Yearly Archives: 2011

Review — Nourish: food + community

Giveaways, , ,
Back in November, when I was knee-deep in school lunches, I heard about the Nourish curriculum. I thought it looked interesting. Nourish contacted me and asked if I would be interested in reviewing the Nourish curriculum and watching the film, which aired on PBS in November. I happily agreed.

 
Things got really busy for me in December and so I just now had the opportunity to view the 30 minute film. I think it’s really good. What I like most about it is that it’s not depressing. I find that many books and movies that deal with food politics to be downright dismal. I saw Food, Inc in September and I was profoundly changed and I’m happy I have seen that movie – it’s made me a better mom. However, I couldn’t even finish the book Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Nourish: food + community — The curriculum

Nourish was developed by the Center for Ecoliteracy. I love that the 84 page curriculum is available for free download on the Nourish website; however, I think it is at least partially meant to be a companion for the film. I think teachers could definitely use parts of the curriculum separately from the DVD. The curriculum opens with a viewing guide with discussion questions and even simple, creative worksheets called “Nourish Notes.” Each section devoted to an activity contains a follow-up worksheet at the end. Here’s a breakdown of the curriculum:

  • Activity 1 examines the “path from farm to fork.”
  • Activity 2 takes a closer look at seasonal foods.
  • Activity 3 is all about food traditions (I love that food culture is incorporated)
  • Activity 4 connects food to our ecosystem (Who else is doing that? It’s normally overlooked, but so important)
  • Activity 5 analyzes food ads (Ooh, I like doing that too!)
  • Activity 6 directs the students to develop a school lunch survey to give to their peers (how cool)
  • Nourish Action Projects — how to start up projects related to the ideas in the curriculum and an action plan worksheet.
  • Ideas from Nourish
  • Resources
  • Glossary
  • National standards — When teachers write out lesson plans for principals to review, we have to reference state learning standards that the instruction proposes to address. The Nourish curriculum does the work in advance by supplying the exact middle school learning standards the curriculum meets.

The curriculum is a great jumping off point for teachers to start bringing these issues into the classroom, with principal approval or whatever is needed in your school.
 
Nourish: food + community — The DVD

The Nourish DVD ($24.95) included both the half-hour PBS special on the “story of our food,” but under special features, there was an additional half-hour with more information from some of the “food celebrities” featured in the special. The film was light, but honest. Being only 30 minutes in length, I think it’s easier to find the time to watch it than a longer movie. I liked how the filmmakers incorporated some of the big names Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Anna Lappe, Bryant Terry, but that they highlighted the voices and faces of a diverse group of high school students. I loved hearing what the kids had to say about food.

The best way to describe the 30 minute program is to call it Food, Inc Lite (now with fewer calories!). They touch on CAFOs without the gory examples, and they talk about mono-cultures, but then cut to examples of farms with polycultures (animals and vegetables together, no need for fertilizer, pesticides, etc). Mind you, the terrible examples worked in Food, Inc, no doubt about it! But while I was horrified and choked up in Food, Inc, I was smiling and nodding watching Nourish.

Additionally, it was kid-friendly. I would feel comfortable showing this to middle school and high school age students, although truthfully I don’t have a ton of experience with those age groups. I could see this short film being shown in the classroom, in parts or as a whole. It’s at an introductory level so if you have students that are aware of these issues already (say like Birke Baehr), they might be bored. For the students at my school, I believe this would be all new information.

Did I learn anything new watching the video? The information about how we are overfishing our oceans was new to me. I didn’t know anything about Blue Fin Tuna and how it’s overfished. Not that I’m eating a lot of that type of fish, but it’s good to become aware of these issues, that are rarely covered by the mainstream press.

I loved in the special features where Alice Waters discussed how we need to think beyond food as something we use to simply “fuel up,” but the larger environmental, even political context, in which food should be considered.

What’s Nourish doing now?

