What did you hide in there?

For toddlers, a lot of things are about control — they want control and they’ll do anything to get it. Food often becomes a battleground for families, with parents wanting them to eat nutritious food, to sit properly at the table, and to learn to eat what is put in front of them. High expectations for meal time can lead to disappointment, turn mealtime into a battleground and create an unhealthy relationship with food. But what can parents do? There is, of course, no silver bullet. However, there are ways that you can make mealtime more pleasant without having to cater to every single food-related whim that your child has.

Parents always feel pressured to have those perfect family dinners (although I don’t think they’re “all that”). I think the first thing we should do is take a huge weight off of our own shoulders and stop worrying about whether everyone is sitting properly at the table and using the right utensils. That will come, with time. When your kids are toddlers, developing a healthy and positive attitude toward food is more important than proper table manners. Dionna (@codenamemama) wrote a great post with ideas on making mealtime a positive experience that I wish I’d printed out and posted on my fridge when my kids were that age (in fact, maybe I should still do it now).

It is important to remember when dealing with your own kids and when handing out advice to others, that what works for one toddler, will not necessarily work for another. That is especially true when it comes to picky eaters. There will always be some person ready to tell you that if you just put healthy food in front of your kids, they are guaranteed to eat it. My experience with a picky eater tells me that is FAR from the truth.

When I asked my readers about the issues they find challenging with their toddlers, a lot of you mentioned picky eaters. Erin, one of the commenters on the post, left an insightful comment in response to some of the concerns people brought up:

I think eating issues are often caused when parents make food an issue of control rather than sustenance. All small kids want to control their world, and they often focus on food. So if parents are rigid about expecting kids to do X (like clean their plate) they will often do Y. In addition, small children have extremely sensitive senses of taste and texture, so it’s pretty common that flavors that seem okay to us are revolting to children.

I wouldn’t send my kid to bed hungry either. I tend to make them food I know they will like and add on a bit of what we’re having in some form (although they often eat before us because they go to bed early). The 3 y.o. has to take at least one “thank you” bite from everything on the plate, but whatever he eats or doesn’t eat after that is up to him. I don’t care. My job is to provide a balanced and nutritious meal. His job is to decide what he wants to eat. And we have a designated snack before bedtime that’s part of the daily meal routine. (We don’t do dessert, so that’s never an issue.)

I was a kid who wouldn’t eat much and I spent a LOT of time sitting at the dining room table after everyone had left refusing to eat my vegetables, and I ended up with a very unhealthy relationship to food. I think it’s one of those situations where we as parents have to ask ourselves – Is this really a big deal to me? Why? What am I trying to teach/give my child out of this situation? When you think about it, it’s kind of strange to try to force someone to like certain foods if they don’t. It’s not a moral failing if your neighbor doesn’t like cilantro!

Hannah (@mominisrael) from A Mother In Israel writes about food at Cooking Manager. A couple of years ago, she wrote a post on preventing food issues, which detailed her mother’s approach to feeding their family. She followed it up with a second post, answering a reader’s questions, on feeding picky children without wasting food.

My two kids couldn’t be more different in terms of what they will eat, what they won’t eat, and how much they eat. Yet somehow, magically, they are both fairly healthy. So my biggest bit of advice regarding toddlers and food would be the same as my advice on most toddler issues — slow down, relax, breathe, and listen to your child. You’ll figure it out over time.

Resources for Healthy Meals, Snacks and Nutrition Parenting

• Check out my review of our favourite recipe book for feeding our family, Whining & Dining (by Emma Waverman & Eshun Mott), including my picks for the best recipes in the book.
• Amy (@muddybootsblog) from Muddy Boots Blog writes about adding some greens to smoothies and popsicles to get some goodness into reluctant vegetable eaters. Amy says this is the only way she could get veggies into her toddler for many, many months.
• Sixty Second Parent (@60secondparent) has a quick list of finger foods for toddlers. Try using an ice cube tray to make a mini toddler buffet with a variety of snacks with different tastes, textures and food groups.
• Over at SimpleBites (@simplebites), they’ve posted one pot wonders for babies and toddlers and two healthy snacks for your little ones.
•  What about letting your toddler plan some meals? Farrukh from Housewife’s Utopia writes about the meal her toddler came up with.
• Dr. Sears has 17 Tips for Feeding Picky Eaters — are there any you haven’t tried yet?
• Some kids simply won’t eat, no matter what you serve or what strategies you try. If you are concerned, check out My Child Won’t Eat – How To Prevent & Solve the Problem (Carlos González). It is a La Leche League book for parents who are concerned that their breastfeeding child isn’t eating a lot of solid foods.
• I wrote about Fuel for Human Bodies: Our Complex Relationship with Food, touching on everything from busy families, to nutrition, to advertising, and more.

