Tag: kids-and-food

Last week, my daughter helped her preschool teacher pronounce the word “quinoa.” She has no clue what Lucky Charms taste like.

Photo courtesy of Paxton Holley

She doesn’t beg me to buy her gummy snacks or potato chips when we go shopping because they are not a part of her world.

But when she starts first grade in another year, her school cafeteria will offer her chocolate and strawberry milk. In another handful of years, she’ll have her own allowance money, and she’ll be confronted with vending machines loaded with unhealthy snacks, strategically located in kid-friendly places. And of course, a vast array of junk food and sugar-laden cereals are located at her eye-level in the grocery store.MORE

Halloween is fast approaching, and frankly, the thought of all the candy my four-year-old and twin two-year-olds are going to haul into the house is making me break out in hives.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Halloween. But the holiday is so focused on trick-or-treat fare that I dread the candy battles my daughter and I will have over her stash. In previous years, we were able to give away or throw out a significant amount of her loot. This year, she’s four, and much more aware of what’s going on around her.

I’m fine with my kids having the occasional Halloween treat. But I’m also aware that it’s not healthy for their bodies or their teeth. Treats are generally saved for special occasions. We don’t often have dessert. And while most of my large Italian family believes I am denying my children their childhood because cookies and cake don’t follow every meal, I tend to believe I’m doing their little bodies a favor instead of a grave injustice.

Which brings me to this video, which is generating a lot of buzz on the interwebs this week.

This is an Australian PSA, created to address the childhood obesity epidemic.

Here’s what I think:

It’s dark and it’s chilling. This PSA is not easy to watch. But I think that’s exactly what its producers were aiming to accomplish.

It’s flawed. The hamburger is not necessarily the enemy. The boy is eating a  fast-food burger, complete with “sesame-seed bun,” but as fellow Midtown member Christina LeBeau said in her post on this topic on Spoonfed, her awesome and Jamie Oliver-recognized blog that focuses on educating kids about food, “there’s a world of difference between a fast-food burger and a homemade pastured burger.” I would have liked to see the boy eating a doughnut, candy bar, or other sugar-laden snack, since the addictive qualities of white sugar are on par with that of cocaine.

It achieved its goal because it made me think about the childhood obesity epidemic in this country, and exactly why it exists. The answers are myriad and complex and I don’t pretend to know them all. But I do know this:

One third of children and teens are now overweight or obese.

One third.

The food served in school cafeterias is loaded with calories, fat, and processed beyond recognition in many cases. Schools nourish students’ minds with knowledge, and yet serve them food so unhealthy it’s making them ill. Kids turn on the tv, flip open a magazine, and walk into grocery stores, and are targeted by ads trying to sell them food that is literally killing them.

And there’s also the widespread idea that junk food is somehow “owed” to kids. That to moderate treats is to zap all the fun out of childhood.

But this is a different world than the one in which we grew up. The health climate is much more perilous. Our food has been drastically changed for the worse by the addition of high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats, food dyes, hormones, and toxic chemicals. Kids and adults are more sedentary than they were even 10 years ago. And numerous studies have proven that junk food is highly addictive.

So yes, this video is disturbing and extreme, but I believe there is a connection between the negative effects of unhealthy food and those from using drugs.

What do you think about the video?

The food kids are served in school cafeterias is, for the most part, junk.

That’s what celebrity chef Jamie Oliver thinks, anyway. And I happen to agree with him.

I have watched with rapt fascination the ABC television show ”Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” and while very little about the state of this country’s nutrition surprises me anymore, what this show is documenting has.

The premise of the show is this: Jamie is attempting to change the way Americans eat, and more specifically, the way American children eat. Considering that nearly 1 in 5 preschoolers is obese, and a staggering 17% of all children and adolescents ages 2-19 are considered obese, I’d say this is a problem that needs addressing, and quickly.

He sets up camp in Huntington, West Virginia, recently named by the CDC as the “Unhealthiest City in America,” and heads into the school system to see what the kids are served in the cafeterias. He finds the elementary school kids being served pizza (eggs, sausage, and loads of cheese) for breakfast, and processed, breaded chicken nuggets and french fries for lunch. The students wash down their meals with chocolate and strawberry milk, which the kids overwhelmingly choose over plain white milk, and which contain more sugar than a can of Coke.

He finds virtually the same scenario in the high school cafeteria. French fries are in huge demand there, and when Jamie yanks the fries in one episode, the teenagers are not happy.

There is a complete dearth of freshly prepared food available for the kids to eat in school.

Perhaps more frightening than what the kids are eating is their inability to identify even the most basic of vegetables. Jamie enters a first-grade classroom armed with broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, and other produce. When asked to identify these veggies, the kids are completely stumped.

And this? Makes me want to cry.

Yes, Jamie Oliver chose a region of the country that struggles to overcome cultural stereotypes. And yes, there is not enough talk of exactly WHY the kids are eating pizza for breakfast and processed nuggets with a five-page, completely unpronouncable ingredient list, and iridescent-pink milk for lunch (much of it boils down to the lack of money for fresh-food initiatives and a completely convoluted USDA food classification system where French fries are considered a vegetable), but the bottom line is this:

This kind of food is what is contributing to the childhood obesity problem in this country, and it needs to stop. Now.

Jamie Oliver is shining the spotlight on Huntington to expose a problem found in every school in the country. He is attempting to completely revamp school cafeteria food, so that students are offered healthy, freshly prepared meals every single day.

But the problem is bigger than school lunch food. We have to change not only what we’re feeding our kids in school and at home, but also the way our kids think about the food they eat.

Midtown member Christina Le Beau, author of Spoonfed, a blog that focuses on ways to help parents empower their children to make healthy-eating choices, says, “We shouldn’t be treating our kids like mindless eating machines who aren’t worthy of real food. Children need nutrition, not government-subsidized calories disguised as nutrition. The only reason kids get stuck in the rut of eating so-called ‘kid food’ like chicken nuggets and colored milk is because that’s what adults think kids eat. And adults think that because food marketers have made it so easy to turn off the common sense and reach for the quick fix.”

It doesn’t have to be this way.

My three-and-a-half-year-old daughter has never eaten a chicken nugget. She eats edamame by the handful, and recently recoiled at the chocolate chip cookie the nice woman in the Wegmans bakery offered to her, because she wanted the fruit flats she was used to receiving instead. Kids can learn to make good food decisions. I won’t say it’s easy (and my children certainly do not eat 100% healthfully every single day), but we can guide them in the right direction and help them understand why potato chips and deep-fried Twinkies are not good for their little bodies.

I recently read Bean Appetit: Hip and Healthy Ways to Have Fun with Food, written by Shannon Payette Seip and Kelly Parthen. This pair founded Bean Sprouts, a kids’ cafe and cooking school in Middleton, Wisconsin. The authors are on a mission to encourage kids to get excited about healthy eating by offering them nutritious food in a fun and hands-on atmosphere. The book is fantastic because it teaches parents how to involve their children in making their own healthy food that’s so appealing kids are certain to gobble it right up. My older daughter loves the  dragonfly sandwich made from whole wheat pita, one baby dill pickle, slices of turkey breast, fresh fruit, and other yummy ingredients.

We can’t afford not to make the effort for good nutrition. Our children’s lives are at stake.

As Midtown members, you’re undoubtedly committed to maintaining a healthy lifestyle for yourself and for your family.

So I’m curious. If you’re watching Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, what do you think about the show?

If you have children, what are your thoughts about the school lunch program in their school? How do you feed your kids when they’re at home?

How does your family stay fit and healthy?