Nourish will be launching a new website and releasing all-new video shorts in February. You can sign up for their newsletter at http://www.nourishlife.org/ or connect with them on facebook (www.facebook.com/nourishlife) to receive updates about new Nourish educational resources, as well as teacher seminars and youth summits. I’m looking forward to keeping up with them.

Here’s the trailer for the film I watched:

FCC full disclosure: I received the Nourish DVD to review. I was not given any cash compensation for sharing my opinion on the product. This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely mine. If I claim or appear to be an expert on a certain topic or product or service area, I will only endorse products or services that I believe, based on my expertise, are worthy of such endorsement. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.

Book Club Monday — Giveaway winners!

Book club,

The publisher generously offered to giveaway five copies of Free For All: Fixing School Food in America so that more people can participate in our discussion! Everyone who commented last week was eligible for the drawing. So here goes!

I used random number generator because there was no way I could choose from all of you cool people. You guys still amaze me! There were 122 comments, which I copied into a Word document and numbered by hand (I’m old school like that). Then I went online and punched in the variables:

And then I clicked go….

Winning commenters were:

#17 – Katie Gruber
#89 – Nicole (from nik in the desert) – I added that because there were two Nicoles!
#4 – Annie_G
#53 – Marisa
#104 – Felisha

Thanks to everyone who entered! Please email me your mailing address and I’ll send it to the publisher!

I have started to read the book and I find even the introduction fascinating, especially the statistics and examples. I do think it’s a little on the dense side (sorry Janet!), but the writing is superb. It’s obvious she spent years researching and writing the book.

I’m sorry that many of you have had trouble finding it at the library, and even through interlibrary loan. That’s a bummer. I guess I have a lot more faith in interlibrary loan than I should.

I’d like to create a name for our book club and a badge for you to put on your own blog showing others that you are reading along. I was thinking “Let’s chew on it – a book club for foodies,” or the “Heartburn Book Club – Digesting books on food politics.” Those are way too corny, right? Any ideas for creative, funny names? Oh, the possibilities are endless…

