Source: Processed People

They ask, “how did we get here and what do we do?” Check out the trailer:

Eat frank food!

This post originally appeared on Grist:

Once every five years, the federal government goes to great lengths to update its recommendations for how Americans should eat. In fact, Congress mandates that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) be based on the most current science available. Yet over the years, the DGA process has been wrought with politics, which should come as no surprise. With each cycle, we gather to witness just how strongly the food industry has managed to exert its influence.

Last week’s release of the 2010 version was no different. Like most versions before it, it inspired plenty of spin and criticism. But really, what does it matter?

Food Pyramid

The time has come to ask, are dietary guidelines just another charade, a waste of taxpayer dollars? Who even pays attention, except for a bunch of dietitians, food industry lobbyists, the media (for about a minute), and a few policy wonks like me and my fellow Grist contributor Tom Laskawy? The general public barely notices; and after the initial media blitz, it’s back to business as usual for the next five years.

Now, the guidelines do play an important role in setting nutrition standards for the federal food assistance programs, and I certainly don’t mean to belittle this important purpose. But given the huge disconnect between actual science (which the DGA is supposed to be based on) and what comes out the other end, why do we keep bothering to engage in this hopeless charade?

While the 2005 version’s take-away message seemed to be that Americans needed to eat more whole grains, this time, the media fixated on the DGA’s warning to eat less salt. (It seems we can only handle one basic nutrition concept every five years.) But as I told Andy Bellatti for his blog post on this topic, such advice is doomed to failure because of our toxic food environment. Such reductionist messages also provide industry an opportunity to retool its junk food to downplay the “bad ingredient” du jour:

Telling people to cut back on salt in the current food environment is like telling fish not to die in a polluted stream. Just like we have restrictions on pollutants in water and air, we need regulations that restrict salt in food. But of course, the food industry would go ballistic over that idea. Big Food is happy to have Uncle Sam keep doling out meaningless advice. And, we are likely to see more “low-salt” junk food soon, just as we saw “whole grain” Reese’s Puffs cereal in 2005. That worked so well.

SODA!

Things did get a little better this time around. Veteran food politics maven Marion Nestle declared herself “in shock” at such obvious DGA statements as, “avoid oversized portions,” “drink water instead of sugary drinks,” and the most straightforward and useful piece of advice, “make half your plate fruits and vegetables.” But somehow even these no-brainers didn’t make it in the government’s 90-page “policy document,” as Nestle explains.

Despite these modest improvements, most messages in the 2010 DGA remain lame. While some experts are understandably pleased that the government is finally telling Americans to “eat less,” I doubt that such vague advice will have enough tangible meaning to be effective, especially with the food industry constantly telling people to “eat more.”

I went back to read my take on the 2005 update and realized that very little has actually changed. In an op-ed piece published in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Why Uncle Sam won’t tell you what not to eat,” I concluded:

Americans need is to be told outright: Stop drinking so much Coke. People don’t think in terms of ingredients. Most consumers don’t even buy ingredients anymore because they don’t cook. We think in terms of packaged-food brand names and fast-food menu items. Imagine dietary guidelines that said: Stop eating Big Macs, Doritos and Oreos. Those are recommendations most Americans could understand, but not ones we are likely to hear. Until people are told the entire truth, instead of meaningless messages such as “eat less,” the nation’s health will continue to suffer.

CHIPS!

As long as Big Food continues to influence the process, the dietary guidelines will never be that blunt. But the larger problem is really the disconnect between our agricultural policies and public health. Rather than tweaking guidelines, the government should figure out how to subsidize more of the foods we should be eating, instead of those we shouldn’t. That’s when eating a truly healthy diet will actually be within reach for everyone. But until then, maybe the feds should just stop bothering to tell Americans how to eat right.

Because, who’s even listening?

Source: Summer Tomato

Can you believe it? I can’t.

