I've been going through it for 10 years now and I'd rather just not have to care about this or invest on it as much :)
Could my parents have fed me a few cheeseburgers less? Absolutely. But it's a very small tarnish all things considered.
My diet did not change, I rarely eat junk food, no sweetened drinks except tea, and I prefer vegetables over other food, and all my meals are cooked at home (no restaurant food, no pre-made food - not even cereal).
And yet, I keep gaining weight. I attribute it to eating too much of the healthy food I do eat, but I can't help it, I'm too hungry otherwise - but of course that doesn't really answer the question of why.
Oh, and if I exercise my hunger skyrockets and I gain even more.
That's pretty commonplace. But there are things happening that nobody tells you about. I can't fit into the pants I wore in my 20's anymore (not for a long time). But I don't weigh that much more. Being observant, I noticed that men over 30 simply did not have the slim hips that younger men do.
Googling it confirmed my suspicions - your hip bones grow wider as an adult, by a fair chunk.
I've also noticed my shoe size is larger as well.
Either way, you're eating more than you burn. The important part is you're aware of the issue
Might be wishful thinking since I didn't eat very well as a teenager.
Is there any evidence beyond correlation that high fat diets are unhealthy?
Also the researchers measured mice intestinal biome at 14 weeks, given that the lifespan of bacteria is probably similar whether in mice or in humans, I wonder if the comparison to human lifespan is valid, considering that a transition that takes x mice-years may only take y human-months, so to speak.
I would 100% agree that a high-sugar low-fat diet is more dangerous than eating high-fat low-sugar, but high-fat high-sugar is a hell of a lot worse than either of the other combinations - and a more common diet in the population at large. That's probably more relevant to this study, as limited as it is.
There's data pointing that Omega-6 fatty acids (primarily vegetable/seed oils and trans fats) are harmful.
See the following talk by Dr. Chris Knobbe:
https://youtu.be/7kGnfXXIKZM
You can jump here for the studies:
https://youtu.be/7kGnfXXIKZM?t=2020
What kind of fats are we talking about exactly. Trans-fats? Rancid fats. Fats in cured meat? Fats from seed oils? What kind of seeds? Vegetable fats? If so again what kind? Maybe you think olive oil is okay. What if I told you 90% of olive oil is adulterated? Animal fat? What's that animal been eating?
The last one is interesting. Before WWII frozen chicken really wasn't a thing because frozen chicken tasted rancid after it was thawed. Someone figured out you could fix that by switching the feed from linseed to corn.
My mother was so into sugar and had other medical issues and had all her teeth pulled and dentures by 35. I was born into an extremely high insulin environment and was morbidly obese by 8.
I just hit my 4 year anniversary of carbohydrate recovery and I’ve made super significant change in my weight, cholesterol, A1C and tons of other unmeasurables.
That's mostly true for what the kid eats, but not really how much the kid eats. Childhood obesity is largely genetic, the correlation between an adoptee's BMI is stronger with that of their biological parents than with their host family.
Of course I prefer to binge on pizza but I’ll overeat just about anything.
I would eat until I felt sick. Sometimes I’d have a food hangover the next day.
A large bag of chips contains an average 1200 calories. Anyone can eat that in a sitting. An apple averages 93 calories, it would take you 13 to yield 1200 calories. Broccoli florets have 25 calories; meaning you'd have to consume 48. I don't believe for a second you've ever eaten 48 broccoli florets in a row.
Yes, emotional eating / stress eating is its own problem which isn't dictated by a given food, but is absolutely facilitated by food, to the extent that in absence of ultra-processed foods binge-eating is far less likely, and drastically reduced.
You’re talking about eating too many calories, I’m talking about overeating and binging. They are related, but not the same. It is absolutely binging to eat broccoli to the point where you feel sick and can’t sleep and contemplate making yourself vomit (speaking from experience here), even if calorie-wise it’s less than a donut.
Food has a different purpose in your state than enjoyment and taste. Did you have siblings that stole your food as a kid? Any ideas why the compulsion to fill your stomach to that point?
https://www.travelpulse.com/news/airlines/airline-passengers...
Anyway, I'm not gonna stop chugging milkshakes any time soon; I need the nutrition to gain weight.