Friday Lunch Wrap-up

Packed lunches
I found out what was wrong with me: I’m deficient in Vitamin D. The lab results came back and my levels are below 20. My doctor told me to start taking 1,000 mg per day. I guess Vitamin D deficiencies are common among people living in the cold. Of course, I don’t eat dairy products too, but I do eat fish and eggs frequently. Now that I know, I can take steps to make it better!
Many of you mentioned enjoying the shots I took of my son’s lunches during the Eat Along Challenge in December and indicated you wanted to continue seeing what he was eating. Well, here you go. It wasn’t exactly a “banner” week for lunches…I wasn’t able to scratch cook as much as I would have liked and mimicking the offerings at daycare is constraining as well…
MY SON’S LUNCHES
(I give them a B- this week.)
MONDAY
Top row: Sweet potatoes fries, leftover Chipotle (gave it a shot after I read it was gf — don’t take my word for it though); Bottom row: blueberry coconut milk yogurt, Amy’s gf/df pizza (amazing), applesauce, crackers, (rice cheese not pictured)
The daycare menu for Monday was American cheese sandwich, chicken noodle soup, applesauce, peas with snacks being yogurt and soynut butter on crackers. My son loves soup and cheese sandwiches and I didn’t plan well enough to make a soup for him ahead of time. I knew my lunch had to be good to compete with what he saw on his friends’ plates. We actually went out to Chipotle on Sunday night after I read it was gf (don’t take my word for it, do your own research). We haven’t been out to eat in ages, so that was nice. I had a little bit leftover so I sent it along, since I knew he liked it.
 TUESDAY
Top row: Rice and red snapper cooked in gf soy sauce,
bakery-bought gf/df muffin;
Bottom row: applesauce, sliced, skinless pears, corn, snack bar
The daycare menu was “Diced ham, rice, orange wedges, green beans, with snacks of fruit and a blueberry muffin.” I send leftovers a lot, but I planned the previous night’s dinner knowing I needed to have rice in his lunch. My kid loves fish. This was a popular lunch with him. The blueberry muffins the daycare offers are mini-spunkmeyer-like ones with no real nutritional value. I will start gf baking, at some point, but I haven’t had the time. In anticipation of muffins on the menu, I bought a few gf/df muffins from a local gf bakery and I froze them. I defrost one overnight and then send it along so that when they offer the other kids muffins, he can have one too. I’m really happy I did that because a little girl had a birthday and I’m sure that he was excluded from any food treat. They didn’t tell me in advance or I could have made sure he had something to eat in celebration…  🙁
WEDNESDAY
Main: Ian’s gf/cf chicken nuggets, gf/df mac and cheese, peas;
Sides: blueberry coconut milk yogurt, sliced cucumbers and carrots, sliced pear, snack bar
You guys know how I feel about nuggets!! But when I have a two year old and I have to compete with the daycare menu they offer, well, I have to play the game. I know that making my own from scratch would be ideal. There’s no excuse; I just need to meal plan better anddo it according to the daycare menu. I keep a box of Ian’s in the freezer for occasions like this. He wasn’t crazy about this lunch and only ate half of it. The daycare menu was “Chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes, diced peaches, diced carrots, with snacks of fruit and ice cream.” Whenever I read that a snack is “ice cream,” I just have to laugh. Stupidly, I haven’t asked if they are really giving the kids ice cream!? I feel like it’s some kind of joke when I read it.
THURSDAY
Top row: peas, passion fruit coconut milk yogurt, gf cornbread
Bottom row: rice pasta with red sauce and ground chicken, hard-boiled egg;
Far right: sliced pear, snack bar
They was his favorite lunch all week per his teachers. He ate everything. The daycare menu was “ground beef and pasta, bread, diced pears, baby peas, with snacks of yogurt and pretzels w/ cream cheese.”
FRIDAY – The day where I goofed up dinner…
…and he had to have gf/cf nuggets again!!
Top row: rice cheese, pasta and sauce (repeat), cornbread (repeat);
Bottom row: nuggets (boo), carrots, applesauce, crackers, and snack bar
Yesterday, the night before this meal, I made chicken tostadas with ground chicken and refried beans. At the last moment, I decided to drizzle some never-before-opened red pepper oil on top for flavor. I drizzled it on and then read the label, while putting a drop of it to my lips. The last ingredient said “flavor” and when I read it, I realized the oil was insanely spicy, too. I was kicking myself when I saw that and did my best to dilute it in the pan. He didn’t eat much, but I ate my dinner with my fingers crossed. Wouldn’t you know it, I woke up with a terrible tummyache AND my son had the biggest tantrum he has had for months about not wanting to put on a piece of clothing. So I don’t know what was in that stuff, but I couldn’t pack it in his lunch or even eat it for mine.
So I went with the leftover pasta that had been a hit before (even though I don’t like to repeat the main dish) and I had to get out the only convenience food we keep in the house (the blasted nuggets) and throw those in. I felt like a failure!!
Also notice the packaged cheese on the top. That is rice cheese. No, I’m not kidding. I would never buy this, but at daycare they give the kids American cheese slices. I know that he wants to eat the same things as they do (he’s only two so it’s not like he can be reasoned with), so when I can, I do try to give him similar stuff. The menu was “Whole grain pasta with meat sauce, mandarin oranges, green beans, with snacks of fruit and cheese and crackers.”
BONUS!
He went to daycare once last week (over break, when I had more time).
Top row: broccoli, quinoa, chili lemon salmon;
Bottom row: tomato soup, pears, pomegranate seeds, snack bar
Just to show that I can make beautiful lunches, when I have the time. He ate the fish and the soup. What did he leave behind? Half of the quinoa and broccoli. Not too bad.
MY LUNCHES
(I rate them B+)
MONDAY
Wraps with turkey salami, coconut milk yogurt, pear, KIND bar for later
Everything is gf/cf for me. I read all the necessary labels to make sure.
TUESDAY
Repeat – I don’t need variety like my son.
 WEDNESDAY
Rice pasta and sauce with chicken, cucumbers, yogurt, (snack bar not pictured)
I love pasta. It was one of my favorite school lunches too! The rice pasta isn’t terrible once you get used to it.
 THURSDAY
gf/df mac and cheese, cucumbers and carrots, egg, KIND bar for snack
The gf/df pasta is really great. We had some leftover so I ate it. It looks greenish because they use like a pesto-y powder. This lunch really wasn’t enough. I was hungry by 3pm. 
 FRIDAY
Top row: gf English muffin with peanut butter, blueberry coconut milk yogurt
Bottom row: chili, pear