Over the last several years, the issue of what is real, authentic food has surfaced, oftentimes loudly with great passion on all sides. I loved the discussion y’all brought on about my post about being a snob and eating organically. It definitely isn’t easy, and sometimes, just too expensive for me. But as some of you raised, even the food industry has corrupted that word – labels sometimes show up that says organic, but is not.

A U.K. food company director was jailed for fraud – he stuck “organic” labels on food that was pumped of synthetic additives.

Organic foods from China are not always what they seem, according to a Public Radio International report. But the organic food industry is a $26 billion one in the U.S. Lots of money to be had.

The Cornucopia Institute, an advocacy group promoting family-scale farming, filed formal complaints against Target in 2009 that some of its products labeled organic were not really organic. According to the complaints, some of the companies that sell through Target, like Dean Foods, quietly shifted away from organic ingredients taking advantage of consumer confusion of “organic” and “natural” labels.

Meanwhile, many local, small-scale family farms may grow and harvest everything organically and according to the guidelines of the Organic Trade Association, but don’t want to or have the resources to go through the hoops and costs of getting the pretty little certified organic label.

Yet everywhere we turn, we see “REAL FOOD,” “PURE,” “NATURAL,” “AUTHENTIC,” “ORGANIC.” What does it all really mean? Kelly the Kitchen Kop just raised a most fascinating discussion about whether Qorn and other “meatless meat” products are real food.

How do you define food versus foodstuffs?

What I do know is that I’m confused and wary of what’s out there.

I’m not obsessive – I do like my Bojangles once or twice a year, and I won’t say no to the peanut M&Ms at the movie theatre. But I find myself having a hard time sometimes describing how I want to eat – food that my great-grandmother would recognize, food that tastes right because it hasn’t been invented in a test tube, food that I don’t have to wonder will give any children I have two heads or an extra finger (though that COULD come in handy in some cases, the finger, not the head). I want plums that don’t make my lip to swell up anymore because it was washed in “good for me” pesticides. I want beef jerky made with nothing but beef and spices, and not that beef stick stuff you find in roadside convenient stores.

I want good food, but since I can’t seem to call this food, “real” or “authentic” or “pure” anymore, as these words have been corrupted, I’m making up a new word.

I’m calling the food I want frank food.

Why frank food? Frank means: forthright, honest, blunt, truthful, candid, aboveboard. Frank foods by definition cannot be adulterated. It is aboveboard. Frank food unabashedly tells you what it is, and it will tell you truthfully when you’re lying.

Frank food is a real, goodness apple that is guileless, unadulterated and uncorrupted with pesticides. Frank food is butter, made with frank milk, free of rBGH and hormones – not margarine or Crisco or something else created out of a laboratory. Frank food is the grass-fed, free-range roadmeat that Hunger and Thirst harvests, fresh and local.

Frank food is what our dear friend at Eat Well, Eat Cheap raised as a great new year’s resolution, inspired by Salon’s Francis Lam who vows to no longer eat “cheap chicken.” Instead, frank chicken is well, frankly, chicken. Nothing added. Since frank chicken costs more, for me, that also means less chicken and meat, which is not a bad thing.

Another frank food is dal, a traditional thick stew usually of lentils or or beans, found in many South Asian cuisines. This Dal is courtesy of Zomppa Tsering, a recipe passed down for generations in the Indo-Tibet region. This frank food is also fairly inexpensive to prepare – hooray! The measurements may be a bit off, I tend to be very generous with my spices – I throw them in until I like the color and keep adding. This dish is chock full of protein, healthy, easy, and can last for days – just freeze any leftovers. I made this in my fancy new Christmas present!

Truly, a frank food without much pretense. It is what it is, and what it always has been.

