Saying bye to "Happy Meal" toys

Who can recall their favorite “Happy Meal” toy from McDonalds?
I admit I had a whole collection when I was young. I still remember some of my favorites- Simba (in plush) and the Tarzan wind-up toy.

I loved going to McDonald’s. What kid wouldn’t? There’s all the delicious food, a play gym with all those bouncy balls, and to top it off, cool happy meal toys! There is something special about getting something that was just for kids. These toys were almost as exciting as my ketchup smothered French fries.

Did you know the first McDonalds “Happy Meals” was sold in 1979 in Kansas City, and it came with a set of toys: a puzzle book, ID bracelet, McDoodleer stencil, McDonaldland eraser or a McWrist wallet? I wish I got those. Since then, McDonald’s has released hundreds of Happy Meal toys, everything from Disney movie figurines to animals from the Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Well, sadly, we may have to say so long to the coveted toys in “Happy Meal.” In a recent government call to action as Grace sent us in an email, toys included in McDonald's “Happy Meals” have been banned in the San Francisco Bay area. The underlying reasons for this ban include the hope to lure kids away from eating unhealthy food. Could this ban catch on to other cities across the nation?
On one side of the debate you have proponents arguing that the big food corporations are the ones to blame for the childhood obesity epidemic. Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), who is threatening the suit writes, “This advertising is unfair to kids and to parents who are put in the position of constantly telling their kids no.” In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with the occasional “Happy Meal” and we have to give them credit for giving kids a better variety like apple slices and milk, right?

Childhood obesity and proper nutrition are certainly important issues and fast food and sugary beverage consumption certainly contribute to the rise of the childhood obesity epidemic, but are these big corporations the only people we should blame?

There are people who argue that it’s all the parents’ fault. As one angry commenter on the article wrote, “Why are we blaming McDonald's for parents lack of common sense…Don't blame fast food chains because of a lack of parenting skills.” A major part of the issue that we cannot overlook stems from the home, indicating how important it is for parents to be a model for healthy eating and living. Young children learn from and imitate what their parents do so if the parents aren't eating fries, Big Macs, and a Coke from McDonald's several times a week, then the child won't either.

While this ban might only affect the food choices of a small percentage of the population, doing something is always better than nothing, right? Giving parents another incentive to feed their children wisely might make us that much closer to giving up our spot as one of the world’s unhealthiest nation; a title that I would be more than happy to say goodbye to. But do you think removing toys from higher calorie kids meals actually influence what they choose to eat?

My passion to cook (or at least attempt to...)

Cooking is a passion of mine and gives me time to step out of my daily routine. It allows me to experiment, to learn, to please, and equally as often, mess up. Cooking means more than putting a pre-packaged meal into the microwave or throwing a frozen pizza in the oven; it actually means following or making a recipe(s) and preparing a meal.

I haven’t always cooked but granted, growing up, I’d give my parents a helping hand with dinner once in a while. Family meals were always important and we always made time to eat dinner together. There were times when that meant eating dinner late because my sister and I had sports practices or one of my parents was working late.

I think back to my friends and I who even just a few years ago did not have sufficient cooking skills. Yet at some point (not sure of the exact moment) I developed a genuine interest not just in eating good food, but in cooking it too and that was when my cooking skills began to evolve. Perhaps this new culinary vision happened during experience in Barcelona, where by living in an apartment and not wanted to spend all my money eating out (considering 1 euro=$1.5), I had to put my cooking skills to the test.

In Barcelona, I loved the challenge of sourcing unusual ingredients in a country where supermarkets are small, cater for regional tastes, and focus on seasonal food. I was shocked to see a whole octopus, a pig’s head, rabbit feet, and even a brain of an undistinguishable animal right in front of the market for everyone to see. I liked the idea of strolling through La Boqueria, buying fresh ingredients, taking them home, and seeing what I could come up with each night. I quickly realized that with a handful of essential ingredients: olive oil, garlic and tomato, you can make a lot of tapas and meals. The Catalan staple and breakfast favorite, Pa amb tomàquet, involves a thick slice of toasted bread, rubbing some garlic and fresh tomato on top, drizzling a generous amount of olive oil and adding a pinch of salt. So simple and satisfying.

Eating out was a great experience as well—seeing the culture surrounding the food made me appreciate it much more. The long siestas in the afternoon were mainly spent eating lunch outside with family and friends, where there seemed to not be a stress in the world. You would never find anyone walking and eating on the go, or even drinking a large Venti Starbucks cup, which has become the norm in most part of the US.

