The Last Breakfast….
November 27, 2008
The Fresh Ideas Nutritainment Manifesto
November 28, 2008
How is it that in spite of the fantastic abundance of fresh healthy natural food available to us, we are experiencing so many childhood nutrition and health issues? Obesity, allergies, sensitivities, behavioural challenges, eating disorders… the list goes on. Why don’t kids just naturally go for natural foods, when natural foods taste so amazing? An interesting question…
How can we capture the imagination of a recalcitrant audience of kids who are force fed who-cares nutritional facts and platitudes of “it’s good for you”… If kids don’t eat the healthy stuff there are threats of escalating and apocolyptic consequences ranging from no dessert to full blown diabetes to the ever dreaded “no Starwars Starships tonight”
At the other end of the spectrum we see an assortment of efforts from innocent positive encouragement to get that broccoli down the hatch.. all the way to unabashed and outright bribery!
Dr. Brazelton has some great thoughts about the working of the palate and how it can be trained by refraining from what is sometimes called ”loud” food (Burger King, McDonalds, etc.). Marion Nestle counsels us to keep junk food out of the house altogether, and ensuring that sugary and salty treats are kept as “sometimes” food, but not as a reward….
But there is another way!
This way allows us to tackle the problem by putting ourselves in those smaller shoes and meeting those little minds and tastebuds where they are and bringing them over to our way of thinking by using a paradigm that they can really relate to….
FUN!!!
We have to reclaim the joy and playfulness of eating well!
Welcome to Fresh Ideas Nutritainment. This is what we believe:
- We believe that it is every child’s right to have FUN while eating healthy food!
- We believe that it is every parent and caregiver’s right to have peace and sanity while feeding their children healthy food!
We know that if we can find a way to play with our food, we will accomplish both of these goals!
This realization was the impetus for the creation of a music video starring a charming and sweet tomato named Plato who embarks on a wild adventure up Mount Everest!
Kids don’t give a fig about how healthy food is… this is why we need to speak to them in the only language they really understand… FUN!
Watch the video!
Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself….
November 28, 2009
I love Maira Kalman…
People Will Eat Horses*** If You Put Enough Icing On It
November 9, 2009
Yes indeed, we will… Thanks for the that little gem of wisdom, George Weston.
Easy Cheap Fast Delicious and SCARILY NUTRITIOUS!
October 30, 2009
Is that a great title or what!? Ok, but it is kind of cute isn’t it?
Happy Healthy Hallowe’en!!!
I am loving pumpkin seeds so much right now! They are another perfect food, and perfectly scrumptious! I’m snacking on these right now…
…..But these look fantastic too!
I found a very interesting recipe on this site…
Diana’s Desserts…
Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Servings: Makes 4 (1/2 cup) servings
Comments:
After you’ve scooped out the seeds and stringy stuff from your pumpkin, keep the seeds, clean them and use them for roasting. Enjoy snacking on these while sitting around a warm fire during those chilly autumn nights or why not serve them as a Thanksgiving snack before the big meal.
Ingredients:
1 cup pumpkin seeds, cleaned
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon salt
Instructions:
Heat oven to 350 degrees F/180 degrees C. Combine pumpkin seeds, butter and salt in medium bowl.
Place mixture onto ungreased 15 x 10 x 1-inch jelly-roll pan. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, until seeds are dry and begin to brown.
Makes 4 (1/2 cup) servings.
Click here to view recipe and photo of Roasted Pumpkin Seeds on Diana’s Desserts Website
The perfect food …So healthy!
And pumpkins are so much fun too!
But pumpkins can sometimes get too carried away…. celebrating the holiday………
Seventh Day Adventists…
October 9, 2009
When I was younger we had a major scandal in the family. Actually, there have been so many juicy scandals in our family! Both sides!!! But with both sides of the family being so … populous … we have a statistical advantage.
Anyway, one of the scandals involved my cousin Joe, who decided to conform his values to those of the Seventh Day Adventists. My grandmother was very distressed, being a founding member of her chapter of the Catholic Women’s league and all… I just thought Joe had been kidnapped by cult members. I see now how people of every faith experience God through their own unique rituals, but we all share love as the foundation upon which the various teams/clans begin to build dogma.
What I’m most curious about right now is why they have such long life expectancies…. How is it that their wholesome way of living enables them to be lively and fit at 100 plus?? What are their habits of health that create a longer life, and a higher quality of life at that?
Could it be a mental health advantage?
Is it that they manage stress well through their faith? Do they “surrender all to Jesus” and just ask that “God’s will be done”, instead of worrying, thus increasing their risk of acquiring stress-induced chronic illness, leading to early death? Hmmmmm. Where does that leave other “faithful” people, those of other faiths? What’s going on with their lifespan numbers?
SDA’s encourage exercise, sunshine, and rest… cool.
Or is it because they follow a vegetarian eating program and abstain from booze and stimulants… Hmmm.
They don’t get as many cancers as we do… and the National Institute for Health research indicates that SDA’s are less at risk for heart disease, strokes, and diabetes…
This is making me want to make another bean stew!
And do a sirsasana right now!
It Was Only A Matter Of Time!
September 17, 2009
For those of you who may be as naive as I have been about the processing of food… Here’s some interesting information … And a cool taste retention animation too!
(1)
Even though Malic Acid is not generally categorized as a nutrient, it can be utilized as an energy source
during human metabolism. The dietary energy value shown above is taken from: Paul, A.A. and Southgate,
D.A.T. 1978. McCanee and Widdowson’s “The composition of foods.” 4th ed., MRC special Report No. 297,
New York: Elsevier/North Holland Inc., pp 311.