Zomppa’s Dal with Spinach

Dal with Spinach (courtesy of Zomppa Tsering)
1 cup dry red lentils (soak for at least an hour)
1 red onion, chopped
2 TB ground ginger
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 TB turmeric
2 TB cumin powder
1/2 tsp chili powder or chili flakes (optional)
2 large tomatoes, finely chopped
1 bag baby spinach
3 cups water, chicken or vegetable stock
Oil

1. In large pot, saute onions in 2 TB oil until translucent
2. Add garlic and ginger, saute for 30 seconds
3. Add turmeric for 30 seconds – do not burn
4. Add tomatoes and saute until well mixed and soft
5. Add cumin
6. Add lentils and combine well, add additional spices if so desired, constantly stir for 2-3 minutes – do not burn
7. Add water or stock. Adjust according to thickness desired (lentils will soak up liquid)
8. Salt to taste
9. Cook over medium heat until lentils are soft (about 20 minutes)
10. Add baby spinach in last 5 minutes of cooking

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Stored Ojibwe American Indian wild rice, harvested in Wisconsin, that will feed us through the long winter

For example, in my language of Quechua Wanka, we call the moon Mama Quilla (pronounced ma-ma kee-ya, with a double ll sound for the “ya” part)—Mother Moon. She is our grandmother, and farmers in my community use her phases to decide when to plant crops. In the Anishinaabe or Ojibwe Native language, Ojibwemowin, the moon is called giizis (pronounced gee-zis). And each month is named in Ojibwemowin using geezis as a part of the month name. For example, August is Manoominike-giizis (pronounced ma-noo-min-i-kay), or Wild Ricing Moon—the time of anticipated harvest of wild rice.

Artist: Rabbett Strickland, Ojibwe artist. Source: White Earth Land Recovery Project & Native Harvest at http://nativeharvest.com/

Wild rice, manoomin (pronounced ma-noo-min), is one of the sacred foods of the Ojibwe. Bands of Ojibwe people tell a migration story where their ancestors historically trekked far and wide to find the “food that grows on water.” Wild ricing or the harvesting of wild rice takes place in Ojibwe country of Wisconsin and Minnesota generally around August or September. The rice, which is actually not rice but a wild grain, is harvested by Ojibwe people by hand, using canoes and wooden sticks called knockers where the tall rice plants are bent with one knocker while another is used to shake the rice into the canoe. The process is back-breaking, time-consuming and just all-around tough work. After being gathered, the rice must be processed by scorching to remove the hulls, and then finished, leaving a wondrous product ready to be cooked.

Knockers! Passed down from the generations. Courtesy of Cutler-Arbuckle family

So with a fresh harvest of wild rice, chilly Fall days and a striking harvest moon, I decided to heed Nelly’s advice and “go slow.” While this can apply to slow foods, for Indigenous people, it can simply mean being conscientious within one’s ecology. And going slow to me also means taking the time to appreciate some good Northwoods comfort food. Mmmmmm.

I decided to make a wild rice hot dish for my main Ojibwe wild rice harvester, niinimooshe (pronounced nee-ni-moo-shay), or “my sweetheart.” Wild rice hot dishes are a combination of the ancient and the modern, combining tasty wild rice with cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soups. Countless variations on the hot dish are prepared with much gusto for cultural feasts and other community events and vary in complementing ingredients—from chicken to pork sausage to venison, and yes, vegetarian too.

Wisconsin wild rice, freshly harvested, scorched and finished

Preparing wild rice: Boil, then simmer

Being aware of healthier eating, I opted to use a ground turkey and turkey sausage in my hot dish, as well as low-sodium, low-fat ingredients. However, I did top it off with extra crispy tater tots because, well, tater tots are awesome.

Tater tot wild rice hot dish: Just out of the oven!

A big serving, just for you. Eat up! There's seconds!

And, because we had gone to an apple orchard and picked up Honey Crisp apples, I also made an apple pie for dessert. It was the very first apple pie I ever made. In my entire life. For reals.

