You know America has serious eating problems when….. Cookie Monster is learning to control his binge cookie eating habit. What is the world coming to? Apparently Sesame Street is launching a new multi-year story arc to help kids reform their eating habits and gain an appreciation for physicial fitness. Do we have that perverted a relationship to food that PBS, in a desperate attempt to slow the childhood obesity epidemic, is stopping the Cookie Monster from eating cookies?
I suppose I could focus on the irony of trying to teach kids healthy eating habits and a respect for physical activity by watching television but that seems like a cheap shot. Still it makes one wonder when an institution like Sesame Street decides to get in on the action of America’s health what the hell is going on here? Have our hectic lives gotten to the point where we can’t even feed our children healthy meals anymore? They have to learn eating habits from a reformed binger (I don’t think the Cookie Monster ever purged though)?
Now I have heard the nunerous critics say that only the rich can eat well anymore. Single mothers, lower middle class families, and the rest of middle America have to make do with the processed foods they can get cheaply at McDonalds and Alberstons. But I would beg to differ. Those who say eating organic is too expensive don’t know what they are talking about. Every Sunday, Tony and I make our weekly pilgrimage to Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Stanley’s Fruit Market. Some people go to church on Sunday, we go groccery shopping. This week out total came to roughly $140 dollars. That means that I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner for seven days on ten dollars a day! TEN! I can’t get three solid meals at McDos for that! We buy only organic. Our milk, cheese, fruit, vegetables, bread and meat are all organic, free range, hormone free, and antibiotic free. We quite literally buy EVERYTHING organic. Let me give you a sample menu for a typical day
Breakfast
Maple Walnut Oatmeal w/ half a Bananna
8oz of Grapefruit juice
Snack
Horizon Lowfat Yogurt w/ fruit (I prefer berries, some I take what is in season)
Lunch
Turkey Sandwich w/ cheese, sprouts, guacamole on whole wheat bread
Pickle, occasionally some White Cheddar Potato Chips
Snack
Mixed Nuts and Fruit
Dinner
Terriyaki Chicken with Ginger Sesame Rice
Vegetables Stir Fried with Umabashi Plum Vinager
Fruit Sorbet
Sounds pretty reasonable, healthy, and tasty am I right? Ten bucks huh? Tell me more! Now kids might eat a little less than Tony and I do. Are you seriously telling me that ten bucks a day is too much for the average American family to spend on food? OK you say most stores don’t carry organic produce let alone organic meats! Not true anymore! King Soopers, Albertons, Safeway, and Jewel Osco all have natural food sections now! Getting orgnic meat is tricker, trust me I have read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, but you can at least compromise by finding a local butcher. Small town America might not have one sure, but you guys have actual farms so I think you are set. Now before you get all uppity and tell me I am doing a lot of cooking I buy the Terriyaki chicken already prepared from Whole Foods, my rice comes from a box, all I do is chop vegetables, boil some water, and throw the chicken on the grill. Trust me, my life does not allow me tons of time for cooking and meal planning.
I suppose you can make the case that $210 dollarss for a family of three is pretty high but consider that you aren’t realling adding extra products to the bill for another person, merely another 1/4 of meat per day which when organic chicken is $6.99 a pound that means an extra $1.70. The most expensive is gets is when you are feeding one person honestly.
Realistically though this all speaks volumes for the need for The Slow Food Movement We need to develop a real relationship with food that has nothing to do with overeating, obsessing, undereating, binging, purging, or otherwise treating food like the enemy. Vogue has a lovely piece on Alice Watters and her project to champion organic produce and regional cooking by teaching kids the pleasures of eating, starting with their own lunch period at Berkley Public Schools in a project called The Edible School Yard Yes I know it is in a liberal namby pamby school district but she is actually working to teach kids about food, their bodies, and the cycle of life right in their own playground. So that perhaps kids can learn that chickens are actual animals as opposed to reprocessed chicken nuggets that give new meaning to Bourdieu’s imitation without an original concept. Alice Water’s child Fanny is at Yale and she has helped transform their cafeteria. If Yale can do it then surely Bartlett shouldn’t have a lot of trouble.
Now as someone who has planted and harvested her own crops, eaten lambs that she as helped raise and slaughter, and learned the hard way how to appreciate food I can tell you the process isn’t easy. Waldorf schools certainly do their part to instill a reasonable sense of eating and physical exercise. Food constitutes rhythms in life and the seasons and days all involve rituals of food and table. We are hardwired in this culture to be crazy about food, biologically we feel the need to eat when something is presented to us, we worry about famine, but we are also told that slim is beautiful. Telling kids that Cookies are a sometime food isn’t going to do much. Instead forgoe buying the chips ahoy (they are $ 2.99 a bag anyway) and buy two pounds of organic granny smith apples. They make great snacks! Put them in salads or pour honey and cinnamon on them and bake for a great dessert! Stuf a chicken breast, put them in oatmeal. It will be better for you and be a lot more satisfying in the long run them store bought, preservative heavy cookies. I guarantee most single mothers can manage that switch without a problem. Better yet, turn off the TV and go find our local community gardens. Most cities and small towns have them and teach your kids from the ground up what it means to live in this world, starting with food.
[...] The issue for me is rather more complicated. Let me introduce the subject to you through a personal anecdote. I was educated in the Waldorf education system whose academic pedagogy revolves around the principle that one should understand the world around oneself in a very basic and fundamental way. It is this bottom down whole to parts approach that allows Waldorf educated children to then take their wide appreciation of many subject and specialize very successfully in a wide range of areas. What is surprising for people is that one area that Waldorf education treats very seriously is farming. Thus at a young age I was exposed to all elements of farming and animal husbandry. Through my education and my own work on a farm in Colorado I raised, slaughtered, and ate animals that had been in my own care. This experience taught me a kind of appreciation for my own consumption habits as they relate to a larger life cycle that frankly forces me to relate to fur in a more holistic manner than many people. [...]