Eating junk all the time or even often is never OK. I think everything has to be in moderation. It is not only about what you eat but also how much of it. It is OK to eat a cookie a day, but not OK to eat a pack of it.

We always ate a lot of fruits and vegetables. DD ate and still eats food that most kids don't eat like brussel sprouts, cauliflower and stuff like that. Just because I made her to eat that since she was young, so she developed a taste for it. We avoided or limited sweets and baked goods. DD is away to college and cooks for herself (doesn't live in a dorm), she eats what she ate at home most of the time. DD drinks whole milk though. But since she does it in moderation it is not bad for her. Glass of milk a day is not a big deal.

I have always fed my kids cereal for breakfast. In winter, it's cream of wheat or oatmeal. The rest of the year, raisin bran, chex, wheaties, and 'plain' cereal. Sometimes, I get a box of fruit loops or apple jacks. I also like bagels, but my kids don't. On weekends, I might cook eggs & bacon, waffles or pancakes and every once in a while, I make chorizo con huevos, or biscuits & gravy. Those are pretty high in fat.

For lunch, I pack SD a sandwich on whole wheat bread, cheese/peanut butter crackers, pudding, applesauce and juice. Sometimes I put a snack size candy from her halloween bag or a cookie. At home, I make the same or grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup. Occasionally, since it's only on weekends, we might make burritos or pizza's on english muffins. We have made corn dogs & fries or nachos, but it's rare. I usually make everything from scratch and it takes a lot of time sometimes, like the beans for burritos. (I hate canned beans)

For dinner, we usually have chicken. I like it grilled with vegetables and my husband likes sauce on it, so sometimes we fix it with cream of chicken soup with rice pilaf or noodles. It takes a long time to make lasagna or enchiladas so we don't get that very often. For beef, he likes tacos, spaghetti, meatloaf or hamburgers. It does get boring sometimes and we try new things too.

I guess the changes that we've made, we started using whole wheat products more (bread & pasta) and cut back soda and sweets. I've never been big on pre-packaged foods since I love to cook and it tastes much better (and is better for you since you can eliminate fats & add things) You can also control sodium when you cook from scratch. I give SD skim milk with all her meals. (except lunch when she gets 100% fruit juice, not juice drink that is only 10% and mostly sugar water) We also stopped eating out very much, which SD thinks we are mean for not eating out. It's actually gotten very expensive with gas prices what they are, so we are not eating out at all lately. Of course, we just tell her that it's healthier to eat at home.

I like fish but honestly don't like to cook it. My BF cooks most of the time including fish. We also try to eat soups and salads. We rarely eat beef. And we don't eat pork at all. Yes, gas is outrageous and overall prices are awful and we both have kids in college, so we cut out on eating out as well. Sometimes lunch on the weekend if we go somewhere and get hungry.

Sometimes I like to ask DD one the phone what she ate and I am always pleased when she says something simple but nutricious. I worry if she is eating enough, she lost a lot of weight while in college, but she walks a lot, i mean a lot, maybe that's why.

OK, what's chorizo con huevos? Something or other with eggs?

We eat chicken way too much, because my kids like it and it's relatively cheap and there are lots of ways to make it. If it were up to me and I were rich, I'd eat chicken once a week, and alternate between hamburger and steak the rest of the days, with potatoes. Or pork about once a month, and homegrown rack of lamb once in awhile. IMO, life without beef wouldn't be worth living.

We almost never eat Mexican food, since several of my kids detest it, and I'm not crazy about it either. Almost no one in my family likes the texture of beans, although sometimes we have baked beans which are ok if you put enough maple syrup on them.

Chorizo is a mexican sausage (cooked with fried potatoes & eggs). It can be very greasy & spicy but the kids love it. We have it maybe once or twice a month, if that.

I'm part Mexican so I learned to cook authentic mexican food. I make my enchilada sauce from scratch (no canned sauce here) and I cook the beans, then serve them refried. I don't use any oil or grease to refry them, just the water they are boiled in. They are very healthy and with a little jack cheese melted in, tasty.

I've never put maple syrup on baked beans... is that sweeter than brown sugar.