Honey crisp apples from the orchard

Honey crisp apple pie

So here’s to those who nurture manoomin, to those who do the gathering, to gorgeous harvest moons, to cooking, to eating, and to going slow! Sing it!

Tator Tot Wild Rice Hot Dish

Tater Tot Wild Rice Hot Dish
(feeds

Ingredients:
1 ½ cups of prepared wild rice (see instructions below)
1 lb. of ground turkey
½ lb of turkey sausage
1 can of chicken broth
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
2 chopped celery stalks
½ chopped white onion
1 large bag of tater tots
1 ½ cup shredded mozzarella cheese (optional)

Instructions:

1. Wash the wild rice thoroughly to eliminate any chaff
2. In a pot, soften the rice (less than 2 parts water, 1 part rice), bringing rice to a boil for 5 minutes, then simmering on low-medium for 20 minutes (You don’t want the rice to have split yet or to be mushy in consistency, so watch it carefully)
3. Brown the meats, drain grease
4. Brown the celery and onion (I use a little of the grease from the sausage)
5. Combine the meats, celery and onion, rice, chicken broth, cream of mushroom and pour into a casserole dish (You’re going to want about an inch and half depth of casserole, so make sure it’s a big dish)
6. Bake covered at 350 for 1 ½ hours
7. Remove from oven, top with tater tots and bake for another 30 minutes, covered
8. Remove from oven and add mozzarella and bake uncovered for 10 minutes

Honey Crisp Crunch Top Apple Pie

Honey Crisp Crunch Top Apple Pie
(modified from Paula Deen’s recipe at www.foodnetwork.com)

Ingredients for filling:
2 doughs for a 9-inch pie
½ cup of sugar
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
5 Honey Crisp apples, peeled and sliced thinly
14 oz unsweetened applesauce
1 ½ tbsp lemon juice

Ingredients for crunch topping:
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 tbsp brown sugar
pinch of salt
1 tbsp of room temp butter

Instructions:

1. Line the pie pan with dough
2. Combine sugar, flour, cinnamon and salt
3. Add in apples, applesauce and lemon juice
4. Spoon the mixture into the pie pan
5. Top the pie with the other dough, either making your own designs or criss-crossing
6. Make the crunch topping by mixing together all ingredients with a fork until crumbly and then sprinkle over the crust
7. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes, then reduce to 350 and bake for 45 minutes or until the crust is a golden brown

For more information on Ojibwe wild rice, harvesting and language, please see the White Earth Land Recovery Project, WOJB (of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Ojibwe), and the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC).

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*Zomppa does not endorse sites or artists mentioned in this article. They are provided as resources for your information and interest only.

We talk a lot about how to eat healthily and deliciously – being aware of where our food comes from, exploring new foods around the world. Great efforts are being undertaken to incorporate healthy eating. After all, you are what you eat. For example, the New York Times recent article spoke about doctors’ efforts to healthier options in hospitals.

However, we rarely talk about poop. Yes, poop.

Babies have three modes: eat, poop, sleep. Their digestive system are typically so good and pure that what they eat immediately gets absorbed in the bodies (vitamins=good) or expelled (waste=bad).

As we grow older, however, we tend to forget that poop is related to our food. As we get older, we start to eat foods that are not as pure as breast milk and foodstuffs that don’t even resemble real food. Our bodies absorb more toxins and our digestive systems are impacted. So guess what? Our poop changes.

My apologies for being a bit graphic (this is a food magazine right?), but poop isn’t something to ignore if you really want to pay attention to what you put in your body. I was recently in a restroom and there was a young teenager, probably 14 or 15, having the most difficult time doing #2. All I could think was, what in the world is she eating? A diet of fast food and soda? Certainly not real food.

Just think to the recent egg scare. What we poop not only tells you about what you put into your bodies, but it can also indicate food allergens and parasites. What we poop is a good indicator of our health, and could be a warning sign; after all, we should be extremely careful of where our food comes from. Does your poop sink like a rock? Is it green? These all are indicators of your diet. Check out this article for more information.

