Just buying vegetables does not make you healthy. I’m staying over at my aunts house for a couple of months while my place is going under renovations. I don’t mind because I’ll get to spend time with my cousins, and pay attention to them.  My god though. When I get to their place, I hear the oldest one claiming there’s nothing to snack on. He’s 11, and weighs about 30-40 pounds more than I do. He’s obese for his height and age. My aunt, aka his mother is trying to “fix it”. Take a look in the first fridge, and see a TON of vegetables. Carrots, peppers colours of the rainbow, mushrooms, lettuce, celery, tomatoes. Along with some kiwi, avocado, strawberries, grapes, blueberries, and watermelon.  Second fridge? I counted FIVE deep and delicious type cakes. Found in the frozen aisle. Two packages of pound cake. A package of cupcakes. Don’t even get me started on the pantry. More chips than I’ve seen in the grocery store. A drawer FULL of snack cakes, cookies, packs of fruit snacks, granola bars. Freezer is full up with popsicles, ice cream, frozen meats that are “for future use to cook with later.” I find stuff dated: “expiry: August 2016”. What.  Cue back to the vegetable fridge. Half the stuff is rotting. I do myself a favour and clean on the fridge, the pantry, drawers of expired food. Yuck. Clearly the healthy stuff isn’t being eaten if it’s rotting away. But yet the garbage can is FULL of junk food wrappers. Just because you buy vegetables and fruits, doesn’t mean the kids will eat it! Especially with all the sugar junk around!  Enough is enough. I’m taking over cooking for this household. My aunt is ok with this. Shockingly not a fatty, for now. I already took my cousin shopping for healthier alternatives to his favourite foods. Plain popcorn. Yogurt instead of high fat ice cream. Caramel/chocolate rice cakes (60 cal for one) instead of cookies. Even let him pick out a flavour of halo top. Diet Coke instead of regular (I prefer he doesn’t have any at ALL, but we are buying a 2L for the week. So that he learns to conserve it). He watched and helped me make a healthy dinner yesterday. We’re doing the same today. Got some flour and made a pizza dough. We’re putting green pepper, mushrooms and tomatoes on it. Hoping to teach him some healthier habits so that he can lose weight. Rome wasn’t built in a day of course. I have the whole summer to teach him better. He does have a learning disability so it’ll take longer.  I’m not letting him, or anyone else in my family become a statistic.