Back to the Baby Carrot Campaign

As we mentioned in class a few weeks ago, companies are now branding baby carrots as junk food in an effort to get children to eat more vegetables. Carrots have entered school cafeterias across the nation, taking the place of junk food vending machines. Most are sold in small-sized bags, labeled with the catchy phrase “Eat ‘em like junk food.” The introduction of these vending machines in schools has been met with some success, but there are some things to consider about marketing them in this way. Are kids eating them because it’s the only snack option and they look like Cheetos, or is it because they realize that carrots are nutritional powerhouses and tasty, too?

I found the following quote by advertising psychologist Carol Moog interesting. She writes, “they need to make carrots more fun — like, perhaps, putting an orange (but natural) dusting on carrots that mimics Cheetos.” This suggestion sounds a bit backward thinking to me, but if it’s getting our youth to eat them, then I suppose it’s a good idea, right?

I think this campaign it is a good starting point for getting children healthy. However, it represents just one step up a long ladder towards bigger, more meaningful change. The issue boils down to the following questions: Why don’t most kids like to eat vegetables? Is it because their parents and other adults do not eat them? Is it the feel, the flavor, or how they are prepared and presented to them? We must find the source and then create change from within rather than adopting the junk food marketing techniques. Valuing healthy, sustainable food will take longer and will require educational efforts for both children and parents, but it will definitely be worth it in the long run.

We must also acknowledge that not all eating habits are set in the school—we need to look at the home environment. They way we eat, our habits, behavior, social skills and values all start there. Familiar phrases I’ve certainly heard growing up like “Eat your broccoli and you can have ice cream for dessert” as a tactic teaches our kids that broccoli and other vegetables are less appealing (since eating them requires a reward) and that dessert is the highly valued prize. Therefore, education, on all levels, will hopefully encourage kids to develop a lifelong taste and liking for vegetables.

Joys of Satiation

When I could not finish my dinner but still wanted dessert, I told my mother I had a separate dessert stomach. She thought it was cute. Turns out, my clever ploy to appease my sweet tooth is rooted in science!

In “High Satiety,” Steingarten points to an experiment in which animals fed bland “laboratory chow” did not gain weight although permitted to eat as much as they wished. These same animals, when offered a range of snacks, ate a higher number of meals and more food at these meals. This phenomena is sensory-specific satiety, which Steingarten describes as “When a human or a rat has filled up on one type of food, and you present him, her or it with another food that differs in taste, aroma, texture, or even temperature, eating begins all over again” (151).

I am immediately reminded of Frank. I remember a campaign at Frank to change the language from “all-you-can-eat” to “all-you-care-to-eat.” Frank has a wide array of selection. The Vegetarian/Vegan station, Pizza/sautee station, Grill station, Entrée station, Deli bar, Salad bar, and soup station….with all these choices and stimulations, I care to eat a lot!

The campaign, however, was an attempt to promote sustainable practices by decreasing waste. Groups like “scrape the plate” have come to meals and used the visual stimulation of piles and piles of wasted food to drive home their message…. But they’re working against the science that fuels cafeteria eating! Other groups have tried to eliminate the use of the trays, which allows our hands to carry as much as our eyes want but stomachs cannot eat.

Even without the trays, however, I can remember countless times burning hours in Frank among friends, asking each other, “What should I get next?” We were willing to stand up from the table and take a walk around the stations, evaluating each food item and making a new choice. The trays may facilitate our need for satiation, but the removal will not stop it.

Frank could alter the menu in order to decrease waste. The guiding mantra could be “the tendency to feel full and stop eating stems from limited flavors.” I wonder the student outcry when the only option for dinner is boiled potatoes…. Turning to bland food in order to restrict overeating and waste undermines the very joy of eating!

Sensory-specific satiety is likely contributing to obesity. (Freshman 15?) Apart from cafeteria style eating, is this due to the unlimited (and growing) number of “edible food like substances?” Though the packaging may vastly differ, the root of our overstocked grocery aisles is all corn and soy… so what’s stimulating us to overeat?!

Apple Picking

Since I saw the first apples at the Hamilton Farmer's Market, I've been begging my boyfriend to go apple picking with me, and this weekend he finally caved in and accompanied me on a trip to O'Neill's apple orchard, about 45 minutes east of Colgate on Route 20.

The trip began beautifully, because the drive along Route 20 is gorgeous this time of year. Hillside after hillside was covered in bright reds and oranges, and we tried to soak in as much of the fall colors as we could (the morning frosts that have been covering the lawns have been an ominous warning that these colors will not last much longer).

