I just read an interview of Daphne Miller on her book called The Jungle Effect: A Doctor Discovers the Healthiest Diets from Around the World—Why They Work and How to Bring Them Home. I really enjoyed the interview not only because I liked Dr. Miller's personality that came through in the interview, but because she also brought up some very important aspects, for example the fact that "good food, nutritious food, and saving the planet are also parallel"! That is the message that I think needs to get out there! Stop eating highly processed foods and you will save your health and the health of the planet!!!
Fortunately, the international non-profit organization Slow Food is on the right track to getting that message across with the multiple programs they offer. I think it's most important, though, to start at the school level. We need to teach children where food comes from and how to prepare it. We need to let them taste fresh foods. Most kids nowadays are so used to highly processed foods that when presented with artificial and natural flavors of, say, strawberry they often prefer the artificial one because that is the flavor they know, the flavor they are used to. Slow Food also offers taste education programs in schools and universities, which include Garden-to-Table Projects and Slow Food in Schools. I wish we had had a school garden when I was growing up! Fortunately, my parents were against us consuming highly processed foods. For example, my sister and I were not allowed to drink soft drinks. At the time I may have thought it "unfair", but now I am glad because I still don't drink soft drinks.
It looks like more and more people are getting involved in educating our children on good, fresh nutritious foods. A friend of mine just told me about a nutritionist, Susanne Klug, who has started to offer cooking classes for children. She has just opened a branch in Nürnberg. I think this is a wonderful idea! I also just read an article called Cookbook Publishers Try to Think Small about the rising trend of cookbooks for children. Unfortunately I don't have access to these books right now, so I can't look at them to see if they are any good, but I do like the idea of getting children to cook at home. The article also mentions a website called Spatulatta that shows videos of children cooking. I watched the video on how to make "Swedish pancakes". It was too cute!
The first cookbook I ever had was called Peter Rabbit's Natural Foods Cookbook by Arnold Dobrin. I received it when I turned four and I still have it! The recipes are really easy to read (small bits of texts interspersed with illustrations by Beatrix Potter) and easy to make. I used to make the Squirrel Nutkin's Banana-Nut Loaf--yum! Now I have moved on to slightly more complicated recipes!
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This "Slow Food" business all sounds like a wonderful idea. A vision is forming in my mind of Europe, where life can also be fast-paced, like in America... but somehow it was possible to keep good flavor and fresh ingredients in the food. So even in a relatively poor country like Romania all the food tastes better than in the U.S.... Right down from the tomatoes and strawberries (which don't taste like cardboard) to the flavorful chicken, to the delicious imported Milka chocolate, all the way to the potato chips, which, though artificial, manage to retain some authenticity of taste. Maybe the reason is that the ingredients are all made somewhat locally and aren't processed to survive a trip from one ocean to another. I don't know. In any case, it's a shame that children should prefer the synthetic medicine taste of fake strawberry to the real thing. How can such poverty exist in what is supposed to be a land of affluence?
ReplyDeleteOne thing I do love, though, is Coke. I can't imagine growing up without that wonderful teeth-rotting, hyperactivity-inducing, can-exploding liquid, the love child of the coca leaf and kola nut, and therefore the presentable half-brother of the life-shattering cocaine drug. So I have a suggestion. Maybe Slow Foods can figure out how to naturally make Coca Cola, and then it would taste ten times better than the glorified sugar water you sometimes get from the fountains. Maybe then small cola businesses would crop up and provide competition against the hegemon corporation, if nothing else, encouraging it to improve its product.