By Jeremy Olson
Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Do any of these sound familiar? Clean your plate or no dessert! Why do you have to be so picky? There are starving people in China! If so, then you’re likely a parent who has gone to battle at the dinner table with kids who refuse to eat the meals prepared for them.
Meal time can be so frustrating. Parents hustle together dinners-sometimes with kids’ sports or activities looming-and pull their children in from their yards or away from games or TV. Only then do their children hold up their noses at what they see on their plates. (When this happens in my house, the immortal words of Weird Al Yankovic emerge: Just eat it!)
It’s more constructive, I suppose, to take advice from an expert such as Dr. Michelle May than the world’s foremost parody singer. So here’s a tip list from May, released by the TOPS Club weight-loss support organization: