Pasta with Chicken Sausage and Vegetables; Childhood Obesity and the Snack Epidemic
Last night’s dinner proved the cliche that your dish is only as good as the quality of the ingredients. Which isn’t to say that the ingredients were bad, they just could have been better. I tossed together pasta with a little sauteed red onion, red pepper, halved cherry tomatoes, sliced escarole and chicken sausage. I finished the dish with grated parmesan cheese. And it was almost very good. But the sausage I used came from Trader Joe’s, a store that sells what I consider to be quality ingredients. Unfortunately, the sausage was packaged, not fresh, and that made all the difference. Louisa was the first to say that she didn’t care for the sausage, it tasted funny to her. I usually love sausage, but I wasn’t looking for a second portion. Oh well, I’ll know better the next time.
Childhood Obesity and the Snack Epidemic
After receiving feedback to my question asking readers whether you’re interested in reading news stories in this blog, I’ve backed off the whole food news bit. But today I feel an issues rant coming on, so I hope you’ll understand…
I don’t think a day passes now when the news doesn’t carry some kind of story about the childhood obesity “epidemic”. Michelle Obama has her First Lady campaign against this epidemic, which hopefully raises awareness of some of the complex issues contributing to the problem. By now we’re aware that kids need to exercise more and eat more fruits and vegetables. But one of the contributing factors I don’t hear discussed enough is one that I think plays a major role in the problem. We’ve become a nation of snackers and we’ve raised our kids to spend their days moving from one snack to the next.
From the moment I joined a playgroup when Annie was a baby, I discovered that good moms come prepared with a diaper bag full of snacks for their child and to share with others. Cheerios and raisins were among the more nutritious choices. Snack crackers and “fruit” snacks were common among the less nutritious snack bags. But whatever we served them, the buffet was open all day as part of the strategy to keep the kids managed and distracted enough to go about our business. Whether we were heading to church, the supermarket, the mall, or for a ride in the car, you could toss a snack bag to the kids and anticipate 15 minutes of good behavior. They certainly weren’t hungry all of the time. Snacking was entertainment. Looking back now, I realize what horrible lessons we were teaching our babies, and they continue to this day.
Schools now tell the kids to bring in a mid-morning snack. After all, how could we expect them to make it all the way to lunchtime? There’s morning snack at camp, snacks packed in lunch boxes, snacks before leaving camp, and snacks when they get home. When my kids were younger, friends would come over and the first thing some of them would do is look to see what snacks are available at our house. Snacking was a major playtime activity.
Yesterday Louisa and I had an argument on the way back from camp because I never buy any “good” snacks. All the kids at camp have potato chips in their lunch boxes, why didn’t she? I buy bad snacks that she “hates” from Whole Foods. Yes, bad mom that I am, I try to buy snacks that, at least, are portion controlled and made from better quality processed ingredients. And frankly, if the snacks aren’t that irresistibly good, none of us in this house (because I’m certainly susceptible to temptation) will be inclined to binge on them. What I’d like to know is why parents feel they need to include non-nutritious snacks like potato chips in their kids’ lunch boxes? Does every meal have to be a party?!?
I believe that if snacking wasn’t the sacred institution it has become in this country, there wouldn’t be a childhood obesity epidemic to the degree that we have one today. But since this generation has been raised with snacking as a given part of their day, I don’t know how Michelle Obama is going to turn around this problem, no many how many times she can shake a hula hoop around her hips.
I’ll leave you with a link to a funny segment from the Colbert Report, Thought for Food, where he mocks cereal manufacturers’ attempts to make their sugary, artificial breakfast food sound healthy to concerned moms and dads. Enjoy.
The Problem with Never Repeating Dinners
Overheard at the dinner table last night, “Mom, is this recipe going to be a keeper?” “Sure Annie, do you like it?” “Yes, it’s good.” “Fat chance you’ll ever see it again,” said Joe sarcastically.
Colorful Food
It’s a safe bet that when you’re looking to eat a healthy dinner, the more colorful your food is, the healthier it must be. Some nutritionists will suggest you eat a rainbow of food colors. Let me qualify that by saying it needs to be naturally colorful. No artificial, neon, tie-dye, electric blue colors will make it healthy, even though that might make little kids want to eat a dish. Bleh.
This sesame chicken salad that we ate last night was one of the more colorful dinners I’ve prepared in a while. The white chicken pieces accented the green of the cucumbers, bok choy and cilantro. The red jalapeno slices promised that extra zip which would make the dish exciting. It was dressed with a soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger dressing (there was a little bit of sugar in the dressing), and it all combined into a very tasty salad. Serving it on a colorful plate added to the eye and appetite appeal, don’t you think?
Of course, few meals are perfect. Annie went into a coughing fit from the jalapeno slices, and Louisa refused to eat the bok choy. But she more than made up for it in chicken and cucumbers. A fair enough nutritional trade in my opinon.