For me, food encompasses a whole range of things that are important to me. Food brings together families and friends through warmth, smells, taste, and satisfaction.

At Colgate, between balancing school work, a job, involvement in students groups, and a social life, preparing meals certainly takes up a lot of time and we don’t always find the time to do it. Yet, I think food is such a part of who we are and therefore we should all take a break from our busy work days and cook together with friends.

Supermarket Craftiness

Nudging Grocery Shoppers Toward Healthy Food

Just as I was contemplating the topic of my next blog post, this article was posted to my facebook wall by one of my NPR-loving friends who shares my deep and abiding hometown love of Wegmans. It is perfectly pertinent to our discussion last week and reaffirms my affection for the big W.

For those who don't have time to read, allow me to summarize. This article talks about taking some of the same techniques used to market unhealthy food and applying them to healthy food, like produce. Wegmans is used as an example because of the way their produce department is the focal point of the store when you walk in the door. At least in my Wegmans in Canandaigua, you don't even really have to "veer right"; the first thing you see when you walk in the door is a big old produce display. This past summer, Wegmans set up a "farmer's market" booth in the produce department, complete with bushels of local summer squash and tomatoes. It was a pretty clear marketing strategy, and it made it very difficult to ignore the fresh produce.

Also, sample day at Wegmans (always a joyous occasion) is especially fun in the produce department. They have apples with cheese, smoothies and other fresh fruits and veggies for tasting. As much as I would like to believe sample day exists for my pleasure alone, it is a great marketing technique to get people in the produce frame of mind (or mouth).

The article also talks about the way Wegmans is using lighting in their newer stores to literally highlight fruits and vegetables, especially with natural light from high windows. Although I haven't been in any of the newer stores to experience this myself, it seems like it would be a good subtle technique. And, as the article points out, subtlety is the key. If people feel like they are being seriously pressured into buying produce, they will probably buy less of it; consumers don't like to feel like they're being "taken" even if it is in kind of a good way.

Obviously the motives of supermarkets like Wegmans are not entirely aimed at healthying up the consumer. It makes good business sense to sell as much produce as possible and reduce waste. Because produce is so perishable, it needs to sell as quickly as possible. My darling boyfriend worked the produce department at Wegmans for the past few years. He recently swithced over to grocery (pretty much the rest of the edible goods in the store) and he tells me that the turn over for grocery is much, much slower than it was for produce. This makes perfect sense; cans of soup are infinitely more shelf stable than bananas. I asked him what they do with the produce that has gone bad and all I could ever get out of him was that it gets "shrunk". I have no idea what this means. I'm pretty sure it is not a literal shrinking process a la "Honey I Shrunk the Kids", but he didn't seem to know where it ended up after he tossed it in the pile for shrinking. What's the point of having a man on the inside if you can't get any information out of him? My hope is that it is composted. This seems likely to me, simply because Wegmans Organic Test Farm is located in Canandaigua, on a lovely sloping hill on the west side of Canandaigua Lake. However, I would be interested to know what happens in supermarkets in general when the food goes bad. I've seen "expired" bread that is still perfectly good get donated to community kitchens, but what about fruit that is actually bad? Does it get composted or simply tossed?

Overall, I think the idea of marketing fruits and vegetables in the same way highly processed foods are marketed is a great idea. However, if the consumer wants chips, she is certainly not going to head for the carrots instead just because they are cleverly marketed. The problem of the American diet is not a problem of marketing or supermarket design alone. But all together, this is a step in the right direction.


Finally, on a separate, only mildly related note, Wegmans is being sued! Walgreens is suing Wegmans because their most recent logo change contains a W that is apparently too close for comfort to the Walgreens W. They are suing for all the profits Wegmans has made since changing their logo. Which I think is pretty funny, since I have never wandered into a Wegmans thinking it was an enormous Walgreens.

Locally Grown Bananas?

I've always been aware that a lot of the produce sold at our local farmer's market may not actually be locally grown. I'm okay with this because usually it still has some semblance of being in season, and I'd like to imagine even if products are being resold, they are still somewhat local in origin, perhaps grown in a greenhouse. I had to stop and think the other weekend however, when one stand was offering bananas.

First of all, where could these bananas have come from? I don't believe that the operations at the local farmer's market operate on a large enough scale that they are buying bananas from a distributor. It seems more likely that they purchased the bananas at a grocery store and sell them with a mark up at the farmers market.

