Originally posted on 4/13/2012
...but if I were, this lady - Karen Le Billon - would be my hero, my mentor, my guide. You see, I'm old enough to remember when mothers were not short order cooks. You got what you got and you said thank you. You ate it or you didn't. But if you didn't eat what was 'for supper' then you didn't eat at all...unless you sneaked down to the kitchen for a secret snack.
Kids are not genetically programmed to like chicken nuggets. Parents program their kids' tastes. I know grown children (ahem, adults) with sad, stunted palates and I know babies who will eat everything from steamed broccoli to veggie curry - with gusto and glee.
If you are a mom, get this book. Read this book. Then screw up the courage to stop pandering to your children. (Oh dear, I'm in trouble now!)
Another woman cut from the same French cloth is Lulu Cohen-Farnell, founder of Real Food for Real Kids. I'll never forget something she said to me on one of our first meetings. "What is this 'kiddies menu'? In France, kids eat the same food as adults, we just smash it with a fork!" Hallelujah!
Can we stem the tide of what I see as the dumbing down of the North American
palate? Because what we are ending up with is a generation of folks who don't know how to eat good or real, unprocessed food;, who don't know how to cook, and who are filled with sugar and trans-fats.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I interviewed a Registered Dietitian a while back about this very issue. His words chilled. He believes we are going to see today's kids developing very early onset dementia - in their 40s! - from all the trans-fats they consume, displacing the omega fats our brains are made of.
He warned that we are going to be a society of obese, diabetic, demented adults. His concern was where we would "warehouse" all these folks who will need long-term care. Now there's a scary thought.
Kale smoothie anyone?