Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Changing Habits Early

Oh, I SOOOOO agree, OHG! We feed the kids every 3 hours or so, give or take, to keep behavior problems at bay. But if they don't eat the food that's offered when it's offered, well, that's their tough luck. I'm not a short-order cook, and they'll live until the next meal.

They are allowed to put in specific requests politely, and I try to incorporate them when it is convenient (usually within a day or so, depending on what it is and if I need to go to the store). But junk food requests are virtually never honored. That's a special treat, granted only by the capricious whim of the wholly unpredictable parents!

Definitely agreed on that, although sometimes I am a wimp and go for the mac and cheese - frankly I like it myself (horrors!).
I do try to throw some frozen peas into the boiling water at the last minute to perk up the nutrition a bit.
They'll eat peas without cheese all over them, but it saves me using another pot when I am having a really lazy dinner night (mac and cheese from the box is a big clue there...)

I have thought for a long time that if I was having a 'last meal', it would surely include macaroni and cheese (home-made) and chocolate milk.

master of none, I do make concessions on some things.
When GD7 is visiting, no onions are used; she gags over the texture of them. GS9 has always needed his meat cooked very tender, at 5 he was very much like your daughter. But milk provides protein, natural applesauce or other cooked mashed fruit & vegetables is OK, etc. Many of the foods we cook for ourselves could be mashed or chopped finely at the table and mixed with something moist to make it more palatable for kids having a hard time eating textures that require more chewing.

Dark chocolate...especially Guittard chocolate chips!

Two books that may be of interest

For kids with eating issues, I recommnend "How to Get Your Kid to Eat But Not Too Much" which expands on the good suggestions already mentioned here (offer your kids good food, but don't make a big deal about whether they eat it or not; don't short order cook, etc). It is very sane.

For information on the food industry we have been reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma." DS12 still gets bedtime stories, but they are not mostly books I meant to read but didn't have time too. And this was on my list and he didn't object. DS has always been into reading labels, but this book really has gotten us reading very carefully to try to figure out how much corn byproducts we eat in a day. It is very enlightening.

I highly recommned Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser) to anyone who hasn't read it. If that book doesn't put you off fast food, nothing will.

Along those lines, the Supersize Me DVD has a long segment showing a long conversation between Eric Schlosser and Morgan Spurlock. It's very interesting.

Val

Keep in mind that 'Fast Food Nation' is primarily PETA propaganda. I'd be at the principals office in a flash if that was shown at school without my prior knowledge.

I just looked up 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' on Amazon.com, and browsed through what was available on line. I spotted this in the first couple pages, 'and "baby" carrots machine-lathed into neatly tapered torpedos'. I'm sorry, but if the author has so little knowledge about baby carrots then I'd doubt if he knew what he was writing about in the rest of the book. Baby carrots are not 'babies', they are mature carrots from varieties bred to grow to a small size. Planted at a high, uniform population and harvested in a timely manner, they will be uniformly small. Ever get a package that had some larger than others? Those tend to be overripe and will be 'woody'.

I was curious, so i looked up baby carrots. This is wikipedia, so take if FWIW. But it looks like there are 2 different ways to get a "baby" carrot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Carrot

There are 'baby carrots' and 'baby cut carrots'. Here's a link to Burpee's seed catalog for baby carrot seeds.

I'm having a weird sense of deja vu, have we discussed baby carrots here before?

Maybe I'm not getting enough of the book quote to follow you here, but isn't that why he puts "baby" in quotes? To indicate that they are not really babies? And they do peel "baby" carrots on lathe-type machines, right?

I guess I don't understand what he's getting wrong there. I have never read the book.

(Sorry--we crossposted there!)

I didn't take "Fast Food Nation" as PETA propaganda, but rather as a criticism of our unhealthy, high-calorie lifestyle. I'm not a PETA fan myself--their frequent treating of women (never men) as "meat" annoys and offends me, plus I like a good steak and adore bacon!--so if they were trying to "get" me with the documentary, they failed miserably! The film encourages vegetarianism, certainly, and is critical of some of McDonald's business practices. But McDonald's isn't saintly, and I don't really have a problem with encouraging Americans to eat less meat and more veggies. That's just common sense if you look at our typical diet, where fries are the only veggies the average kid eats in a given day! Besides, I think that message is WAY too mild to be PETA-based propaganda! PETA generally has the subtlety of a sledgehammer, IMHO.

I do think the film does a good job of showing how damaging fast food can be to us if eaten more than occasionally (which we still do, even after seeing the film), and that a healthy diet rich in fruits and veggies and whole grains is important to good health.

Did you watch the movie and see PETA's pawprints all over it, OHG? I'm curious about what I missed there...