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Pediatrician Wendy Schofer discusses her article, “Why food perfectionism harms parents.” Wendy explains how the intense worry over family eating habits and ultraprocessed foods is often a symptom of a deeper issue: perfectionism. She highlights the crushing stress parents, particularly physicians, face when trying to meet unrealistic, idyllic standards of health (often seen on social media) while juggling real-life chaos. Wendy argues that this perfectionism, combined with exhaustion, fuels black-and-white thinking about food (healthy vs. unhealthy) and a constant feeling of failure. This conversation is a call to say “enough” to these damaging ideals. Learn how dismantling perfectionism and embracing “realness” can help families build a new, lifelong relationship with food, body, and self.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today we welcome back Wendy Schofer. She’s a pediatrician. Today’s KevinMD article is “Why food perfectionism harms parents.” Wendy, welcome back to the show.

Wendy Schofer: Thank you. It is such a pleasure to be back here with you.

Kevin Pho: All right, well we’ve been talking offline. It’s wonderful, like I said, to have you back, and your most recent article talks about food perfectionism. So for those that didn’t get a chance to read it, tell us what it’s about.

Wendy Schofer: Absolutely. So I actually am writing a lot right now about what it is that I’m seeing in the media, and I had seen a recent article from The Atlantic that was basically talking about how avoiding ultra-processed foods is absolutely a pipe dream for parents. And really dissecting what was happening in that article. There was so much of a lamenting of the stress that parents are under right now and how they’re kind of feeling like they’re stuck between avoiding the doom and gloom and dangers of ultra-processed foods, but not having the time for the whole foods, for the picturesque, picture-perfect, Insta-perfection of happy children joyfully eating these fresh-cooked meals that nobody’s got time for.

And so instead of the article kind of saying, “That’s it, we need to just throw this all in. It’s completely a pipe dream,” I recognize that this is the place that we need to lean into how we feel like we are stuck as parents. And I will quite often, I will also add as physicians, feeling like we’re stuck between the perfectionism of this beauty over here versus saying, “Forget about it. We’re just throwing it all away.”

Kevin Pho: Yeah. So no middle ground, right?

Wendy Schofer: It seems that way. And yet I think that that’s really the opportunity to see, well, what is real right now? Where is the middle ground of where we really are right now, doing our best?

Kevin Pho: Yeah, absolutely. Doing the best with the resources, the time, the bandwidth that we have.

Wendy Schofer: Right, right.

Kevin Pho: And parents are caught in the middle because you have all the media spotlight on ultra-processed foods, but it doesn’t quite give a solution in terms of what can we do other than the other extreme. Right. So when you talk to parents in the exam room or when you coach, what kind of approach, what kind of path, what kind of options do you lay out for them?

Wendy Schofer: Yeah, I appreciate the question because it’s really connecting with them about first, what is it that is important to them? For some parents, they’re just like, “I just want what’s quick and easy. That’s all I can do right now.” And it’s not me coming in and saying, “This is the path for you.” That was the practice that I had taken 15 years ago in the office and that they all told me this doesn’t work because it was my plan. It wasn’t their plan and it wasn’t understanding their goals.

And so now I really first start off with: What’s important to you? What is your goal? And then after that, we really kind of slow it down and start looking at what is it that you see as an opportunity to move you just a little bit closer to that goal. So if it is the goal of having fresh foods, home-prepared meals, or even just looking at less ultra-processed foods, well, what is it that you’re eating more of? We hate going with goals that are “less of” or restriction or cutting out because our brains just hate the vacuum. And so what is in that vacuum? What do you want more of? And it’s really having those step-by-step conversations, which are much slower than what we see when we’re looking online about quick fixes and just cut it all out. And it’s like, that doesn’t work. We need to slow it down.

Kevin Pho: Now in your article, you link some of this issues about food with kind of undiagnosed anxiety in the parents. Right.

Wendy Schofer: I’m just gonna say we all have anxieties. Yeah. We all have worries, concerns; we can call it any which name we want. And I’m just shining a light on how this is kind of what is keeping us awake at night. The things that, as parents, we are concerned about: the health of our children. Well, that is a form of anxiety. Perhaps not diagnosable, perhaps not something that we’re going to seek treatment for, but it is something that is impacting us, the stress that we’re carrying with us every day, as well as the relationships that we’re sharing with our children.

Kevin Pho: How much does social media play a role in this? If you’re doomscrolling and you see all these idyllic meals and something that is always perfect, how much does social media play a role in these anxieties?

Wendy Schofer: I’m gonna make up numbers. I love making up numbers. I’m like, oh, it’s crazy. Off the charts. It’s 90 percent. Let’s just identify that we have a tremendous bombardment of images in our lives. Images that are just depicting one snapshot in time, one perspective, one particular angle. And also having some media literacy here: What is it that that image is trying to sell us?

And it’s something where it has nonstop, it has seeped into our homes. I mean, growing up in the eighties, we had the magazine covers. We had some folks on TV. Sure. And now it’s everywhere. It’s falling with us everywhere that we go, that we have these images that are being doctored, that are trying to sell us on this idea of this picture perfection.

And so, yeah, it impacts us as parents. It impacts our children. It’s impacting us as physicians as well, because we are all swimming in this culture, in this soup. You know, we had the book The Anxious Generation that came out a year and change ago, talking about the impact of the phone-based childhood and quite honestly, so much of the social media on our children’s mental health. We have to expand this to look at how it’s impacting us as adults and the environment that we are all in.

Kevin Pho: So tell us a story where you implemented some of these strategies. It could be coaching or in the exam room where you kind of redirected your patients and their families away from that food perfectionism mentality.