Talk about programming the palate!
The Voice of Reason Heard Here… and a bit of stupidity too.
September 11, 2009
The Doctor Will See You Now!
I am disappointed that I completely missed an excellent opportunity to exercise my duty as a citizen to inform my elected representatives about my views on bill 156 basically proposing that we would have some basic nutrition labels in restaurants, etc. I think it would be a great idea to know that the Big Mac I’m about to scarf down is 800 calories or whatever it is. I think that would have prevented me from taking full advantage of some very rich lunches and dinners and a lot of really fantastic wine! I am pretty convinced that I would have been a lot more conscious of my intake if I were to see some numbers over and over again, and start connecting the dots between my choice to consume those numbers and their effects.
My car is very fuel efficient, and only costs about $15 to fill, but I can’t really put more than that in there… unlike the situation we have with our bodies, in that we can put in a lot less than $15 in the form of nutritionally insufficient and empty of prana taste bombs on a dull, over-stimulated, and fatigued palate.
On the highest level of my reason I completely get that by eating more than x calories, I will be bigger… but it’s all the tiny individual singular actions that are hard to corral and add up in the mind, and the habitual behaviours (Starbucks anyone?).
I find this argument comical on many levels…
Peter works very hard to inform himself, but why does it have to be hard to inform ourselves? Let’s just make it easy to see nutritional information at the point of consumption, so we can do some simple math, and make an informed choice… like smoking cigarettes … I get exposed to the math on the various poisons and then I get a opportunity to make an informed choice about if and how much I will smoke.
It’s really about common sense? Come on Peter, it’s really about profits!
Which leads me to a wonderful segue to the original purpose for my post…
Michael Pollen couldn’t have put it any more simply and rationally.
I wonder what would happen if we just let food be our medicine?
The Corner Pieces Got Me!
September 10, 2009
This is how I felt after not just one, but TWO brownies from Whole Foods! I didn’t mean to, but the corner pieces got me!
More David Kessler and The End Of Overeating…
September 10, 2009
“Television could perform a great service in mass education, but there’s no indication its sponsors have anything like this on their minds.” Tallulah Bankhead
Huffpo has a terrific interview with David Kessler on the responsibility food marketers have in the obesity epidemic…
LM: That ties into what you were talking about with eatertainment as an aspect of this phenomenon.
DK: If I give you a pack of sugar, and I said, “Go have a good time,” you’re going to look at me and say, “What are you talking about?” Now I add to that fat, and temperature, and texture, and mouth feel, and color, and I’m going to put it on every corner, and I’m going to say you can do it with your friends, you can do it at the end of the day when you want to relax, and I add all the television monitors and the color, so it’s a carnival sort of atmosphere, who wouldn’t want to get on the ride?…
…It also is how you look at advertising. If advertising was meant to just convey information to consumers and it was neutral, that’s one thing. But if advertising is a cue, then it gives you greater reason to regulate it, especially to kids.
..
Fifty years ago, the tobacco industry, confronted with the evidence that smoking causes cancer, decided to deny the science and deceive the American public. Now, we know that highly palatable foods—sugar, fat, salt—are highly reinforcing and can activate the reward center of the brain. For many people, that activation is sustained when they’re cued. They have such a hard time controlling their eating because they’re constantly being bombarded—their brain is constantly being activated.
For decades the food industry was able to argue, “We’re just giving consumers what they want.” Now we know that giving them highly salient stimuli is activating their brains. The question becomes what do they do now?”
Hmmmmm?
Blessing Before Meals Helps Digestion!
September 9, 2009
At mealtime, many of us just chow down without any thought as to where we get our food, how and who grows it, what it does for us, the symbology of it in literature, the nutritional and health benefits, oh and most importantly… how lucky we are to be able to eat it!
More than 20 million children starve to death every day… and that doesn’t count the ones who are just simply starving… how lucky we are to just not even think about “if” we get fed.
It’s just “what”, “when”, and “how much”.
We may not really even think about our meal if we are reading, texting, watching, or surfing…
How interesting it is to look back to times when blessing the food before eating (and sometimes AFTER as well!) was an important ritual.
I like the idea of taking a moment to appreciate the “bounty” on my plate, and have a stockpile of “blessings” from a variety of sources.
Here is one from Nischala Joy Devi, who taught the first yoga programs for both Dean Ornish’s protocol for reversing heart disease and the Commonweal Cancer Help Program. It is from her book the healing path of yoga…
Nischala Joy Devi
Beloved Mother Nature, you are here on our table as our food.
You are endlessly bountiful, benefactress of all.
Please grant us health and strength, wisdom, and dispassion to find permanent peace and joy.
May the entire universe be ever filled with peace and joy, love and light.
What beautiful imagery!
Now what is really interesting is that according to studies she cites in her book, a 5 minute meditation prior to eating leads to an increase in alpha-amylase. this enzyme helps us digest carb rich foods.
Math Before Meals!
In the same study, alpha-amylase production decreased by 22% when subjects did math problems for 5 minutes before meals!
O-vegetables!
September 9, 2009
O-vegetables!
I wonder what kind of premium these greens would get at the market?
From the NYT…”City officials say that Sam Kass, a White House chef and a one-time personal culinary czar for the Obamas, showed up at a community meeting last week to support the efforts of a nonprofit group that is hoping to bring an open-air farmers’ market to a spot near the White House. The market would be open to the public every Thursday from Sept. 17 through Oct. 29.”