I suppose this system could be convenient for some. Maybe it makes it easier to buy all your groceries in one place. Perhaps it provides a little bit of variety for those who aren't as willing to try experimenting with whatever root vegetables are currently in season; a comfort food for those who were dragged along by an overzealous locavore. There are many roles a banana could play in a farmer's market, but for me it was only unsettling.

I started to doubt the origin of every product around. Is this maple syrup really local? How do I know that these carrots were grown in the area and not just picked up at a grocery store. While I realize that the bananas may have only been there as a way to make a few extra dollars, it seems like such an in your face contradiction to some of the values that are supposed to define the farmers market that it changed my whole perception. Was I really at a farmer's market, or was this just a communal area for local citizens to try to make a few dollars pedaling the tropical fruits of Price Chopper to unwitting Colgate parents?

When one shops at a farmer's market you are not only purchasing food, but you are consuming a certain ideal about the food you eat. Having the person who grew your potato hand it to you, is about as close to food production as its reasonable for many to get. Asking the farmers for cooking tips and making small talk about the weather this year are as much a part of the experience as the food that comes with it. When Farmer Brown brings bananas to the farmer's market, it lifts this veil. Suddenly all of the other appeals of shopping at a farmer's market are gone and its just an outdoor version of Price Chopper. Part of the appeal of buying local is the transparency of the entire process. While some operations still manage to maintain this, several do not. All I can do is wonder who is buying these bananas.

"Is Candy Evil or Just Misunderstood?"

I came across an interesting article in the Dining section of the New York Times recently, titled “Is Candy Evil or Just Misunderstood?” I thought the topic of candy was quite fitting for Halloween. The author discusses the history of sweets in America and why it has such a bad reputation.

In the article, Samira Kawash, the blogger behind Candy Professor, defines candy as “a processed food, eaten for pleasure, with no particular nutritional benefit.” And yet, she and others in the article point out that we eat all sorts of other, sugar-packed foods — like granola bars, certain cereals and yogurt, and fruit juice under the belief that they are much more nutritious: As the article states, “Nutritionally there is little difference between a gummy bear and a bite of fruit leather.” And yet, “candy carries so much moral and ethical baggage that people view it as fundamentally different — in a bad way — from other kinds of food.” I think this view stems from the health claims and marketing attached to many of these food products.

Many of today’s popular health claims including low fat, no high fructose corn syrup, trans fat free, organic and all natural can lead people to select foods, especially snack items, without paying much attention to whether these foods are truly nutritious choices. This gives certain foods a “health halo” attached to them, making them appear much healthier than they truly are. I am certainly subject to buying some food according to this notion.

At a recent visit to the supermarket, I came across dozens of outrageous nutrition/health claims of various food products ranging from ground beef to soda to crackers. I found a bag of chips which were described on the label in huge letters as “vegetable chips.” A quick look at the ingredients indicated that they are actually made from a variety of potatoes cooked in oil…I saw another claim of pretzels marketed as “Cholesterol Free!” Well, obviously they are…What other outlandish nutrition claims can you think of? Have these claims impacted your purchasing behavior?

What I’ve learned is that we can’t let these “health halos” dominate our decisions about food products. Going back to the candy debate, I think the issue centers on the idea that as our culture becomes more and more health conscious, people have been quick to give candy the evil glare. But maybe instead of arguing that candy is an evil invention, we need to look at our society at large, particularly America’s fixation with sugar and how it was evolved over time.

What is the Caganer??

We spend so much time devoted to talking food. But what happens to food after it enters our bodies?! We have failed to look at the full course of the food lifetime (apart from, of course, the show many of us reveled in at the dairy farm --was it just me or did every cow choose to have a bowel movement at the exact moment our attention was directed towards them!?).

I hope this post is not TMI for any readers. It’ll be tame, but I understand it’s a topic that often elicits embarrassment. That was not ever the case in my house. As unconventional as it may seem, its been a dinner conversation on more than one occasion- checking in with everyone making sure “all systems were go” and regular. It’s a private affair, so I suppose my parents wanted to check in with that aspect of our health somehow!

Different cultures have different attitudes towards poop. Americans and the British have forged a sentiment of amusement, creating jokes commonly incorporated in pop culture, while the French and particularly the Germans find it distasteful. After studying abroad, the difference in bathroom structure is very apparent. All Spanish homes are equipped with bidets, but this is not the case in the US. European bathrooms are far more private, with full length doors and more commonly private stalls, in stark contrast to the communal bathroom. In developing countries, feces-contaminated water is the leading cause of infant death, hardly a comedic matter (The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and why it Matters; George).