I had not picked out O'Neill's as our apple picking destination from the beginning; I only knew that East of Lafayette was Orchard Valley, home to many beautiful upstate New York orchards and the famous Lafayette Apple Festival. See http://www.lafayetteapplefest.org/ for a better idea of this miraculous annual event. O'Neill's stood out to us because you could smell the apple fritters from the road-- we got right in line.

Our apple picking venture started out rocky-- the orchard's owners explained to us that a snow in May had wiped out much of their harvest, and that the trees were pretty picked out at this point. However, we weren't discouraged. We found a whole bag full of apples, and relished in the challenge of getting the only ones that were left, which hung at the very tops of the trees. Once we had exhausted ourselves climbing and picking raspberries in the raspberry bushes that line the trees, we sat down at a picnic table to a delicious dinner of hot dogs, apple cider, apple fritters, and cider doughnuts. So satisfying.

At the end of the day, I walked away from O'Neill's U-PICK apple orchard with a bag full of huge, delicious apples and the satisfaction that I really knew where they had come from. I had shaken the hand of the man that grew them, I had seen them on the trees, and I had picked out the most beautiful and the best for my apple bounty that day. Sodexo, it'll be a long time before I need to eat any more of your shiny California apples.

My sister got some vinegar in her ear; now she has picked hearing.

Ha ha ha. That's a nice little food joke for you. But today I want to write a little bit about food humor. I've had a lot of fun clicking through the following two sites that document foods that has gone horribly, horribly wrong, accompanied by the requisite snarky comments. Food and eating are such important components of our life that is is especially funny to see it go awry. Its kind of like watching wedding videos where the groom passes out or the bride sets her hair on fire with the unity candle.
But sites like this also seem to be a way of poking fun at the ridiculous things people are willing to eat. For every picture of a terrible fast food meal, there are a hundred people who ate that meal without complaint. And for every American who is repulsed by Tropicana Orange Juice with Rare Cheese Flavor there is a Japanese teenager who drinks a bottle of it a day.

So just for fun, check out these sites:
The Worst Thing I Ever Ate: A gallery devoted to images submitted by people who have just eaten the worst thing ever. My stomach turned at the image of mechanically separate chicken parts.

Cake Wrecks: This site is filled with pictures of "professionally" decorated cakes that have been massacred by inept and apparently illiterate bakers. It is very hilarious, but also a little sad that one might grow to employable age without being able to spell "birthday" correctly. Scroll past the pretty featured at the top of the page to see the unfortunate ones.

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

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I recently watched Jamie Oliver’s television show, Food Revolution. The premise of the show revolves around Jamie Oliver attempting to change the eating habits of residents in various communities through education and work with the schools. I’ve seen a few episodes so far and definitely think it is worth checking out.

The show combines two genres (reality television with cooking) in a way that transcends them both. The reality aspects of Food Revolution are not about influencing others out of self-interest and the cooking aspects of this show are not simply about spicing up a dish. Rather, Oliver finds an innovative way to blend them together to reflect the broader social importance of food in our society.

The show reveals that the role of education is need on all levels to change the U.S. dietary habits. Once the public is educated they will demand change and the food industry will start to take notice, providing healthier offerings. In the show, we see the scale of the problem when we look at children at an elementary school who cannot properly identify a tomato. We see the scale of the problem when Oliver met an obese family to teach them how to cook quick, healthy meals—only to discover that the family went back to eating fast food and unhealthy pre-packaged meals the moment he left. And we see the see the scale of the problem when he tried to initiate a change in school lunches, which were quickly rebuked. This food revolution is not just a TV show; it represents a movement to change people’s eating habits for the better and raise awareness of the issue.

A quote from Marion Nestle discusses the importance of the show. She states, “I like the way he’s just in there getting his hands dirty up to his elbows, dealing with people on things that nobody wants to talk about and telling the truth as he sees it, no matter how uncomfortable it is. And, yes, it’s exploitive; but…people are talking about it” (Organic Connect Magazine, 2010). I definitely agree with her and believe the show serves as a catalyst for change. Between Michelle Obama's “Let’s Move” campaign and the recent legislature of a new school-lunch program, the timing is now to tackle childhood obesity.