Maple syrup is probably a bit less sweet than brown sugar - hard to compare. Maple syrup makes anything (almost) taste better - but only the real thing of course - not the "pancake syrup" made out of corn syrup. I prefer the grade A syrup, but some people like the stronger flavor of Grade B.

I LOVE Mexican food. Authentic one from Mexican town. I used to work in Latino neighbourhood and those restaurants were the best. It is totally different from chain mexican places, taste great and is cheap. I don't cook it though, don't know how to.

How about side dishes? I bet you none of you eats buckwheat. It is just good by itself with butter or with milk or as a side dish with meats. It takes long to cook, but I love the taste and the whole house smells. They don't like it here, but it is a staple in Eastern Europe. I also like couscous as a side dish. Oh I make great potatoe pancakes and zucinni pancakes, not to eat by itself but as a side dish with meats. I get bored with potatoes or rice or pasta.

I do not like maple syrup. Actually I don't like any syrups. It is funny like if you didn't eat something growing up it is so hard to get used to it.

You live in New England and have never heard of chourizo?

In Southeastern Mass(and other parts of new england with a heavy portuguese influence)... chorizo is called chourico(sha-reese)? or linguica (lin-gwe-sa) both are a portuguese sausage. They are the same but different :).

Same spices chourico has more fat pieces and more pepper linguica has less fat more solid sausage in a different "casing".

Like the difference between an oscar mayer hotdog versus a nathans hotdog ... same but different.

Portuguese people put chourico/linguica in everything except milk dishes( ice cream, cereal, etc.)

Lots of heart disease in portuguese community can't imagine why!!

but I eat fish and seafood sometimes.

The health of my OWN diet can vary wildly from day to day - today was mostly coffee, soymilk and french fries, but Friday was almost all fresh vegetables. Left to my own devices I sometimes devolve into the grad student diet of cold coffee and whatever I can steal from the department coffee room, but I really do prefer to eat properly. Whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, cheese and dairy, that sort of thing.
I rarely cook anything out of a bag or can. Almost everything I make is from scratch from fresh vegetables. I eat quite a lot of cheese, but since I don't eat meat or drink cowmilk (I drink soymilk), that's not really a problem for fat and cholesterol. I drink pop sometimes, averaging about a can every other day. Popcorn or yogurt covered raisins are my favourite evening snacks. Dessert (if it happens) is usually fruit or yogurt, but can be cake or something too.

When I have any of my N&Ns with me, or when we have A__, it's square meals at regular intervals - regardless of what I feel like eating or how tired I am.
I try to "kid-friendly" my meals for A__ and the N&Ns by chopping my vegetables smaller for sauces or skipping chopped onions in the tuna salad. A__ HATES mushrooms, so I cook them on the side if we have something mushroomy when he's with us. My oldest niece HATES lettuce, but loves broccoli and cabbage, so I make coleslaw when she's around. My youngest niece says apples hurt her tongue, but she likes apple sauce, so she has that instead.

A__ is limited to one can of pop in a day when he is with us. But he gets to choose when to drink it (it only has to be after breakfast). We don't keep much junk in the house, but he's allowed to have one junky snack in the day if he requests it (a small quantity of icecream or chips or chocolate or jujubes, etc) and only if it's not too close to an approaching proper meal.

Junky snack privileges may be removed for bad behavior, but I've never given any of them junk food as straight bribery. I've been known to tell my N&Ns "If you guys are good all morning, we'll go to the park this afternoon to play" and then I'll "surprise" them with a stop for icecream on the way home - they know the "surprise" is coming, but they pretend to be surprised... Or when A__ is good at the grocery store, he might get to pick dessert for that night, but he chooses fruit as often as he chooses cake and he often gets a high five and hug instead!

My children ate what I cook for them, being home at 5PM for dinner was mandatory at our house. If they didn't want to eat, I made them sit at the table anyway and they always ate. They knew if they didn't eat they didn't have desert or snacks later. Snacks were cookies and a glass of milk, never pop and chips. We had sodas and chips on camping trips sometimes when we barbecued. There was no thought of healthy food, just cook, eat and get out of the kitchen. No eating all day long. LOL