I felt pretty relieved because I knew that my eggs were not on the “list” of affected producers. My eggs don’t all look the same, have the same color or size, but they are delicious, fresh, and I know from where they come.

I know that when I eat right, my body (and poop) tells me I’m eating right. I also know when I’m not eating right because my body will tell me so. I make an effort to eat – in or out – at places where I know the source of the food.

This is one of the reasons why I love one of my new favorite restaurants in Washington, D.C., Ripple (sorry for the photos – dim room with camera phone!). The smaller serving sizes reminded us that we have gotten too used to super-sized meals. The food is all locally-sourced – and the names of all the producers are listed on the menu. I didn’t have to wonder which industrial slaughterhouse my food came from, but instead celebrated and supported local farmers and producers. The friendly staff offered an extensive and sophisticated cheese and charcuterie menu. (Yes, that says bacon peanuts).

Best of all was the flavor. Start out with good ingredients and the meal is almost guaranteed to be 100x better. The pork belly melted in my mouth, as the quail egg oozed warm yolk over the perfectly seared ahi tuna, complemented by a delightful green soybean salad.

True, Ripple is not inexpensive, but my body knew that the food it was ingesting was good.  As the name of this wonderful restaurant indicates, perhaps places like this is a harbinger of what is to come – that the local, organic, fresh food movement is having a true ripple effect on every part of our society, regardless of class, ethnicity, or politics. We can no longer afford to ignore our food or our poop.

Look, it’s not a pleasant topic, but everybody poops. Pay attention.

For many people, eating a tarantula would be an unusual, grotesque, and even torturous act. It, by no means, would be considered a food. In contrast, eating a fast food hamburger would be a very normal, and for some people, daily activity. Well I’ve had both, and confess that the eating of a big hairy spider, while uncomfortable, did inspire me to re-orientate my own perception of food.

Objectively speaking, one could consider the tarantula as more of a food[1] than many fast food hamburgers.[2] No preservatives, no colours, no other additives, the tarantula is actually a wholesome edible substance. A fast food hamburger on the other hand, like a great deal of our food, may turn out to be less of an edible substance than we realise. It arrives at the fast food restaurant completely cooked, having already been manufactured across a factory line. Like a piece of Ikea furniture, it requires only assembly at the restaurant.

And because it has already gone through so much processing and cooking, but still needs to travel far and wide and be placed in storage, the individual components of the burger have preservatives added in order to maintain their palatability and increase their shelf-life. The meat in the burger usually comes from an animal whose natural diet of grass has been replaced with grains, hormones, antibiotics and sometimes other dead animal meat.[3] The bun has had extra sugar added to make it tasty. The cheese has no doubt been derived from a dairy cow fed hormones to regulate its ovulation and milk-producing cycle.[4] Each ingredient has had preservatives, colours, and flavours added, to ensure the assembled food product is so familiar and tasty that it has you coming back for more. And although it probably does more harm to us than good, we eat it – because it’s “food”.

The personal experience we each have with food is an ongoing lifelong event where our perceptions are influenced through a web of many factors, including genetics, biology, age, education, income, environment and culture, just to name a few. As children, our perceptions are moulded by our parents and caregivers. Later, our perceptions are shaped by our own experimentation, knowledge and response to external and internal stimuli. This would be fine, if we were working within the boundaries of safe, sustainable, nutritious food. Unfortunately, however, the majority of us are provided food from within a framework of profit. Food industry goals such as mass production, increased yields, and brand loyalty, leads to food produced in an unsustainable manner, with added pesticides, hormones, flavours, preservatives, and more. It is here that the problem begins, and where our food perceptions become critical in navigating the approximately 47 000 “food” products that are available in the average supermarket.[5] See the following ingredient list of a “fruit snack” with “no artificial colours or flavours”:

Maltodextrin (maize or wheat), concentrated fruit paste (22%), modified starch (1412), food acid (citric, malic), dietary fibre (inulin), apple juice concentrate (2%), vegetable oil (emulsifier (lecithin) (soy), antioxidants (304, 306)), sugar, emulsifier (471), natural flavours, natural colours extracted from fruit, vegetables and plants (chlorophyll, anthocyanin), vegetable gums (410,415).