The show is definitely worth watching so far, even just one episode. While targeting childhood obesity will involve a massive undertaking, I hope that the issues he brought out in his show can translate into action.

http://organicconnectmag.com/wp/2010/07/marion-nestle-how-the-food-industry-hijacked-nutrition/

JG Domestic

My sister works as a hostess at Iron Chef Jose Garces’s flagship restaurant, Amada. This Friday, Garces is opening JG Domestic, his seventh restaurant in Philadelphia. In order to train his staff and test the menu, Chef Garces opened the restaurant this week for staff-on-staff meals. Meaning, this afternoon I was able to have a delicious lunch with my sister (for free!!) in what is slated to be a Philadelphia “hotpot” seated only 20 feet from the iconic Jose Garces.

JG Domestic focuses on US domestic ingredients. According to our server, Chef Garces scoured the country for the best ingredients, which changes with the season. Some of these ingredients come from his very own farm in Pennsylvania, but some are flown from all the way from California. This restaurant highlights the best of American growers in the peak of their season.

According to NBC Philadelphia, Jose Garces describes “all domestic” as the following: "I don't want to say farm-to-table, because people get this idea about local farms growing and raising all of the ingredients. This is really about sourcing the absolute best ingredients wherever possible. If that means it's coming from the producers around here, all the better. I am getting my lamb from Elysian Fields right here in Pennsylvania. It's about the best ingredients coming from where they show the best. Wherever that may be.”

The restaurant is located in the lobby of the large Cira Center, a 29 story high rise. Within the restaurant, however, the atmosphere is far from sterile. Tables are long and wooden with cutouts for live trees. The periphery of the space was outlined with trellis, further promoting the earthy feel. There was even a “live wall,” which lined one side of the restaurant and housed hundreds of herbs. I asked if these were used in the cooking, and though the specific herbs were the ones found in the food, it was not from the plants on display due to health code regulations. That would have been local food!

We had access to the full menu, and though I was tempted to go with the Wagyu after reading of Steingarten’s experience with the Japanese meat, I could not resist the classic burger. The menu includes a second page listing where each ingredient is found. My menu for the lunch was the following:

Heirloom California popcorn with Vermont cheddar and homemade horseradish
Wolfe Neck’s Farm (Maine) Beef burger with New Jersey Tomatoes and California Point Reyes Blue Cheese
Duck Fat Fries
Our desserts included pumpkin and cream from a Pennsylvania farm

I found the concept behind JG domestic interesting because Garces focuses on quality ingredients, and thus went searching small farms, but chose not to limit himself to local. For him the benefits of small farms is in the quality of product, whereas others may be looking to support local businesses and reducing their carbon footprint, supporting the larger social, economic and environmental benefits of local eating.

Nutrition

Last week when our class went to Syracuse to hear Michael Pollan speak, we heard loud and clear his emphasis on our somewhat false faith in nutritional science. He spoke about nutrition as a relatively new science that we have not yet mastered, and especially spoke about the increasing view Americans have that we eat only to supply our body with scientifically determined elements that create the perfect diet.

I come from a family of athletes- my three brothers spend most of their time playing soccer and baseball, my mom has now run 2 marathons, my stepdad (perhaps the craziest of all) has run several IronMan races, and we all love to ski. Needless to say, in a house with so many active people, we go through a lot of food each week (the poor milkman nearly breaks his back getting all 7 gallons of milk to our front stoop). Our cabinets are also filled with many "exercise" foods-- granola bars, protein drinks, "goo," energy gummies--you name it, we've tried it.

Hearing Michael Pollan speak about nutrition got me thinking about the conjunction of these two things--exercise and nutrition, and where Pollan's message fits in. Pollan argued that healthy people exist on all parts of the planet eating an unbelievable variety of different foods. If this is true, can athletes succeed to their maximum capacity eating by Pollan's mantra? Do some sports require different diets than others?

I recently heard that Lance Armstrong (one of my family's all time heroes) eats by the "6 ingredient diet." With this diet, Armstrong eats only foods with less than 6 ingredients, excluding a wide variety of the sports foods I mentioned in my description of my family's cabinets. This emphasizes a clear decision on the part of one of the world's most successful athletes to return to less processed foods, and perhaps to eat a little more at home (where he has control over the things he puts in his food). Armstrong's performance in this year's Tour de France is no indication that this diet has created maximum physical performance (he crashed in a very important stage, for those of you who watch Wimbledon instead of the Tour on summer mornings), but his decision to switch to this diet could be a sign that Pollan's message is infiltrating a genre of eating that has long been ruled by nutritional information, however accurate.