What are your favourite resources relating to toddlers and food? Do you have any favourite websites, books, or recipes?

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Image credit: jessicafm on flickr. Post contains affiliate links.

 This next guest post is a great transition from the topicsof toddler survival into the topic of toddler food. Please welcome Aimée from the amazing food blog Simple Bites with some great tips on surviving the grocery shopping experience with toddlers.

We must have looked a sight, my three-year-old, Mateo and I. It was my last minute attempt to hit up a grocery store before beginning my serious holiday cooking and baking blitz. My shopping list was lengthy and detailed, my time limited, and my energy flagging even before I unbuckled my son and stepped toward my local IGA.

I shivered in the December winds, my winter coat not giving much protection to my 6-month pregnant shape, and inwardly cursed myself for –yet again- forgetting to bring a couple of reusable shopping bags.

Once inside, Mateo shrieked and his little snowsuit-clad form staggered across the wet floors and lurched into a massive red plastic fire truck shopping cart. As I tossed my purse into the top of it, my iPhone dinged to let me know that my email was piling up as I ran errands.

Fast forward thirty minutes finds us hot, bothered and hungry. I can barely maneuver the unwieldy shopping cart between pyramids of Christmas fruitcake and Crisco. While I searched for just the right candied fruit peel for my homemade Pannetone, Mateo had thought it would be fun to poke his finger into a few shrink-wrapped packages of dried fruit. He was now grounded to the fire truck, where he fully reclined on the seat, his muddy, still-too-big winter boots hanging out the side window.

Too tired to care that his boots were a potential hazard and focused on finding the last few items on my list, I took the corner into the cracker aisle. In classic comedy style, his boots took out the entire bottom row of a tower of Breton crackers – and the rest came tumbling down around our cart.

That was it. I was done. I headed for the nearest check-out, paid my 5 cents per plastic bag, and enlisted the help of the grocery packer to push my cart out through the slush to my car. He must have seen the lag in my step, for he quietly loaded the car and gently closed the trunk before wishing me ‘Joyeuses Fêtes’. I sighed. It wasn’t my brightest hour. I knew better.

At home, as I unpacked the clementines and cranberries, my thoughts drifted to this yet-unwritten post and what wisdom I could possibly impart to Annie’s readers. It seemed only fitting to share the most obvious lesson of the day – how to survive a grocery shopping trip with your toddler (and pregnant belly) in tow.

Because we don’t just want to survive an outing like this, do we? They have to happen once or twice a week, so we may as well aim high and plan to actually enjoy them. On days when I’m not in a hurry or feeling hugely pregnant, I prepare ahead of time to make the grocery shopping a learning experience.

And so, here are my tips for making the best possible grocery shopping experience with your toddler.

1. Make a List.

This goes without saying, especially for those of us with chronic ‘mommy brain’. Make the menu plan, write a detailed grocery list, and stick to it, thus avoiding impulse buys.

I take the organizing one step further. After my list is made, I take three different colored highlighters and highlight the list: fresh produce, pantry staples, and dairy/meat. Now once I’m at the market, it’s easy to see at a glance if I’ve gotten all of our fruits and vegetables for the week.

2. Fuel Up.

Either have a snack before you go, or pack something portable to keep little hands busy (them), avoid more impulsive buys (you) or ward off hunger pains (all parties). Since we practice smart snacking, there’s usually something in the fridge or pantry that is ready to grab and go.

Just sayin’: sugar free lollipops can make standing in line at the cashier much more pleasant. Oh, and I’m not opposed to dipping into a box of rice crackers before they’ve been purchased either.

3. Apples or Pears?

When shopping for groceries, occasionally include your child in the process by giving them a choice between two items. Not only will it keep them engaged, but they will genuinely feel as they are not just along for the ride.

Bonus: Letting your child choose between green or yellow wax beans really does help him connect with his food and later you will reap the benefits around the dinner table when he is eager to eat ‘his beans’.

4. Quiz Time.

Kids love to show off their smarts and can be easily entertained by your request to name off fruits and vegetables. They are curious too, and will listen to your tale of where the produce came from and how it was harvested if you care to spin one. That just might buy you enough time to select the perfect avocados you need.