I made chili one night this week, but I didn’t send it with my son. He didn’t want to eat it, only picking out the chickpeas. I should mention that when you have a fat pear, you can’t close the laptop lunch box. So, I had to throw most of the pears into my purse, which was perfect for an afterschool snack. I wash the pear off and dry it with a paper towel, which makes a perfect napkin.

A couple things I’d like to mention:

1) I don’t think everyone should go gluten-free or that school lunches should be gluten-free (although with small tweaks, many rice-based lunches could be). I had to make these dietary changes for my family. It’s not easy and you shouldn’t do it unless you think you might benefit. However, I do believe that many people live with sensitivities, allergies, and intolerances to many different foods that go untreated for years.

2) I’m going to start baking gluten-free so that it’s not costing me a fortune when I go shopping. So that should be interesting!

3) I have talked to my son’s daycare about the food and they told me if I want organic food, I need to bring it myself. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m trying to raise awareness about the quality of the food at daycare with other parents, but they tell me that they are struggling with picky eaters and are simple pleased that their children are eating anything at all. I haven’t met or seen any other parents who pack, but I’m going to keep my eyes open.

4) The book club giveaway will be announced on Monday! I think Monday will be “Book Club Monday.” I may not have a book club post every week, but whenever I have a book club announcement, I’ll do it then.

How you doin’?

Miscellaneous,

It’s been almost three weeks since I stopped eating school lunches. How’m I doin’? Better.

Since those test results revealed that my body is not happy eating gluten and dairy (non-Celiac gluten sensitivity), I knew that after the project I would have to remove gluten and dairy completely from my diet, to see if my digestive issues would go away. Starting with the day after the project ended, I have been gluten free, and mostly dairy free.* Naively, I thought that the day after I finished eating school lunches, I’d feel amazing, ready to run through a field barefoot or something. While I did feel like celebrating when the project ended, it took a full two weeks for me to say that I think my body is approaching normal.

Chocolate was one thing I enjoyed all last year. My husband and I would have a couple squares every night after our son went down. Some people high five after putting their kids to sleep, we would “clink” a couple squares of dark, smooth chocolate. In December, I switched to gluten-free, pure dark chocolate (no milk ingredients). But every day that I nibbled on any type of chocolate, I noticed I was getting headaches and needed to pop a couple tylenols. I decided to eliminate chocolate and see what happened.

One day last week, I again got a little headache, and thought to myself with much relief, “I didn’t eat any chocolate today so it can’t be chocolate…” and then I remembered my son fed me Nature’s Path Leapin Lemurs cereal, which has chocolate in it. Is chocolate out now, too!?! Well, I haven’t eaten chocolate since, and I haven’t had any more headaches. **burying face in my hands**

My husband, who as I’m sure you already suspected, is a saint. He is wonderfully accomodating with my son’s and my gluten free, dairy free diets (my son has been on this diet all fall due to severe tummy troubles — being gf has been a godsend). Over the holidays, my husband didn’t have to make any new adjustments, but the rest of my family was subjected to a lot. The out-of-state folks were real troopers. My mom planned the whole Christmas dinner gluten free/dairy free. She said, “Since I have cooked a lot of holiday meals, this wasn’t too hard to do.” She cooked the turkey, gf stuffing, mashed potatoes, and sweet potatoes (all excellent). I contributed a broccoli salad (a winner) and green bean casserole (a flop). To me, almost everything tasted really good, and not like it was prepared according to strict dietary rules.

