nutrition

Every Sunday afternoon I take my 6 year old son to dance, a sport which he absolutely loves for the high-flying acrobatics that the men get to do. Well, not so much at his age, but they are starting into some of the fun stuff and he gets to watch the older boys do it. This kid is a natural artist and we want to encourage that in every way we can. A couple of weeks ago now he asked me completely out of the blue if we could take some snacks to dance with us, which I thought rather odd since we had not done that sort of thing in a very long time - since he was maybe 2 or 3. When the boys were young we used to fret about going anywhere without having a supply of snacks on hand for them - I guess this is probably common with all new parents. Better to have a happy child than a whiny child. But it has been years since have done this and it struck me as odd that he'd ask for it out-of-the-blue.

I managed to shoe him out the door without the snacks, but then when we arrived at dance I finally clued in as to where this request really came from - every single kid at dance had a constant supply of snacks being shoveled into them by their parents. It was literally non-stop eating, and got me to thinking a lot about this.

With the huge problem of childhood obesity which is brought into the spotlight by one of my food heroes Jamie Oliver, in his new TV show, it gets me upset when I hear the excuses that people give for not eating properly, and more importantly, for not educating their kids on proper nutrition. In one of the famous scenes you can pick up on Youtube, Jamie is in a classroom with kids, and has a table full of fresh vegetables and is quizzing the kids on what they are. The answers he gets are astonishing and shocking, even when we accept that they were probably edited for maximum shock appeal. The kids in this classroom did not seem to have much of any idea what any vegetable was, which means they'd probably never seen them not only on their own dinner plates, but on their parents', either. I do not recall whether it was in the video linked just now, or in another interview I saw with Jamie where he mentioned that this particular problem was solved with, if I recall correctly, two 1-hour educational sessions with the kids. Two 1-hour sessions! Shocking! There is no excuse for this.

Just last night in our house was one of those circumstances when we were pressed for time and were unable to cook a proper supper. I'd had a museum sleepover the night before with the boys and Beavers, and my wife has been sick the last few days. We'd just picked up a bunk bed at Ikea and had the boys' room torn apart to make room for it and get it all together before bedtime. It was already clear that the boys would miss their bedtime, we were all very hungry, and so we called in the Chef. Yes, that is right, the Chef, as in Chef-Boy-Ardee®. As full-to-the-brim as our pantry is with natural and whole foods, many of them organic or local, we do keep a very small number of "sin-foods" on hand, and as crappy as a can of Ravioli really is, we did not mind one bit feeding it to our son. Why is that?

Apparently pre-packaged toddler meals, sold by Gerber, Heinz and various other companies, aren't actually that great for kids.

Color me not surprised.

What I find most surprising about the sudden media coverage of the nutritional content in these meals is that everyone is suddenly appalled.

Seriously? Have people never read the labels? Have they never tasted jarred baby food? Has it never entered the realm of possibility for these folks that feeding their children actual fresh, healthy food isn't that hard? Or that it's actually a lot cheaper than the commercial alternatives?