Piquing your child’s curiosity for food can help lead to a lifelong interest in healthful eating, cooking, or even farming. It’s never too early or too late to begin.

5. Don’t Get Then Started on Junk Food. Ever.

As Annie writes, we as parents have a responsibility to say “No” to unwholesome foods and to teach about and provide our children with proper nutrition.

We want our children to grow up to be healthy eaters, aware of the way their food choices affect the planet, and how it is produced. Most importantly, we want them to connect the dots between healthy, whole food and happiness.

So much of developing a healthy family food culture begins in the grocery store with the choices our children observe us making from day to day, season to season, year to year.

I can safely go down the cookie or junk food aisles without one request for Twizzlers or Bear Paws. Sure they’ve had these items at grandma’s or playgroup, but both my sons instinctively know that they don’t go in mama’s cart.

How do you manage the grocery outings? I’d love to hear your wisdom, stories and tips!

Aimée Wimbush-Bourque is a food writer and expectant mother of two, living in Montréal. She draws from her rural, whole foods upbringing as well as her professional training as a chef to prepare simple, unprocessed home cooking on a daily basis for her family. On her award-winning food blog, Simple Bites, she chronicles her kitchen experiences with stories, cooking tips and recipes. For more whole food inspiration and everyday delicious chit-chat, follow Aimée on Twitter and Facebook.

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Once again, the media is looking at the question of who is to blame when children aren’t eating properly. Parents and activists (such as Corporate Accountability International) don’t want fast food and processed food companies marketing their junk to our children. Those companies, on the other hand, claim that they offer many different choices and that it is up to parents to make good decisions for their children.

This week, Ottawa-based Dr. Yoni Freedhoff who blogs at Weighty Matters was quoted at length in the Chicago Tribune. You should read the whole article on the David vs. Goliath fight parents face, but here is a quick excerpt:

The argument put forth on how to protect them from all of these traps and more?  Parents can just say ‘no.’

‘No’ to pizza days at school. ‘No’ to chocolate milk as part of the school lunch program. ‘No’ to the freezies handed out after soccer practice. ‘No’ to the meal and the co-branded Disney toy that was advertised on television. ‘No’ to the sugary cereal with the decoder ring on the bottom.

So who is to blame?

My long answer is written out in my post outlining the reasons why boiling everything down to “personal responsibility” will not fix the systemic problems in our food system.

My short answer: Both.  Parents do have a responsibility to say no. To seek balance. To teach and provide proper nutrition for their children. To help their kids unpack deceptive advertising and become media literate. But at the same time, we shouldn’t have every obstacle possible shoved in our way as we do that. Each of us has a limited amount of energy and time and patience. None of us wants to be the parent who is saying no all the time. Some of us (I would bet all of us) would like to be able to sit down, relax, and lower our guard every once in a while.

We’ve all heard the saying “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” This proverb can be so aptly applied to so many different situations. When I think about how to best help people in need, regardless of the type of need, it is something that I like to keep in mind. Addressing the symptoms of a problem provide temporary relief, but addressing the true roots of those problems create solutions.

Today is Blog Action Day and bloggers around the world are blogging about food and famine. When I was researching my post for today, I ran across some statistics that make you stop in your tracks. On ONE.org, they share some quick facts about food and agriculture:

• Approximately 925 million people around the world are hungry.
• Growth in agriculture is twice as effective at reducing poverty as growth in other sectors.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, 2/3 of people are employed in agriculture.
• Women produce 60 to 80% of food in sub-Saharan Africa.

In UNICEF’s post about higher food prices, I read some more jarring statistics. In Kenya, people spend half of their income on food and in Somalia they spend more than half of their income on food. That means that when food prices rise, as they have been, the people in those countries suffer even more than we do. Those rises in food prices have a much bigger impact on their budget than it does on ours. Especially if they are already buying less food than the really need and already buying the least expensive food possible, there isn’t really anywhere to cut back, other than by eating less food and being even more hungry.

Getting food and water to people who are suffering from the drought and famine in Africa is an essential and urgent need. But solving the problem that so many Africans are facing, requires an investment in their future.  This is why our family will be supporting many of the Plan Canada Gifts of Hope projects that invest in the livestock, the seeds, the infrastructure, and the education that is needed to help communities further develop and grow their agricultural sector. Some of the projects you can support through Plan Canada (and its affiliates in other countries) include:

• Baby chicks
• Peanut butter projects
• Endless harvest
• Beekeeping kits
• Mango trees
• Livestock, such as baby chicks, goats, rabbits, pigs, cows, hens and roosters and more Rabbits

Projects like these not only create economic growth, but they also helps to feed families locally and make communities more independent. We need to reduce our global dependence on companies like Monsanto and invest in small scale local agriculture. When I give, I want it to be a gift that helps plant seeds of change.

