When starting a serious relationship most couples do not sit down and talk about what type of culture they want to have in their home for food. It often comes up later on, as stress between the couple, or it comes up in stress when relating to children.

Like the money talk, you and your significant other agree on fundamental topics like finances – even though they’re not always fun or easy to discuss but you still do it because it is important!

The conversation about kids is an important one. Do you both agree on having kids? If so, how many? All these visions are important to share before exchanging vows.

Couples enter marriage thinking it’s something they can work out later, or one can change the significant other’s mind, but it rarely ends well. New research says that the No.1 thing couples fight about most is FOOD!

Why is talking about Food important?

We’ve been taught that Good wives are the ones that cook to her husband’s liking! Or a good home chef is the one that succeeds in having empty plates, but different people have different taste palates and each is used to a certain culture to which they’ve been fed all their lives.

At the beginning of the marriage, one may compromise on certain things. But food is the least that a couple can compromise and here falls the clash.

It is one thing to disagree over what to have for dinner. But to argue on a whole Idea, whether to eat healthy or not, bringing junk home or not is the most important factor to tackle.

When the child is born, this clash if not resolved will end with major disagreement between parents overfeeding, and each loses the benefit of a supportive partner, and they may see increased conflict at meals, making an already difficult job harder.

When parents state different rules without agreeing on at least one, mixed messages are delivered to the child which fuels him with anxiety unsure of whose rules apply when.

Children will then tell when parents aren’t united and may try to use that to their advantage, think about a toddler asking the more lenient parent for chocolate and have it! 

Or in the case of a toddler rejecting a certain meal, the lenient parent tends to be less bothered by feeding problems or comes up with an easy solution that enforces the child’s rejection by pressuring the other significantly to offer an alternative meal.

This pressure though it may seem harmful when the child starts eating, but in fact, it reinforced the child’s behavior which will lead to more rejection and fewer ingredients to eat by the day.

The problem begins between parents as to who to blame when things fall outside the limit, and it may be hard for one to admit that the other would have had a healthier approach. 

It is crucial for the sake of the relationship and to benefit your children with a healthier relationship to food, that parents do communicate about what meals were like when growing up, and how they were raised around it, and how it shaped their approach to meals today.

Talking about them will allow partners to agree on many ideas, and reject those that did harm to them more than it did benefit their health.

I hope that this article would benefit many couples and allow them to figure out the best approach to have with their kids.