This week, I went to my primary care doctor and chatted with him about the project. The last time I talked to him was in June. I told him that I’m still feeling tired. When I look back over my life, I’ve always felt “tired.” Granted, I have a ton on my plate right now, but still. We have a history of thyroid disease (Hashimoto’s — an autoimmune disorder) in my family and my thyroid levels haven’t been checked since 2008. So he ordered a lot of blood work, including my vitamin D levels.

I fasted this morning and went to the lab to have my blood drawn. I don’t mind needles at all, thankfully. I’m really interested to see how everything compares to my results in June. After being reminded about the project, my doctor gave me the name of a doctor on staff who specializes in integrative medicine. I’ve made an appointment for next week. Should be interesting to share my story. I guess this is someone who has talked about school lunches in the past! I’m laughing thinking about how I’ll introduce myself, “Um hi, I ate school lunch all year and I have a blog. And I’m anonymous…” Giving the whole “recap.” Won’t this be fun, eh? I’ll keep you posted.

*I have eaten some ghee, which I had never heard of before. It doesn’t seem to bother me. The label on the jar I found at Whole Foods states lactose and casein free. I keep calling it “glee,” but maybe I’m just happy.

Ad critique: Lunchables, revisited

Miscellaneous,
Ad appeared in Working Mother, October 2010
“Princess today. President tomorrow?
Kids are full of potential. And unlocking it starts with a great lunch.
Now LUNCHABLES has mandarin oranges for a full serving of real fruit.

it doesn’t get better than this”

Really? I think it does get better than this. Also mandarin oranges are going to turn your daughter into president material? An ivy league education, yes. A processed, convenient lunch in a box? Um, sorry. I just don’t buy it!

Last summer, I started taking pictures of ads I saw and commenting on them. I’m starting up again because I believe it relates to the project. When I think about kids’ food environments, I feel the need to consider food marketing. Recently, Bettina over at The Lunch Tray blogged,

“The Roberts Wood Johnson Foundation is by far the biggest funder of work on childhood obesity, and it’s now spending $100 million a year on the problem. The food industry spends that much every year by January 4th [her emphasis] to market unhealthy food to children.”

Um, Houston? We got a whopper of a problem. These companies got the money and we got…well…let me think….our brains (and our looks, for those of you who are not anonymous). So, we gotta use ’em!  It’s our job to question these subtle messages in the ads we see. We can’t just let them slide by and go on with our day.

When I saw this print ad, I thought about how we discussed Lunchables already, via guest blogger and last summer when I critiqued another similar ad and then went to the store and took pictures of the nutritional information and ingredients. The ad above must be from that same family of ads. But I couldn’t resist bringing it to your attention.

I’m not a fan of Lunchables (I can’t imagine that shocks anyone), but I did want to eat them when I was younger. We rarely got them; maybe once a year or less. Back then, it was just crackers, cheese and little circles of ham. My mom didn’t buy them because it was cheaper to just buy those ingredients and assemble them at home. A pizza lunchable wasn’t available then. They look so unappetizing to me! Here are the ingredients and nutritional information for a Lunchable similar to the one in the ad (~600 odd grams of sodium, ~70 grams of carbohydrates, including 35 grams sugar).

Thoughts on this ad?

(I subscribe to Working Mother and I enjoy it. Ads like the one above appear in parenting magazines equally. I am not trying to slam Working Mother. It’s what I’ve got sitting around the house, and that I can read in 20 minutes!)

You’ve got mail!

