Archive for February, 2011

Friday Food News Wrap: Feb. 18

Friday, February 18th, 2011

President Obama’s proposed budget was at the top of the news this week, and those who follow childhood nutrition were pleased to learn that all programs will retain their current level of funding, with $7.9 billion for discretionary nutrition program support (as per Obama Foodorama).

However, as The Slow Cook pointed out in Grist this week, school lunch will get more expensive under the new legislation, which isn’t necessarily a good thing for kids who pay “full price” for lunch.

For a contrarian view on whether President Obama is really helping on the kids’ nutrition front, check out “Froot Loops vs. Real Fruit: For Real Change, Don’t Look to Obama,” by Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA, writing in The Atlantic. His argument is that Obama is not going to take on the bigger issue: changing the rules that make food and farming practices so damaging to nutrition practices in this country.

Sugary Cereals: In other news, everyone seems to be taking on sugary cereals this week. First Fooducate breaks down the advertising hype on Froot Loops and Apple Jacks. Are they really as nutritious as the ads say they are? Uh…no. Then Andy Bellatti of Small Bites calls out Trix for what they really are: “Twizzlers + Flinstone Multi Vitamin + Corn Dust.” When you put it that way…

Calorie Counts: In other news, a new NYU study shows that posting calorie counts at fast-food restaurants did not seem to inspire teenagers and parents of young children to order healthier meals (via US News & World Report’s HealthDay News and Food Fun). What will it take?

The Default Choice: Marion Nestle of Food Politics highlights a new project by the Center for Science in the Public Interest on making healthy kids’ meals the default option at restaurants. As the theory goes, if you are presented with fresh fruit as the lunch, and you have to ask to change it to French fries, you’ll have more kids eating fresh fruit.

Energy Drinks?: A new study in Pediatrics (as reported by MSNBC) finds that energy drinks can be dangerous for teens. The potential harms, caused mostly by too much caffeine or similar ingredients, include heart palpitations, seizures,strokes and even sudden death.

Girl Scout Cookies?: How do you feel about Girl Scout cookies? We don’t want to be the bad guys attacking this long-revered institution, but Fooducate (via a guest post by Spoonfed) takes up the charge. Their issue is with the trans fats, refined sugars, and artificial colors and flavors.

Healthy Lunch: What did you pack in your child’s lunchbag today? Gina Rau of the Feed Our Families blog highlights a cool tool from Parenting.com that lets you calculate how healthy that lunch really is.

What Did They Really Eat?: Did your middle-schooler eat breakfast today? You may be surprised to learn that the answer is “no” for nearly a third of California 7th-graders, according to Kids Data. In related news, Fruit and Veggies: More Matters has statistics on how many fruit and vegetables kids eat, in comparison to the recommended intake for each age group.

Kids’ Cooking Contests: Last but not least, if you have a young chef in your house, he or she may want to enter one of two kids’ cooking contests. The Kids Can Cook contest by Sweet Potato Chronicles and The Kids Cook Monday is accepting recipe entries from all kids until April 1. There’s also a “Stirring Up Health” cooking contest from Healthy Kids Challenge, which is accepting recipe entries from 7th and 8th grade students until March 11. Cook on, kids!

Happy Friday to all!

Posted Under: Childhood Obesity, Government Regulations, Just For Fun, Nutrition | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
This post was written by jollytomato on February 18th, 2011

Romanesco

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

Bought some lovely romanesco at Whole Foods yesterday. We were going to cook it, but the kids decided they’d rather take it in to school for show-and-tell. (From Wikipedia: “The broccoli’s shape approximates a natural fractal; each bud is composed of a series of smaller buds, all arranged in yet another logarithmic spiral.”) Isn’t nature amazing?

Posted Under: Just For Fun | Tags: , ,
This post was written by jollytomato on February 17th, 2011

Fun Food Saturday: Bagels

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

Today we are kneading dough, letting it rise, boiling it, and then finally baking it to make our own bagels at home. Yes, we KNOW you can run down to the bagel store on the corner and get hot, fresh bagels for less than $1 apiece. But that’s not the point. The point is, we want our kids to know where bagels come from and what it takes to make one. We don’t want one of those situations like when a kid thinks beans come from a can or orange juice comes from a carton. And we have a feeble hope that maybe, just maybe, our homemade bagels will taste as good or even better than the ones at the bagel shop. Certainly they’ll taste better than (shudder) the ones that come in a bag at the supermarket.

We started with the most kid-friendly recipe we could find, which was this Bake Your Own Bagels recipe from Disney’s Family Fun site. (Note to those with big families or big appetites – it only makes eight bagels.) Despite our initial concerns that the project might be too complicated, it turned out just fine. There were even plenty of steps along the way where the kids could get truly involved in the project (stirring the dough 100 times, kneading it, punching it down, and poking the holes). The only caution is that it does take time. We started at about 6:45 in the morning, but we were not actually eating bagels until 10 am. As our 7-year-old observed, those bagel bakers must get to work awfully early in the morning.

Of course there are plenty of other recipes besides the Family Fun one. We were intrigued by Francis Lam’s story and recipe in Salon, as well as this recipe from the L.A. Times, and this recipe from Planet Green. Heck, there’s even a gluten-free bagel recipe if you need one. Curiously, most of these recipes call for rolling the dough into ropes and then connecting them to make a circle; apparently there are two different schools of thought on how to do this. True, you get a “cleaner” looking bagel when you start by making a rope, but the kids found the other technique of simply poking a hole in the dough to be much easier.

So – how did our bagels come out? Fantastic. Possibly even as good as our gold standard, the New York City bagel. Our advice: Definitely do the egg white/water coating on top of the bagels; it gives them a nice crispy golden sheen. And of course, eat them while they’re still hot. You might not even need cream cheese.

Fun Food Saturday: Because food should be fun.

Posted Under: Just For Fun | Tags: , , , ,
This post was written by jollytomato on February 12th, 2011
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