Last week my partner went out to our friend’s organic farm and picked tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes. Big ones, small ones. Red ones, green ones, and orange ones. This weekend, I turned most of them from tomatoes into pasta sauce, with smaller amounts going toward ratatouille, salsa and fried green tomatoes. Some are cooked and some are roasted.

My final inventory (minus things already consumed):

• 6 jars bolognese
• 8 jars butternut squash (with orange tomatoes, orange peppers, onion and garlic)
• 2 jars roasted red pepper and tomato
• 3 jars primavera
• 3 jars tomato and garlic
• 2 jars salsa verde

Because I know nothing about canning (perhaps a challenge for another year), I simply froze the sauces in mason jars with the tops still loose and then closed them once the sauce had frozen.

I’m looking forward to a winter of organic, local, sauces that have not only saved me money, but also saved us from way too much sodium and other things that get tossed into commercial sauces.

What have you preserved for the winter? What method did you use?

This is a guest post by Kristin from Peace Love and Muesli, a great blog with plenty of healthy ideas for families. She probably wins the prize for the blogger I’ve known the longest. We were both heading out to BlogHer ’11 last week and she agreed to write a fun guest post for my blog with some fast and fun food ideas for families. Enjoy!

Maybe your partner is jetting off to a fancy conference for the weekend or maybe your camping trip was cancelled because of tornado warnings. Whatever it is, you are home with the kids and looking to make it a special weekend.  Sure you can head out to a restaurant, it always seems like a great solution but in my experience it costs more money than I wanted to spend and never tastes as great as I’d like.

What’s a health and budget conscious parent looking for some special family time to do?

mmmm.....s'mores

Eat at home and make it fun, that’s what!

The first step to an extra special family dinner is to shake up the routine.

1. Ask your kids what they’d like to eat. This is a loaded question, you might end up eating chocolate milk and cookies. If you are ok with that, go with it. If not, set some parameters like there must be a vegetable.
2. Instead of a sit down family dinner, have a cocktail style dinner. Or a buffet. Costumes allowed.
3. Light a campfire in the backyard (or a picnic area) and cook outdoors. Everybody likes s’mores, even the healthiest eaters.

To get started you’ll need some recipes. Good news, I have recipes.

Kids love to help in the kitchen, especially when making a mess is involved. So recruit your team of helpers, get into the kitchen and get cooking together.

The most requested meal at my house is noodles and cheese. I like to make homemade food when I can and mac ‘n cheese tastes so much better when it isn’t out of a box.  Excellent with cheddar and gruyere, but there is no end to the flavour combinations.

Coconut curry lentil burgers

The second most requested meal at my house is nachos, we really like cheese at our house. We also bake nachos in a casserole with tortillas. It’s a tasty dish that is easy to have ready ahead of time. Serve both with lots of guacamole and salsa. Or better yet, serve them with a guacamole bean salad. Nachos are a great make at home meal. They have the decadent feel of a restaurant meal but with healthy toppings.

If you and your family would prefer a vegan dinner I’ve got some ideas. How about coconut curry lentil burger with mango salsa? Or sweet potato and black bean enchiladas? Both delicious, make extras because you will be wanting leftovers. Hmm, I bet the mango salsa would be good on the enchiladas too.

Kids helping with the pizza dough

Make your own pizza night is a great way to get the whole family cooking, it’s also a great way to make sure everyone gets what they want on their pizza. My kids love rolling out their own pizza dough, oblivious to the huge mess of flour. Isn’t there a don’t try to make a happy kid happier rule? Try barbequing your pizzas, gives them a crunchy texture and a smoky flavour.

On more melted cheese recipe, please, I promise it’s a good one.

Cheese fondue. Pair it with a chocolate fondue dessert and it will turn dinner into a great time. Bread is the traditional dipper for cheese fondue but sliced apple, cooked sausage and boiled potatoes are great too.

After all that you and your eaters will need some dessert. Bake up some chocolate chips cookies. For an extra fancy dessert use the cookies to make ice cream sandwiches. That’s a sure fire way to turn any family dinner into a special memory.

What are your family favourite special meals?

