?She had that guilty look from the second I came near her,? recalls Annette Prouse*  of her six-year-old daughter, Ella, when she found her holding a can of Coca-Cola. In an effort to instil healthy eating habits in her children, Prouse, a lawyer and mom of three in Milton, Ont., doesn?t allow her kids to have pop, candy or chips, though she admits that she drinks multiple Cokes a day herself. She hopes her rules will help her kids avoid her bad habits. But it was one of her cans?left out on a nearby living room table?that Ella had snuck off with.
Until then, Ella had never shown an interest in pop, but a few days earlier, her grandma had taken her and her eight-year-old sister, Sophia, out for lunch, ?They both came home and proudly told me how they?d had pop,? Prouse recalls. While she says her daughters are usually pretty good at following the rules, realizing that the newly discovered sweet, fuzzy joy of Coca-Cola was easily available in her house was clearly too tempting for Ella. Prouse?s story doesn?t surprise Victoria-based registered dietitian Jodi Holland. ?When some kids are really restricted or feel deprived, they may go towards the tendency of hiding food or, when they do have access to those foods, they?re overeating.? While banning kids from junk food might seem like a simple way to create healthy eaters, the truth is a bit more complicated.
The problems with bans

Issues around banning junk food start with defining what that term even means. For Prouse, it...