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My Child's Diet He isn't attracted to food, but he isn't obese. By Greg Blake MillerPublished: April, 2004

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As I type these lines, I am sitting at the kitchen island next to a bowl of rice and a plateful of Wheat Thins. No, this is not my hi-carb diet. This is my 3-year-old son's lunch and, notably, it has not been eaten. He is in the next room, singing. He sings much better than he eats. At a time when the newspapers relentlessly remind us that America's children are becoming ever more obese, I suppose I should not worry about my son's disinterest in food. There was a story in the newspaper's Living section the other day about 5-year-old children being carted around the mall in "superstrollers," presumably just after a nutritious helping of chicken nuggets. My son had pretty much retired from strollering at 18 months, and he'd never had a chicken nugget in his life. When I put it like that, I think, Lucky me! And I am lucky, but... Let me start with a bit of history. When, 3 1/2 years ago, we were awaiting our boy's arrival, we told ourselves we weren't going to feed him things like, well, chicken nuggets. Wait. Before you call us a pair of self-righteous nutrition snobs, you should know that we've had our comeuppance. Now, at least once a week, we put chicken nuggets in front of the kid and say, "Please, please eat some chicken nuggets." The problem, and the reason for our lapsed idealism, is this: We don't know how the boy stays alive. His first solid food was the usual - Gerber's smooshed peas and pears and an unexpectedly tasty concoction called Apples 'n' Chicken. It seemed we were doing OK. Soon enough he graduated from baby food to...Well, let's see...Hmm... There were no chopped-up hot dogs, no macaroni and cheese, no pot roast carefully cut up into little squares, no cucumbers or lettuce or brussels sprouts. There was an occasional bit of an apple or orange, but, for the most part, there was this: Cheerios, rice and bananas. For months and months he lived on Cheerios, rice and bananas, and, because we heard other children lived on Cheerios, rice and bananas, too, we kept our heads about us. By and by, he discovered chocolate. He really liked chocolate. He liked it so much, in fact, that a few weeks ago he pretty much gave up Cheerios and bananas. Rice, by some miracle, survived. We've strictly rationed the chocolate, though we've made peace with the idea of chocolate chip granola bars by telling ourselves that the fiber somehow cancels out the hydrogenated oil. The burden of the little guy's nutrition would be on rice alone, if it weren't for the fabulous nutritional sleight-of-hand pulled off by America's blessed vegetarian entrepreneurs: soy milk. Thank you, sandal-wearing, Crosby, Stills & Nash-listening, wind-power-consuming producers of this wonder fluid! (And sorry for all the crass stereotyping.) At last measurement, our son was in the 50th percentile for weight. I guess, all things considered, that's not half bad. Greg Blake Miller is a writer and college instructor in Las Vegas. The UC Irvine graduate is a longtime contributor to Churm Publishing, Inc.

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