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A review by eleneariel
Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children by Lisa Holmes, Lisa M. Holmes, Mehmet C. Oz, Ann Cooper
4.0
I took this home because I thought it might give me some healthy, easy lunch ideas. Instead it served, in a round about way, to make me realize again that educating our children is more than just school lessons - everything and every part of life is teaching them lessons they'll carry with them for the rest of their lives. Including how and what they eat and the attitude they have towards food.
And thinking abut that led me to thinking about how I would hope to bring children up to see food as a joy and a way of celebrating life, something to be enjoyed but not be a slave to. I would hope that they would grow up understanding moderation, and esteeming quality ingredients and homemade dishes above the packaged and prepared. I want to raise a fearless eater.
... which led me to realizing that I need to whip some of my own habits into shape before I even think about trying to pass them on to a mini-me, so, yeah.
First the book goes through the numbers - 35% of American children are overweight, a number that has doubled since 1970. 25% are obese. 14% have type 2 diabetes. 40% of all cancers are attributed to diet. The USDA-approved National School Lunch Program is woefully unbalanced nutritionally. 85% of children do not sit down to a meal on a regular basis. (this. is. awful.)
A side note in one of the chapters that I found very interesting was the recommendation to skip all the bland rice cereal and, when babies are ready to start on solid foods, offering them small, mashed portions of whatever the rest of the family is eating. Not only is the classic rice cereal heavily processed (raising a child's insulin and blood sugar levels), but eating habits are formed very early in life and keeping children in a diet of bland, simple foods may lead them to seek less variety in their diets as they get older. Despite the fact that pediatricians have recommended these types of bland baby foods, there's no evidence that normally spiced food causes any harm, and if you look around the world, you'll see that the bland food for babies is really only something you see in western cultures.
Speaking of variety in diet, apparently 99% of today's agriculteral production depends on only 24 different domesticated plant species.
Later it speaks about the horror that is the school lunch room (although on a practical level, how DO you produce, healthy, attractive, tasty meals for hundreds of children on a tight budget and with a very limited amount of time? I know most schools are doing the best they can under the circumstances.) and then goes into some detail on several programs that sought to improve school lunches, such as Alice Waters' (of Chez Panisse fame) Edible Schoolyard program, which actually allows kids to grow, harvest, and prepare much of their own food, providing them with not only better lunches, but also a way to get creative in the kitchen.
And thinking abut that led me to thinking about how I would hope to bring children up to see food as a joy and a way of celebrating life, something to be enjoyed but not be a slave to. I would hope that they would grow up understanding moderation, and esteeming quality ingredients and homemade dishes above the packaged and prepared. I want to raise a fearless eater.
... which led me to realizing that I need to whip some of my own habits into shape before I even think about trying to pass them on to a mini-me, so, yeah.
First the book goes through the numbers - 35% of American children are overweight, a number that has doubled since 1970. 25% are obese. 14% have type 2 diabetes. 40% of all cancers are attributed to diet. The USDA-approved National School Lunch Program is woefully unbalanced nutritionally. 85% of children do not sit down to a meal on a regular basis. (this. is. awful.)
A side note in one of the chapters that I found very interesting was the recommendation to skip all the bland rice cereal and, when babies are ready to start on solid foods, offering them small, mashed portions of whatever the rest of the family is eating. Not only is the classic rice cereal heavily processed (raising a child's insulin and blood sugar levels), but eating habits are formed very early in life and keeping children in a diet of bland, simple foods may lead them to seek less variety in their diets as they get older. Despite the fact that pediatricians have recommended these types of bland baby foods, there's no evidence that normally spiced food causes any harm, and if you look around the world, you'll see that the bland food for babies is really only something you see in western cultures.
Speaking of variety in diet, apparently 99% of today's agriculteral production depends on only 24 different domesticated plant species.
Later it speaks about the horror that is the school lunch room (although on a practical level, how DO you produce, healthy, attractive, tasty meals for hundreds of children on a tight budget and with a very limited amount of time? I know most schools are doing the best they can under the circumstances.) and then goes into some detail on several programs that sought to improve school lunches, such as Alice Waters' (of Chez Panisse fame) Edible Schoolyard program, which actually allows kids to grow, harvest, and prepare much of their own food, providing them with not only better lunches, but also a way to get creative in the kitchen.