Packed lunches
Something came in the mail to me. The note said:
Hi Mrs. Q,
We heard you are looking
for a new lunch bag…
Hope you can put
this to good use!
Gasp!
Imagine me, the one who was always carrying a tray every day last year, strolling into the teacher’s lounge with this bag slung across my shoulder. I wouldn’t get any stares. Nope, none at all!
Inside was this case

Inside the case was a little book and…
a laptop lunch bento system!

Thank you, Laptop Lunches! You made my day! I practically fell over with joy!

Sadly, that gorgeous purse is not getting carried to school. I think it’s way too conspicuous for me to show up with it after what I did all year. It’s like advertising that I’m Mrs. Q or something! But I am using the bento box, because I can’t just let it sit in a closet. (One day, this year, I will use that purse though…)

So this week I’ve been getting back in the swing of packing. I’m taking pictures of my lunch and my son’s lunch in the morning. I’ll do a Friday lunch wrap-up with photos of our lunches. Mine are boring, but at least his are somewhat interesting since I need to provide some variety for him to keep him interested.

One thing I figured out is that I was giving him too much yogurt. On Monday, I filled up the small container right to the brim with yogurt for myself and I could barely choke it down. A half a container of yogurt is plenty. I haven’t packed in so long that I forgot that you don’t need a lot of yogurt. I like yogurt for something sweet at the end of the lunch. At the store, I buy a large container of coconut milk yogurt and spoon it in a reusable one.

Packing lunch is weird. I forgot what it was like. It’s a pain. But I’m LOVING IT! Don’t get me wrong!

(Disclosure: Laptop lunches contributed a guest blog post last year with a giveaway. They sent me this bag as a gift for completing my school lunch project, not as a product to review and there is no giveaway today. Laptop lunches did not ask me to blog about their gift nor did they pay me any money. Later this month, I will be reviewing a number of lunch products, for adults and for children, from various different companies, some who generously sent me a product to review and other products I bought myself. So stay tuned.)

Food dyes in the news

News

This article Do synthetic food colors cause hyperactivity? Critics blame the additives for triggering behavioral problems in youngsters was on the front page of the Chicago Tribune on Sunday. I’m happy to see that more people are paying attention to food issues and I’m hopeful that this type of concern is going mainstream.

Last year, I learned about food dyes. Just like a lot of things related to food, I never paid that much attention before this project. Sure, food dyes weren’t good, but once in a while? Okay, fine.

Just once in a while, right?
(Photo credit: Center for Science in the Public Interest, 2008)

When I started reading labels, I noticed that food dyes were in everything. The spicy cheetos a student brought to school (yes, I read the label). My husband bought a store brand of trail mix and it wasn’t until later I looked at the label. I discovered that Yellow #5 and Yellow #6 were added curiously only to the papaya. And I thought trail mix was “natural.”

The school foods I ate that contained food dyes were some of the fruit “icees” (Red #40, Blue #1), the special occasion cookies (I’m guessing Red #40 and there was a green cookie once too…?), and some of the salad dressings (Yellow #5 & #6). I know that only because those foods either were obviously colored synthetically or the ingredients were listed. I don’t have access to the nutritional information for the foods I ate in 2010 for lunch, so I can’t be sure they weren’t snuck into other things I ate.

Earlier this year, a guest blogger shared her experience as a person who is allergic to Yellow #5. I don’t know how she narrowed it down to that, but I have to wonder how many kids go along undiagnosed with allergies and sensitivities, year after year.

Recently, I bought “olive oil shampoo,” because it sounded natural. I didn’t read the label, but lo and behold, it contains Yellow #5 and Yellow #6, which is less of an outrage considering shampoo is made in a lab and not meant for eating. Still, you can find shampoo without artificial dyes too. It bothers me that my shampoo and the dried papaya my husband bought have the same ingredients…

These dyes have been banned in Europe. Here’s the kicker: US companies with branches in Europe don’t use synthetic food dyes in the products they sell to Europeans. Those same products they sell here? They have the dyes in them. For example, check out this comparison shot of US and UK Nutri-grain bars. I sound like a little old lady school teacher when I say this, but for shame!