My real interest stems from an aspect of Catalonian culture that I found so interesting and unique- the caganer. The caganer is a small statue, most commonly a peasant man in a red cap, who is squatting and pooping and placed in the Nativity scene. Yes, the Nativity scene alongside the baby Jesus and the three wise men. The caganer represents the equality of all people: as everyone defecates regardless of status, race, or gender. Additionally, the caganer reinforces that the infant Jesus is God in human form, with all that being human implies. Most relevant, the caganer represents the importance in Catalan culture of eating well, and all that goes along with eating well. Their ''fertilizer'' enriches the earth around them, thus promising a buena cosecha (a good harvest) during the forthcoming year. This translates into a general good omen for the future.

The caganer is a lasting and important part of the culture, made evident by the 2005 government decision to remove the caganer from the public nativity in Barcelona. The local government countered many critics, who claimed an attack on Catalan culture, stating that the Caganer was not included because public defecation and urination had recently been made illegal. The Salvem el caganer campaign (Save the caganer) and media criticism led to the reinstatement of the caganer in the 2006 nativity.

5 Things

Hi all,
I was just browsing around cnn.com and found this posted on their eatocracy blog. It is a list of five things chefs don't want you to know according to chef Josh Grinker. I got a kick out of it so I thought I'd repost it here for you all to see! And the first item is very relevant to my most recent post.


1. There’s butter in everything
"No, that’s not true - there’s also cream and oil.

In every culinary school in America, they hammer home the same three-word mantra to students day after day, year after year, until it’s like a little voice in your brain that guides virtually every culinary decision you will make for the rest of your career: 'Fat is Flavor.' And you know what? It’s true.

You know how you cook a great steak? You slather it in butter, throw it on the grill, paint it with more butter just about constantly, take it off the grill to let it rest - and paint it again. Then you slice it, put a nice big dollop of butter on it and let it gently melt under the broiler. Voila."

2. They aren’t in the kitchen
"The mark these days of a successful chef is that they don’t spend much time in the kitchen. In fact, it’s almost an inverse principle that the better the restaurant, the less chance there is that the chef is back there cooking away. And, it’s almost certainly true that the chef hasn’t picked up a knife since his last appearance on 'Iron Chef America.'

People don’t really seem to understand this. I have a friend who is a waiter at Po in Brooklyn, a small Italian restaurant that opened about four years ago. The original Po, in Manhattan, was once upon a time co-owned by Mario Batali before he sold it and went on to found a restaurant empire.

My waiter friend has people ask all the time if Mario is in the kitchen tonight. Actually, he’s just off the red-eye from Vegas, in a cab this very minute, racing back here to make sure your eggplant Parmesan is up to his specifications."

3. There’s salt in everything
"This simple fact is what separates good cooks from bad ones, or at least flavorful food from bland food. Good restaurant cooks know how to season food and that’s why their food tastes good.

It’s not some genius alchemy of exotic ingredients, or zig zag farm-to-table freshness that makes you coming back wanting more - it’s salt.

I don’t know why lay cooks are so resistant to this ideal, but they are. I taught a class on grilling a steak once and when I showered the beef with a crust of salt there were gasps from the audience as if I had just stabbed a small child. The result was a perfect steak.

When I give people a recipe that invariably ends with ‘salt to taste’ and they tell me it wasn’t as good as mine, I know the reason: not enough salt."

4. Your food was cooked by minions
"Well, not quite - but migrant workers, would-be criminals and mindless idiots? Yes, most definitely. The restaurant business, despite its celebrity pretensions, is a tough business. Profit margins are razor-thin and competition is brutal. Restaurants, to be successful, must get the most skilled laborers possible and pay them as little as possible. That means lots of immigrants. And if you think they’re all legal and paid handsomely for their six-day weeks, well, just enjoy your soup.

The other major demographic working the skilled restaurant job are dumb blue-collar kids who have been lured by the chance of stardom, sort of like playing the lottery.

Oh yeah, there’s one group I forgot: alcoholics."

5. Chefs are jerks
"This is a fact that is nearly universal and one that chefs most certainly want to conceal. The culture of the kitchen is one where abuse is assumed and condoned. Combine that with the pressure of feeding hundreds of diners, lots of details and a militaristic hierarchy and you get some out of control egos.

Many, although not all, chefs are savvy enough to realize that their baby tantrums would be laughed at in the real world, so they step into the dining room in full regalia, all smiles and charm. Rest assured, the more gregarious and charming they are to you, dear diner, the more draconian and out of control they are to that poor fry cook."