To Melissa G., the Recessionary Grocery Shopper: The Official Kid-Will-Eat-It Guidelines

Oct 1, 2009 by

Dear Melissa G.,

Congratulations! You have been named “ground zero for the new austerity” by one of our food industry giants, according to an article I just read in Advertising Age.  Industrial edibles manufacturers, scrambling to keep their profits up while consumers like you look for ways to spend less, are taking a hard look at you, the average grocery shopper, and how you think and behave.  Melissa, you represent today’s Every Mom:  the very picture of the grocery-shopping parent. You are the bull’s eye of the target for processed food manufacturers in this economic downturn.

It’s quite an honor, and a responsibility, a sacred destiny even, Every Mom. The wellbeing of the American child is in your hands.

While Campbell Soup was analyzing your habits and attitudes…

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Hunger: To Fear or Not to Fear?

Dec 19, 2008 by

Children must eat or they will die.  Does that fact scare you or give you a sense of power?

When it comes to eating, in many American families, the children are successfully controlling the fearful parents, who are in turn unsuccessfully trying to control the children.

I heard last week yet another mom complain, “Little Caiden has eaten nothing but tater tots and pickle loaf for the past week.” Another mom sees what I feed my kids and tells me, “My kids would never eat that. How do you get them to eat that?”

All I wonder is: who is furnishing the tater tots and pickle loaf or whatever else that enables a child to refuse perfectly good Real Food and live?  And why?

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Close Encounters of the Food Kind: Single-Minded, Whole-Hearted Attention to Eating

Dec 16, 2008 by

How do the French get away with eating loads of high fat foods, and with such enjoyment, while remaining thinner and healthier than us Americans?  Viva la difference! It’s a question with a hundred answers.

For starters, let’s look at the French traditions of the table.  The guidelines to follow are small portions, of good things, in sequence.

Small Portions

The French value quality in food over quantity. The all-you-can-eat buffet is a foreign concept to them. What would be the point? Adults enjoy Real Food, and assume, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, that children will enjoy it, too. The French take largely for granted that Real Food is necessarily for health and life, and go straight to eating and drinking for enjoyment.

Americans more often eat…

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