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Forget apple pie; what's more American than ketchup?
Isn’t it enough that French adults are way more sophisticated than American adults? (Have you seen how cool the French look smoking cigarettes? I mean, hello?) Now comes word that French schools are under government orders to limit ketchup in their lunchrooms to help kids “keep their cultural identity.”
If there’s anything that can be closely identified with American culture and kids, it’s ketchup. On French fries (or pommes frites, as Fancy Nancy would say). On hamburgers. On hot dogs. On chicken (which, by the way, is kind of gross). Embedded on t-shirts. Under fingernails. Ketchup is about American as, well, ketchup. I mean, zut alors — ketchup couldn’t be more American if it was what Betsy Ross used to stain the stripes in her flag.
Under the new French rule, ketchup in school cafeterias will only be permitted to be paired with certain foods, like fries, and it is banned altogether from accompanying classic French meals such as beef bourguignon and roast veal with blue cheese sauce, according to Fox News. (Bravo, by the way, to French kids, nay, all French people, for eating roast veal with blue cheese sauce — with or without ketchup.)
Getting creative with healthy food.
All of us, at one time or another, have professed that we are going to eat better.
No more nachos! No more sugary cereals! No more cookies.
How long did you make it? If you’re anything like me, you probably lasted two or three days, a week at the longest, and then you went back to the same old same old.
One family decided to go without junk food for 100 days. It’s been a year and they’re still going strong. Continue reading »
Skip the soda to stay at a healthy weight
How much harm can one little soda do?
Turns out, it’s the little things that add up to a wider waistline. A new Harvard study shows that small habits add up to big weight gains over the long term. The study draws on data from over 100,000 people collected over a 20 year period.
The news from this massive study is really that there is no news. The big culprits for gradual weight gain aren’t surprising. Drinking soda every day will pack on the pounds. Ditto eating potato chips. Watching TV makes you gain weight, increasing your physical activity prompts you to lose it. Getting enough sleep is paramount.
Does your kid "like" jalapeno Cheetos on Facebook?
Children are especially vulnerable to advertising. It’s hard for them to tell the difference between an ad and entertainment or educational content. They don’t have the filters adults have to help manage all the information coming in.
Parents know this, and we try to teach our kids about ads and media, and to protect them from the onslaught of advertising. We have a big challenge in doing so, though. One might even say an enemy. Big corporations know about kids’ openness to ads, too. And they do their best to make it even more confusing for little ones by disguising advertising as games, toys and cartoons.
The latest round of this comes from big corporations, especially food companies selling sugary cereals and snacks.
Food Revolution scared me. And not just because of the Pink Slime. The parents on the show seemed educated and informed. They were feeding their kids well at home, but being undermined by the institutional food their kids were eating during the day. One mother said her son’s tastes had actually been altered by school lunch: “He used to eat all the good food we have at home before. ” Others nodded gravely. Are kids that vulnerable to influence? Would they really just be eating pizza and fries at every meal if we’d let them?
Yesterday’s New York Post asked the same question in a very different context: an article quoting various restauranteurs about kids and fine dining. The angle was irritating in general, but it was the last quote that left me with the worst taste in my mouth:
“… at least one of the city’s top restaurateurs thinks parents may be forcing gourmet cuisine down their children’s gullets. ‘The only food I ever see children enjoy at any of my restaurants are the pizzas at Pulino’s,’ said restaurateur Keith McNally, who also owns Balthazar and Minetta Tavern. ‘That’s all children ever want to eat. Anyone who says anything else is lying.”’
Really? Continue reading »
Diet soda may cause stroke and heart attack
Put down that diet Coke. At least for a moment.
A new study presented by the American Stroke Association finds that people who drink diet soda are at substantially higher risk for “vascular events” than those who don’t drink soda at all. The findings are being questioned by soda industry representatives, but the scientists who conducted the study say their research is sound.
Just one more nail in the coffin for junk food. Earlier this week, I posted about junk food sapping kids’ IQ scores. There’s really no safe way around it: eating healthy means eating whole, healthy foods.
A delicious bite of contraband.
Kids of St. Paul, Minn., load up on the cookies now. Because if you’re a student in a public school there, you’re going to have to go without sweets during those many long hours you’re on school grounds.
All public schools in the St. Paul school district will be, by the school year’s end, sweet-free zones. That means no more cookies, cinnamon rolls or cakes for dessert with school lunches. Little Debbie’s snack cakes will be confiscated from home lunches. And concessions for school fundraisers can’t include hot chocolate or brownies.
No birthday cupcakes. Continue reading »
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