Kristin writes all about healthy at Peace, Love and Muesli. Well, mostly healthy. Life isn’t about perfection and s’mores are too yummy to pass up. She believes in a one step at a time approach to all things. Kristin vlogs about her potato chip addiction and encourages readers to Feel Good every Friday. Find Kristin on Twitter or Facebook.

This is a post about families and food, poverty and privilege, accessibility and convenience, taste and nutrition,  consumerism and profit, affordability and sustainability. This is a post about our complex relationship with the way we fuel our bodies that cannot begin to do the topic justice.

Healthy eating? Whose responsibility is it?

You’ve heard it before. People are obese because they have no self-control. No one is forcing them to eat McDonald’s or to scarf down a bag of chips while sitting on the couch. No one. So if they are fat, it is their fault. It doesn’t matter that they also exercise and eat lots of healthy food or that there are thin people who eat a lot more fast food and never seem to gain any weight. That doesn’t matter at all. If you are fat, it is your. own. fault. period.

Or so goes the holier-than-thou mantra.

But I don’t buy it. People are, statistically, heavier now than they ever were before. Did we all go through some sort of metamorphosis that has led us to lose the self-control that previous generations had? No, not really. The problem is that societal influences have changed for the worse and we have simply accepted them. When they cause us harm, we yell about how it is our “personal responsibility” to just deal with it and do better. That isn’t always easy when the cards are stacked against us.

• Families are busier. There are more two-income or single-parent families where there simply isn’t one person home all day to clip coupons, leisurely visit multiple grocery stores to get the best deals, tend to a backyard garden, and prepare homemade meals from scratch. Instead of just running off to the local playground or into the woods with some friends, children are involved in after-school activities that their parents drive them to and from. Parents are trying to squeeze some me-time into the week too.

• Food is less nutritious. Yes, vegetables are still vegetables and everyone should strive to have a well balanced diet that includes lots of whole foods. However, there are many processed foods that have unnecessarily high amounts of fat, sugar and salt. Bread has added salt and tons of sugar. Pasta sauces are dripping with fat and have astronomical sodium levels. Things that could be baked are instead deep fried. Things that should be sweet are instead sickeningly sweet. I wrote recently about some better processed food brands that we have found and like, but they are few and far between.  I lost weight when we moved to Europe and gained it all back when we returned to Canada and I am convinced that the main reason is the added sugar in bread and other processed foods that we rely on.

• Nutritious food is less accessible and less affordable. With the rise of fast food and convenience stores, a lot of small grocery stores, bakeries, markets, and health food stores have gone out of business. This has created a lot of food deserts in major cities in industrialized countries, i.e. areas that are lacking access to “affordable fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk, and other foods that make up the full range of a healthy diet.” Unfortunately, food deserts are more common in low income areas, where people are less likely to be able to afford healthier fast food options and aren’t necessarily able to just hop in a car to go to a grocery store in another part of the city. When buying healthy food requires a four hour round trip on a public bus with three children in tow, parents are understandably less likely to make the effort. When nutritious food is available, the prices are often high, especially outside of the growing season in a country like Canada.

• Pervasive marketing. Fast food and other unhealthy, over-processed options are marketed to death (literally). We cannot escape them. Even if you don’t watch television, you are subject to billboards, in-store displays, trucks that are no longer just trucks but instead a zoomed in giant picture of a Big Mac or chocolate chip cookies, vending machines, window displays, and more.  Major brands sneak their way into sporting events, cultural events, museums, recreational facilities, and schools under the guise of sponsorship dollars. On top of all of this, we need to account for the health washing that happens, i.e. all the labels and commercials that tell us how healthy the not-so-healthy food is.

There are other things that play into obesity rates for sure, such as sedentary lifestyles and genes. But what we put into our bodies does continue to be one significant determinant of our weight and of overall obesity rates.

We can’t simply blame people for putting the wrong things into their bodies when the cards are stacked against them like this. To do so is to speak with the blinders of privilege. Yes, I know that some people manage to eat great food all the time while clipping coupons and earning minimum wage. But that doesn’t mean that it is easy for everyone or that it is the top priority for everyone. We can work hard to eat really well all of the time, but we shouldn’t have to.

Yes, we eat fast food

On average, we probably eat out about twice per week. One of those meals is probably at a fast food chain and the other is usually at a less than ideal restaurant. We aren’t perfect. I know what is in that food. I know it isn’t optimal nutrition. I also know that it isn’t making up the vast majority of the food that my family eats. We make choices among the bad choices. We’ll opt for a chain with fresh ingredients and crayons over one with suspect ingredients and cheap toxic toys. I know that it doesn’t make the food healthy. But yes, we do take advantage of convenience and even of cheap convenience sometimes.

