Education

With the huge problem of childhood obesity which is brought into the spotlight by one of my food heroes Jamie Oliver, in his new TV show, it gets me upset when I hear the excuses that people give for not eating properly, and more importantly, for not educating their kids on proper nutrition. In one of the famous scenes you can pick up on Youtube, Jamie is in a classroom with kids, and has a table full of fresh vegetables and is quizzing the kids on what they are. The answers he gets are astonishing and shocking, even when we accept that they were probably edited for maximum shock appeal. The kids in this classroom did not seem to have much of any idea what any vegetable was, which means they'd probably never seen them not only on their own dinner plates, but on their parents', either. I do not recall whether it was in the video linked just now, or in another interview I saw with Jamie where he mentioned that this particular problem was solved with, if I recall correctly, two 1-hour educational sessions with the kids. Two 1-hour sessions! Shocking! There is no excuse for this.

Just last night in our house was one of those circumstances when we were pressed for time and were unable to cook a proper supper. I'd had a museum sleepover the night before with the boys and Beavers, and my wife has been sick the last few days. We'd just picked up a bunk bed at Ikea and had the boys' room torn apart to make room for it and get it all together before bedtime. It was already clear that the boys would miss their bedtime, we were all very hungry, and so we called in the Chef. Yes, that is right, the Chef, as in Chef-Boy-Ardee®. As full-to-the-brim as our pantry is with natural and whole foods, many of them organic or local, we do keep a very small number of "sin-foods" on hand, and as crappy as a can of Ravioli really is, we did not mind one bit feeding it to our son. Why is that?