Wendy Schofer: Yeah, absolutely. So the first person that I think of is one of my earliest clients that I worked with where she was losing her mind every evening in that witching hour. She would come home from a long day at work, solo parenting. She had her children coming home from school, and they were hangry. They were so, so hangry. They were kids, somewhere in the range of like five, six years old. And so lots of energy, lots of volume, and she was having the hardest time figuring out how she was going to feed her children healthy food when she had absolutely no bandwidth leftover at the end of the day, and with her children going all over the place in this chaos.

She kept on talking about how, “But this is what it needs to look like. This is what it means for me to be a good mom. Raising healthy kids, it looks a certain way. What’s on their plate looks a certain way.” And so what we actually did was slowed that down to be able to understand so much more about her stress. So again, anxiety. We all can acknowledge stress when sometimes we have some concerns about actually using a name for different emotions. But really understanding her stress and her anxiety about her children’s health, about the role that she was playing as a mom.

And what she started doing was actually focusing on what she needed in that time, that transition between work and home. How she could take care of herself so that she could then focus on what she chose, whether that was this meal, whether this was enjoying time with her family, if it was the meal, meaning the composition of the meal. But instead of feeling like she was being pulled in all these different directions and failing in every direction she was being pulled in, we slowed it down.

And I think that that is such a tremendous opportunity for us right now because everything is snowballing so quickly for our families. Like it’s just, you’re getting carried away thinking we need to go faster, harder, stronger, longer, like all the productivity and the grind, and that’s impacting our families. It’s creating that stress and the anxiety that just is coming together when we’re looking at how we’re feeding our children, and now thinking that we’re doing that wrong. So I, more than anything, slow things down and then start getting a lot of questions about like, “What is really important to you?” Not what is it that society and the images and perhaps even your physician says is important. What is important to you?

Kevin Pho: And obviously that’s gonna be different for every parent, every family, right?

Wendy Schofer: Absolutely. And that’s the thing where so much of social media is selling us that there is this quick fix. This is the go-by, the plan that works for everybody. And I really think that the only thing that works for everybody is really listening to what works for you. You know, really getting it individual and slowing that down. Because again, if people are making it sound like it’s that quick and easy, they’re just selling you something.

Kevin Pho: Is there anything that you’d like to see from a public policy messaging standpoint that you want even mainstream media to focus on, rather than just purely focusing on the ills of ultra-processed food? What are some more nuanced messaging that you like to see?

Wendy Schofer: I feel like a kid in the candy store right now. I would love to see what’s real, what’s real. So as we’re talking about mainstream—and I’m just thinking about the mainstream literature and newspaper articles—talking about the real struggles that folks are having right now, but also the real successes. What is working for our families? Because the more that we hear about the doom and the gloom, the epidemics, the dangers, we’re just staying in this fight-or-flight mode. It is doing a number on our brains as parents and as members of the society.

And so we’re just staying in this black and white: “It’s good. It’s bad. It’s healthy. It’s unhealthy.” Well, that’s just a survival mechanism. And so I wanna see the real discussion about how it’s so much more than just the black and white. As I was talking in the article about really getting into the nuance as well as what is working. What is working? Because there is always something working, and this is really where a lot of the language of coaching is coming out. I call that out because it’s so very different from what I learned in my medical training, which is all about identify a problem and fix it.

Let’s find what’s working and really shine a light on that because that’s what we wanna see more of. And I think that that is really something that we can spotlight more in the media. That’s something that as I’m gonna continue to write and share with you, you’re gonna see more and more from me as well, because we all have a part to do with that.

Kevin Pho: In your article, you write about a potential connection between a parent’s food perfectionism and potential eating disorders or eating behaviors in children. Yeah. Right. So tell us a little bit more about that potential connection.

Wendy Schofer: Yeah, so when I think about where eating disorders kind of really stem from, we don’t have one source. There’s not one answer. But how often it’s about control: control of food, control of portions, control of access, whether that is internal to the individual or a response to how food is being controlled externally. And so a lot of the control is about the food rules. “This is healthy or unhealthy. This is what you’re allowed to have, what you’re not allowed to have.”

And so the perfectionism is something that can be within the individual who experiences disordered eating, and it can also be stemming from those around them. And so I am not saying that parents are the reason that their children have disordered eating, and yet we can also look at how can we address our own concerns about food rules and perfectionism so that we can create an environment where kids can learn about their bodies, about their food, create relationships with that and how we get to grow together.

And so it’s correlation, causation, we can get into all that, but really looking at how there are concerns that perfectionism is hiding underneath the surface. And I see a lot of that in my experience as being a physician who has served with the military and the perfectionism, the rule-based approach to health, how we are seeing dramatic increases in eating disorders in active-duty service members, as well as their family members. And so again, looking at how there’s similarities there with that rule-based approach to health. Perfectionism is hiding underneath the surface when we’re talking about the vast majority of these situations.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Wendy Schofer. She’s a pediatrician. Today’s KevinMD article is “Why food perfectionism harms parents.” Wendy, let’s end with some take-home messages that you wanna leave with the KevinMD audience.

Wendy Schofer: I appreciate it. So I think that really slowing down is the most important thing that we can look at, in particular as parents and physicians. There are a lot of things that are happening all around us that are contributing to stress, and a lot of it is the speed and the go-go-go thinking that we just need to keep going to reach the next endpoint. Slowing down to be in the moment, and also to understand or to witness the impact that this has on us, on our patients, on our families, is really critical. And ultimately giving a name to it. As we’re seeing the concerns in the black and white, the perfectionism, let’s call it what it is, so that we can then kind of see how can we approach this differently in our own lives.

Kevin Pho: Wendy, as always, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and insight. Thank you again for coming back on the show.

Wendy Schofer: Such a pleasure. Thank you so much.