Could we do better?

Yes, of course we could. But quite honestly, it just isn’t worth the effort all the time.

If our kids have an activity on Saturday morning and we then have other plans in the city in the afternoon, it simply doesn’t make sense to drive all the way home in between. I could pack a picnic lunch, which we could eat outdoors if the weather is nice or could eat in the car if it is awful outside. Of course, I could. But to be perfectly frank, after working all week and packing nutritious school lunches every single day during the week, sometimes I just want a break too. Not only do I want a break from slaving over food preparation, but I also want a break from the whining about the things that they don’t want to eat. So yes, sometimes it is just easier and better for my mental health to stop at Harvey’s for a burger and fries than it is to go the extra mile to ensure that everything that goes into our families mouths is perfectly nutritious.

Sometimes, preserving some extra family time (instead of spending it all in the grocery store, garden and kitchen) and preserving some extra family peace is more important than perfect nutrition. As long as we are generally healthy, I’m okay with that because I know that the food we put into our bodies is just one part of our overall health. Getting out and doing fun things as a family and getting enough rest are other parts of that equation too.

Convenience shouldn’t suck

I think the subtitle says it all, but let me explain.

When we were moving to Berlin last year, some of you may remember that I was concerned when I learned there would be a McDonald’s about one block from our apartment. In the end, it wasn’t an issue at all. The kids asked a few times if we could go there, I said “no” and explained why and they accepted it. Why did they accept it? They accepted it because there were delicious real food treats that were equally accessible. They accepted it because there were numerous playgrounds in the area that were much nicer than the trashy one at the McDonald’s. They accepted it because there were fun things to do that were much more appealing than a stupid plastic toy. Ultimately, when held up against what else was on offer, McDonald’s simply didn’t make the cut.

Almost every subway and train station in Berlin has at least one bakery in it that sells fresh baked goods, but also sandwiches full of fresh ingredients and also fresh fruit. This photo, provided by my friend Danielle from 50% of my DNA, shows an example of one of those. But the ones that we passed multiple times every single day had a much bigger choice than what you see here. There was a Subway (the sandwich chain, not the underground train) a couple of blocks from our house, but we never once step foot into it (although we did eat at another Subway once in another part of the city). Here in Canada, I see Subway as one of the better fast food options. In Berlin, it wasn’t even on my radar most of the time because there were so many other convenient options to choose from.

Let me draw you a picture of the area that we lived in. When we were coming home and got off the U-Bahn (subway), we immediately passed by a wood oven pizza place that made fresh pizzas starting at around $2. Right next to that was a small grocery store and fruit market that was open 24 hours per day. During the day, the fresh fruit spilled out onto the sidewalks and made it so easy to grab whatever we needed for a quick afternoon snack. We got fresh bread at the bakery every morning for breakfast (there were at least three bakeries within a 5 minute walk of our apartment). There were numerous grocery stores, ranging from cheap bulk stores to the upscale organic ones within a few blocks of our apartment. Some of them, like the Bio Company that we liked to shop at, also sold affordable snacks and meals that you could eat right there.

The kids and I often packed some cheese, apple slices, and our stainless steel water bottles and headed out for the day. I would buy some bread at the bakery whichever subway station we got off at and we’d have a picnic lunch somewhere in the park. We ate ice cream almost every single day, but it was Italian-style gelato that did not have excessive amounts of sugar in it. We ate out several times per week and had our choice of dozens and dozens of restaurants within a few blocks of our house, ranging from amazing little vegetarian cafes to traditional German style food to Moroccan, Thai, Italian and all sorts of other ethnic foods.

Berlin offered accessible, affordable, and nutritious convenience, not just in our part of town (which was one of the poorest parts of the city and would likely be a food desert in North America) but across the city. Ottawa and Gatineau don’t even come close, not even downtown and certainly not in the suburbs. Convenience shouldn’t have to suck, but in North America it seems like it frequently does.

I don’t expect people to be perfect

We are all humans. The food that we put into our bodies is only one of many things that we need to worry about on a daily basis. Some days, making the best choices from an ethical and health perspective is not always possible. Or at least it isn’t possible without giving something else up. Some people have been able to make changes to their lives that allow them to make the best choices most of the time. Not all of us can and not all of us have the motivation to do so.