Can we really call this a fruit snack?

As a dietitian, I take full responsibility for all the people I myself have seen over the years and suggested the use of ‘moderation’ as an eating framework. It’s a shame that even professionally trained foodies can get lured into this logic. We need to stop thinking that ‘everything in moderation’ is the answer. Moderation is the response that the food companies supply when asked about their unhealthy products. Just recently, over the furor of food advertising to children, the senior vice president for global nutrition at Kellogg, upon being asked why candy qualified as a healthy choice for children, responded that “with balance and moderation all foods can have a place in the diet”. This is simply not true. Some ‘foods’ have no place in the diet at all.

Since digesting that most delicious tarantula I’ve realized that one of the most powerful actions we can take to divert the path of our current food system trajectory is to turn our own perception of what food is on its head. While nature and nutrition increasingly move further apart, many individual consumers still maintain a traditional understanding of food sources to make their choices, thanks to clever advertising and poor understanding of food industry practices. We need to be vigilant about our choices and remember that our foods increasingly originate from a mechanized and manipulated factory line. Be aware that there are laboratories that deal only with chemically generated flavours that add palatability to your food. These chemically generated flavours are used under many circumstances. For example, added beef flavours are why the taste of french fries from McDonalds did not alter when their frying oil was changed from beef tallow to vegetable oil.[6]

As Michael Pollan says in his book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,[7] many of our ‘foods’ are not really foods, but in fact “edible foodlike substances”. Too often we accept foods into our diet without enough critical examination. But I ask you to honestly examine, which one is more dangerous: the tarantula or the fast food hamburger?

[1] Oxford Dictionary definition of food: any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth.

[2] I choose the hamburger as the archetypal fast food for arguments sake. Many other foods could equally be represented here.

[3] In Fast Food Nation, authored by Eric Schlosser (2001) he outlines that until 1997, the rendered remains of dead sheep, dead cattle, dead cats and dead dogs were fed to cattle. Since then, and currently, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations in the United States allow dead pigs and dead horses to be rendered into cattle feed, along with dead poultry. Poultry is also allowed to be fed dead cattle.

[4] If you want to learn more on this issue, there is an Australian-based website that contains further information: http://www.foodlegal.com.au/.

[5] Food, inc. 2008 (a great documentary to  watch it if you haven’t seen it already).

[6] Schlosser E. 2001. Fast food nation: the dark side of the all American meal. Houghton Mifflin Company. New York.

[7] Pollan M. In defense of food: an eater’s manifesto. Penguin Press. USA. 2008.

According to Joel Berg, executive director of the New York Coalition Against Hunger, “Hunger and obesity are often flip sides to the same malnutrition coin…Hunger is certainly almost an exclusive symptom of poverty. And extra obesity is one of the symptoms of poverty.”

According to nationwide statistics, 18.5% of Americans were food insecure at some point in the last year – that means there was a time when people did not have the money to buy the food their families needed. In fact, 62% of teachers report buying food for their classes at some point using their own money because their students don’t have the money to buy food.

Think child hunger has no impact on a child’s ability to learn? Take a look at this two minute video:

You can download the full report of the study conducted by Share Our Strength. When learning or behavioral problems arise, teachers and parents often overlook the fact that sometimes, it’s because the child is HUNGRY.

To make matters worse, the food that makes you fat and unhealthy also tends to be cheaper and more affordable. You may have seen Nonna Joann of BabyBites post about her 1- year old Happy Meal. If her food didn’t change after ONE YEAR, would you want to feed this to your child? But it is a lot of food for not a lot of money.

