Read Online The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn - Free Book Online
Authors: Kathleen Flinn
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remained one of the few things that her son, Koji, would eat. âHe will eat a little of the chicken and sauce sometimes, but not the rice and definitely none of the vegetables,â she said. Like many toddlers, Koji was a wildly fussy eater. He eschewed vegetables. Unpleasant scenarios occurred when they tried to force him to eat anything other than chicken nuggets, pizza, fish sticks, or mac and cheese. âIt all started with day care. Thatâs what they feed him there. Now he wonât eat anything else. I worry about him. I mean, that canât be healthy, right?â
Research studies have found that an increasing number of American children may get enough food to eat yet remain undernourished due to overreliance on foods that are high in fat, salt, and sugar yet lack the fundamental nutrients. A 2004 study found that nearly a third of the calories in a typical American childâs diet came from junk foods, defined as ultraprocessed foods with little nutrition.
Itâs hard to blame kids, according to Dr. David A. Kessler, the author of The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. Many of the foods on the common kid-food listâchicken nuggets, powder-based mac and cheese, fish sticksâhave been engineered to stimulate pleasure centers in the brain. Studies found that as a result, rats can become addicted to junk food in the same way that they do to cocaine or heroin. Just as with drug addictions, rats often reject their standard ârat chowâ and starve to death when denied junk food. That may explain the difficultyâor sometimes impossibilityâof trying to force broccoli into a four-year-old in place of dinosaur-shaped pizza bites.
An acquaintance of mine took her fussy, plump toddler to the doctor when she noticed he had become grumpy and started to gain weight. The doctor described his condition as âa sort of starving.â He was dehydrated, an unsurprising fact given that he shunned water and insisted on sugar-spiked fruit juices or flavored milk. When she tallied up his collective meals from day care and at home, she was horrified to realize that he was subsisting on juice boxes, chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, French fries, and hot dogs. She couldnât place the last time she had been able to make him eat a vegetable. I told Jodi that story.
âItâs not like she was a bad mother,â I said. âShe started realizing that wherever they went, the childrenâs menu invariably included mac and cheese, fries, pizza, hot dogs, and hamburgers. It gives people the message that thatâs how kids should eat.â
The normally bubbly Jodi stared at the counter. âThat pretty much describes what Koji eats, too.â She stared into her coffee. âIâm the one who is supposed to take care of him. I know that I shouldnât give him that kind of stuff. Sometimes, though, I come home and I think, I will make him eat a healthy dinner. I look in the cupboards and the fridge and pull out some vegetables and think, I donât even know how to actually cook these. Do you boil them?â She appeared suddenly defeated. The golden curry had seemed like a good option because at least it wasnât breaded or fried. âI never even thought to look at the label. Is that something you could make without a cube?â
TERRI
Terri was a soft-faced, strawberry-blond-haired forty-six-year-old who had ditched a law career in the wake of a crumbled marriage and battles with alcoholism a dozen years ago. She managed a small tourism business from her one-bedroom condo. Due to the sedentary nature of her work, plus a recent broken ankle, she figured she was forty pounds overweight. She was battling high blood pressure, among other health problems.
Accumulated papers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, bills, and unopened junk mail rose like a small mountain off her dining room table, with a portion of the pile cascading like
Research studies have found that an increasing number of American children may get enough food to eat yet remain undernourished due to overreliance on foods that are high in fat, salt, and sugar yet lack the fundamental nutrients. A 2004 study found that nearly a third of the calories in a typical American childâs diet came from junk foods, defined as ultraprocessed foods with little nutrition.
Itâs hard to blame kids, according to Dr. David A. Kessler, the author of The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. Many of the foods on the common kid-food listâchicken nuggets, powder-based mac and cheese, fish sticksâhave been engineered to stimulate pleasure centers in the brain. Studies found that as a result, rats can become addicted to junk food in the same way that they do to cocaine or heroin. Just as with drug addictions, rats often reject their standard ârat chowâ and starve to death when denied junk food. That may explain the difficultyâor sometimes impossibilityâof trying to force broccoli into a four-year-old in place of dinosaur-shaped pizza bites.
An acquaintance of mine took her fussy, plump toddler to the doctor when she noticed he had become grumpy and started to gain weight. The doctor described his condition as âa sort of starving.â He was dehydrated, an unsurprising fact given that he shunned water and insisted on sugar-spiked fruit juices or flavored milk. When she tallied up his collective meals from day care and at home, she was horrified to realize that he was subsisting on juice boxes, chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, French fries, and hot dogs. She couldnât place the last time she had been able to make him eat a vegetable. I told Jodi that story.
âItâs not like she was a bad mother,â I said. âShe started realizing that wherever they went, the childrenâs menu invariably included mac and cheese, fries, pizza, hot dogs, and hamburgers. It gives people the message that thatâs how kids should eat.â
The normally bubbly Jodi stared at the counter. âThat pretty much describes what Koji eats, too.â She stared into her coffee. âIâm the one who is supposed to take care of him. I know that I shouldnât give him that kind of stuff. Sometimes, though, I come home and I think, I will make him eat a healthy dinner. I look in the cupboards and the fridge and pull out some vegetables and think, I donât even know how to actually cook these. Do you boil them?â She appeared suddenly defeated. The golden curry had seemed like a good option because at least it wasnât breaded or fried. âI never even thought to look at the label. Is that something you could make without a cube?â
TERRI
Terri was a soft-faced, strawberry-blond-haired forty-six-year-old who had ditched a law career in the wake of a crumbled marriage and battles with alcoholism a dozen years ago. She managed a small tourism business from her one-bedroom condo. Due to the sedentary nature of her work, plus a recent broken ankle, she figured she was forty pounds overweight. She was battling high blood pressure, among other health problems.
Accumulated papers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, bills, and unopened junk mail rose like a small mountain off her dining room table, with a portion of the pile cascading like
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