As Ottawa obesity doctor Yoni Freedhoff often says, “It’s about the healthiest life you can enjoy, not the healthiest life you can tolerate.”

If people want to make a healthy choices, they should be at least as accessible and affordable as unhealthy choices. In that type of world, I think that people would be more likely to make healthy choices more often. They wouldn’t feel like they had to turn to an unhealthy choice because it was the only convenient, affordable, or appetizing option that was available to them. Like our experience in Berlin, they would be able to pass by McDonald’s without giving it a second thought because there were dozens of options that were better in every single way.

We can all make a difference

But how do we get there? The world will not magically change overnight. The crappy foods, the food desserts, the pervasive marketing, the accessibility and affordability issues are not going to go away on their own. If we continue down the path that we are on now, we are going to continue to endanger our health and the environment. Our current approach to feeding the population of the world is not sustainable. It is destructive and is making irreparable damage. None of us can change this on our own, none of us should have to change this on our own, but all of us can help.

If we each choose one change that we want to make in our own lives and follow through, that will make a difference. If we all choose one issue to educate other people about, that will make a difference. None of us has to take it all on. All of us can, incrementally, take on more.If more of us make changes in our own lives and our own choices, it will put more  pressure on the food system to make changes too. As consumers and as human beings concerned about the  sustainability of our planet and the health of its inhabitants, we can make a difference.

However, we shouldn’t have to carry the entire burden. We still need governments to put regulations in place that will protect us, protect the environment, and protect animals. We need industry to partner with us in seeking out healthier solutions. Even organizations that are making foods on the unhealthy end of the scale should be looking for solutions to reduce sodium, sugar and fat content, to buy more local ingredients, to buy more organic ingredients, and to insist on ethical treatment of the animals that we eat and the human beings who process that food.

We need to shape up. We need the governments to shape up. We need industry to shape up. Boiling it all down to “personal responsibility” will not resolve the systemic problems in our food system. If we want food fuel for our human bodies, we need to work together to make changes.

I have food on the mind lately. I’m trying to feed our family better and I’m also working on a post in my head as a follow up to the McDonald’s post. I want to talk about our food system, our relationship with it, how it impacts our lives, and what needs to change. But I still have to finish working through my train of thought.

In the meantime, in addition to sharing cookies with you yesterday, I thought I would share today’s journey of food from local farmers and our own backyard garden onto our dinner plate.

Good farmer’s markets know it is smart to do something to attract families. Ours often has free attractions and activities for kids. Today’s attraction was free face painting.

Our bounty from the farmer’s market! I always go around and check the organic stands first and then go back to other local vendors if I’m missing something I need. Today we got garlic scapes, cucumbers, asparagus, onions, and Japanese turnips. We also picked up some bread, some cheese, and some wild game sausages.

Here are a few odds and ends from our property and garden. I already harvested a lot yesterday, so there wasn’t much left to take today. I picked some wild strawberries that grow in different spots around our property. I found a few more peas in our garden and I picked some of the rainbow chard, which probably could have grown a bit more, but looked like it was getting attacked by some sort of pest, so I figured I’d better grab some before someone else at it all.

For dinner tonight, we fired up the BBQ to make the sausages we bought at the market. I also made an Asian-inspired vegan quinoa dish. I cooked the quinoa in a toasted sesame miso broth and also chopped up the fine part of the garlic scapes (the part that is like chives) and mixed it into the broth. I then sauteed the garlic scapes, along with some julienned carrots, and some of the onion from the farmer’s market. When it was almost done, I added some chick peas and the stalks of the swiss chard. Once that was tender, I threw in the leaves of the swiss chard, the leaves from the Japanese turnips, and one finely chopped tomato. I then mixed it with the quinoa in a bowl. At the table, I added just a touch of sesame dressing to it for extra taste. We served all of that along with chopped vegetables and hummus. The vegetables included the Japanese turnips, one of the cucumbers, the peas from our garden, and some other random veggies I had in the fridge.

This is a typical lazy Sunday for us, where I have lots of time to shop carefully, spend time in the garden, and spend time cooking a healthy, nutritious meal. Not every day is like this though. Not even close.

Note: This post is being submitted for inclusion in the Healthy Child, Healthy World Summer Garden Show and Tell.