Source: BabyBites

So what can we do?

Well, did you know that April is Child Nutrition Month? In its second year, the Global Child Nutrition Foundation and School Nutrition Association to raise awareness and funds to fight child hunger…and child malnutrition. Supported by Congress, it is also working to advocate for the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization. The Senate just passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 that calls for an increase of $4.5 billion over 10 years to address childhood hunger AND childhood obesity because they are connected. For example, programs will include new nutritional standards in schools. This bill is a step, though is not the $1 billion per year President Obama had requested.

What can you do? Write to your representative and senators. For more information on how to take action, check out Food Research and Action (FRAC).There is no excuse for children to get to school hungry or have access to only unhealthy, cheap food that leads to obesity and other preventable diseases. Preventable.

Sound the alert.

It’s no surprise anymore to hear about the horrific statistics on childhood obesity (i.e. obesity rates have tripled, $150 billion spent on obesity-related illnesses).

The good news is that there is a tremendous movement occurring to reverse and prevent these trends, from removing junk food from vending machines to establishing school gardens. I am sure by now you have heard of the First Lady’s Let’s Move! Campaign to mobilize the nation to advocate for healthier food and physical activity for our schoolchildren.

A broader movement is Four Years Go, a global campaign to achieve a “just, thriving, and sustainable world” by 2014.

4YG is not focused in one particular area, but engages EVERYONE from all sectors, so please take a look! We at Zomppa are supporting this movement with the focus on, what else?, access to and awareness of healthy food!

But how to raise awareness? Access? I’m not convinced that it can be done simply with changing the vending machines from soda to water or adding a class on the food pyramid (though they ARE wonderful and important initiatives).

It requires a change in our culture: how we relate to and understand food. One thing we are working on at Zomppa is to do this by engaging young people to be both healthier and more mindful eaters and impassioned appreciators of food…through play!

Which brings me to what I was doing one day at the Marbles Kids Museum in Raleigh, NC.

I was so excited to come because I am a big advocate of learning through play and exploration. For me, as well as for countless kids, I learn best when I can touch things, pretend, and play.

At Marbles, I was blown away by all the fun and interactive activities, from the human-sized chess boards to half of a transit bus you can climb. Of course, I focused on the food-related play areas – including a pizzeria and an entire area where kids can learn about running a lemonade stand. What better way to learn about food economy than to count change with nickels bigger than your head?

Even adults seemed to like it – as there was not only a wedding photo shoot there, but a wedding party held there that night!

For those of you parents who are familiar with Montessori and Waldorf pedagogical philosophies, you probably understand the value of play in a child’s understanding. Play and creativity is an often underutilized component of learning that is critical to a child’s development.

Children (like me) often learn better when they don’t realize they’re learning. If we can give children more opportunity to learn through play – pretending to cook in the kitchen, colorful displays of fruits and vegetables, easy-to-follow physical activity- imagine the longer-term benefits.

Constructive and educative play is a necessary means to change the way our children relate to food, so they can love and appreciate it, as well as love and appreciate their own bodies and health.

So whether you have children or nieces or neighbors or yourself are trying to eat better, don’t see it as a boring, snooze-fest of statistics and calorie counting or exams. Have fun with it!

Some easy, simple ideas:

• Cook with kids: Devise easy to assemble meals that allow children to get involved – like grilled cheese sandwiches with apples or lettuce roll-ups – they will jump at the chance to eat their greens when they get to make them.
• Make food shopping fun: Make it a scavenger hunt for the kale on sale or who can first find the quinoa – and spell it correctly
• Pretend restaurant: make pretend one dinner a week that you are a restaurant and assign “roles” for everyone. You might surprised how quickly their plates are finished.

A more just and sustainable world…a more playful and optimistic culture…a more delicious appreciation for food – what a lovely outlook.