I'm about 30 years old now and my diet is pretty much shit. It's actually kind of funny/embarrassing when my shopping cart has bags of pizza rolls and hot pockets. I take full responsibility, but I must say I'd have a much easier time if I had grown up eating healthy foods from the beginning.
Luckily, I don't overeat, so I'm skinny and somehow have good cholesterol and blood pressure, but I know this will come back to bite me at some point.
As an adult, I started discovering foods that were startlingly delicious. For example, a fully ripened pear, when all the pears I'd eaten were harder than apples. U-pick cherries in season. Strawberries that you didn't need to dip in powdered sugar. Darker and darker chocolates to the point I can't eat milk chocolate any more. The way my wife prepares salmon, simply broiled with a little salt, pepper and soy sauce is fantastic. Fast food is Chipotle, which for fast food is as fresh and healthy as you're going to get.
Make a point of exploring quality flavorful foods. It's enriching in many ways.
Yes, this is exactly what I was getting at, that it is something "difficult."
Imagine trying to convince a person from the stone age (or even the early 1900s) that an amazing plate of sauteed vegetables, rice/beans, sliced fruits, and steak/fish/chicken were something you had to force yourself to eat.
They'd probably punch you in the face.
> I'm skinny and somehow have good cholesterol and blood pressure, but I know this will come back to bite me at some point.
Yes, our bodies can tolerate almost anything in while young. But if we want to make it thru our fifties and not be miserable or dead, I urge a different tack.
I found out the hard way about the cooking part in College (ate healthy @ home but didn't care for the cooking bit, and it was considered "for girls" so my parents didn't press). Then I tons of allergy and other diet related issues after I moved out until well into my 20s.
I'm now committed to not only cooking healthy for my kids but teaching them at an appropriate age to learn how to make (and procure) the dishes as well.
The instapot helped me a lot in "grown up" meal department.
Maybe like the above poster (and myself) men learn to appreciate the benefits of cooking like lower cost, fun family activity, and usually healthier.
Is this just careerism, needing to get published to advance a career?
At first glance this seems very obviously wrong. Can you elaborate why you think there is no value in understanding the impact of things like diet on development and beyond?
One good thing my parents taught me is that vegetables can be eaten without cheese or salt, and I currently eat healthier than anyone I know, and it's not a struggle at all for me.
It's just "normal" and I'm accustomed to it. I think this can still be trained as an adult, but it's probably easiest if you never have to "transition" or break out of bad habits. Wishing your family the best.
It's the same with all things in parenting: you do your best and hope they will understand you did it out of love. But there are no guarantees.
Coincidentally, what made him into a healthy eater is that he found that food with lots of sugar and fat made him feel worse. Oddly, it doesn't happen to me at all, but he grew to be sensitive to it for some reason that we never understood. But he eats extremely healthy, if not a bit bland, now -- and is a great athlete.
The evidence will come later if it hasn't already. Their behavior might be a hint. It impacts focus, brain development, everything.
Well, I can only conclude either you don't have kids, live in a very different setting, or you're some kind of super parent :-)
The main reasons are (a) the kids are highly attracted to foods that constitute a poor diet and (b) they are constantly exposed to opportunities to consume those foods.
At its peak we were taking them to 2 - 3 birthday parties a weekend at which they were presented with unlimited candy, giant pieces of cake, sugary drinks, and a humungous bag of lollies to take home. Then at school the same children bring sweets to school and hand them out to the whole class, trade things out of their lunch boxes at lunch time, etc etc. Unsurprisingly they routinely come home having eaten only a small portion of the food we gave them and tell us they "weren't very hungry".
One of the interesting revelations as a parent has been how little control you really have over what your children are exposed to and how much is dictated by the society around them.
Another thing I didn't expect is arguing with the spouse about it, who will also undermine the effort.
Notwithstanding the food-swaps at school (I think to liken this all to be candy is hyperbolic), the kids eat what you feed them for breakfast and dinner. Whether this is a battle has little to do with the nature of the food itself. I'm sure you don't believe that perpetually relenting to kids when they whine, piss and moan will make your life easier - they'll normalize the behavior to get what they want and misbehavior will be the norm. Being a parent is the battle and it doesn't end at letting kids eat candy any time they want, which makes healthy eating a moot point.
Young bodies can tolerate even crappy diets. It's a different matter when older however. If it isn't turned around by their fifties say, they'll be in for a world of hurt. That's why it habits must start young.