Recently on Care2, I wrote a post called Does Your Annual Food Waste Exceed Your Body Waste? It has some pretty scary statistics on the amount of food that we waste in the developing world. We always try to keep the amount of food that we waste to a minimum and I’m always frustrated when I end up having to throw good food away. Overall, I think we do quite well. Well enough, in any case, that when Julian recently went to put something in the garbage can and noticed a pile of mouldy bread in there, he said “What is all this food doing in the garbage?” That said, he is also the one who frustrates me the most when it comes to food waste, for example arriving home day after day with the yoghurt I sent him for a snack still in his lunchbox and very warm at the end of a long day.

I’m always on the lookout for things that can help us reduce our food waste. I already freeze a lot of things, like pieces of leftover sausage or cooked chicken that can be easily added to another dish on another day. We also freeze a lot of fruit if it looks like it will go bad before we have the chance to eat it and I then use that fruit later in smoothies or baking. I also take the ends of the bread that no one wants to eat and put them into a bag in the freezer and then toss that bread into the food processor when a recipe I’m using calls for bread crumbs.

This morning I was making breakfast for my family and noticed that we had way more boxes and bags of cereal than we needed in the cupboard and that most of them hadn’t been touched in a while. When I pulled them all out, I noticed that most of them didn’t even have one full serving of cereal in them. I figured that I could probably use all of the leftover cereal to make cookies or muffins, so I searched online to find a recipe and found a Cookies from Leftover Cereal recipe on CheapCooking.com. I used whole wheat flour for the flour (the recipe didn’t specify which kind) and used a mixture of dark chocolate chips and the President’s Choice Mini Peanut Butter Melts for the chocolate chips. I used the leftovers of four different kinds of cereal, most of which were different organic muesli type cereals and one that was the crumbs left in the bottom of a box of Kashi Cinnamon Harvest Squares.  I think that cranberries would be an excellent addition to the cookies too. I also meant to add a few tablespoons of flax seed to them, but forget to get it out (I’m easily distracted  by mini-bakers helping me).

The result was around 50 absolutely delicious cookies that my kids just love. I guess these would fall into the category of what passes as “breakfast cookies”, although I don’t think I would serve them as breakfast. On top of the sugar that is already in the cereal itself (not as bad as some brands mind you, and at least not high fructose corn syrup), the recipe adds more sugar and fat (butter) and puts it firmly in the sweet treat category for me. But so delicious!

My Care2 post has a few tips on reducing your food waste. Do you have any other tips or great recipes that you use to get rid of the leftovers?

Have you heard about the partnership between McDonald’s Canada and CityLine (a Canadian daytime television show targeted at women)?  They are working together to provide a FABULOUS opportunity for Canadian mom bloggers called McDonald’s All-Access Moms, where real moms get to “go behind the Golden Arches.”

Apparently all the cool mom bloggers in Canada got an e-mail encouraging them to apply for the program. I guess mine got lost in the mail somewhere (probably the postal strike or something). The e-mail said that the program is “designed specifically for moms who are interested in finding out the truth behind the rumours at McDonald’s.” I wonder which rumours those are? Like the rumours about which cashier is sleeping with which deep fryer operator?

It turns out this isn’t just a little conference call with a gift card attached. This opportunity, like some others I’ve written about before, involves travel and behind the scenes access:

The McDonald’s All-Access Moms program will select three Canadian mommy bloggers to go on four trips across the country.  Together, we will visit supplier facilities and restaurants and you’ll have the chance to ask all the tough questions –so you can find out for yourself, what is really in McDonald’s food.  At the same time, we would ask you to blog openly and honestly about your experience.

CityLine camera crews and parenting expert Nanny Robina will also be on the trips, capturing all the action, as there is nothing to hide!

The program will kick off with a trip to corporate headquarters in Toronto and then a visit to the Innovation Centre and test kitchen in Chicago – this July!  Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions at all, I’d be happy to provide some more details.

There is one hitch. The program is not eligible to residents of the province of Quebec, so I can’t apply (update: apparently moms in Quebec can apply, but there is a separate French website for them). But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to put together a little video, like the real applicants will be doing, to tell McDonald’s and CityLine why I want to be a McDonald’s All-Access Mom (if the video doesn’t display or doesn’t work for you, you can access it here on YouTube).

To those who do apply, I wish you safe travels and enjoyable doublespeak. Maybe you can keep a cheeseburger from the tour to show to your grandchildren one day.

CityLine is right about one thing: Mom Knows Best. That’s why this mom will keep teaching her kids about the dark side of companies like McDonald’s instead of lining up to be part of their multi-billion dollar marketing machine.