My Children, The Food Experiment
 
By Sandra Steingraber, Center for Ecoliteracy.
 
 
My kids have never seen food industry ads -- their food preferences have
been entirely shaped by direct experience.
 
I didn't mean to raise my two kids as part of a human experiment in food
preferences. It just worked out that way.
 
When Faith was born in 1998, my husband and I were living in Boston in
an historic building where the wainscoting and windowsills were coated
with lead paint. We knew we would need to move by the time that our
daughter started crawling. Since I am a science writer and Jeff a
sculptor, we began to look at communities that offered both large
research libraries and cheap studio space. Ithaca, New York thus became
our new home. On the very day that Faith first figured out forward
locomotion, we loaded up a moving van with all our earthly possessions
and headed for a log cabin in the woods just east of the Ithaca town
line. The backyard descended into wetlands where great blue herons and
foxes lived. The well water was sweet, and the frogs kept us awake at
night. When we discovered, upon arrival, that our television set had
apparently been stolen out of the back of the truck, we just shrugged.
 
And so the experiment was set in motion. We didn't replace the TV. I got
pregnant again and started writing a new book, which I was determined to
finish before the baby was born. Meanwhile, Jeff took over the running
of the household and the care of a willful toddler. He quickly made
three discoveries. One, there was a community-supported organic farm at
the top of the hill which we could join. It had a play area out in the
fields to occupy little kids while their parents picked produce or
engaged in adult conversation. It also offered regular potluck dinners,
which meant less cooking for him and more choices for his lumbering and
now quite finicky spouse.
 
Two, there was a cooperative grocery store downtown called GreenStar
that we could also join. Not only did it stock organic teething
biscuits, it had a play area near the deli to occupy little kids while
their parents could read, say, the arts section of The New York Times
and drink much-needed cups of coffee.
 
Discovery number three: if he worked two hours a week at GreenStar, we
could get a 20 percent discount on groceries. The discount meant that
the prices at the coop now approached those in regular supermarkets. And
this meant that he didn't have to drive anywhere else for dog food,
toilet paper, dish soap, and toothpaste. The result was a net gain of
time. Running errands with small children, Jeff pointed out, takes a lot
longer than just the driving time, especially when one factors in the
minutes lost to the buckling and unbuckling of car-seat straps, the
zipping and unzipping of little jackets, the diaper changes in the men's
room, and, most dreaded of all, the disruption of the nap schedule.
(Parents of toddlers are nodding furiously in recognition here, knowing
all too well how one badly timed nap can throw an entire household into
chaos.)
 
I was convinced by these arguments. So, for the past five years, all the
food we eat at home has come from our local food coop or a local
community-supported farm in which we are shareholders. The result for
our two kids -- Faith is now six and her brother Elijah almost four --
is that they have never been advertised to. The images, jingles, and
pitches of the food industry have, by and large, never reached them.
Their food preferences have, consequently, been entirely shaped by their
direct experience with the food itself and the farmers who grow it.
 
No cartoon characters stare at them from boxes of presweetened cereals
displayed at pediatric eye level in supermarket aisles. No candy bars
wait in the checkout lane, ready to spark a parent-child battle of
wills. No television commercials seduce them with pictures of crispy
chips and bubbly colas.
 
I realize that my children are only a sample size of two. But because
their commercially unmediated relationship to food is so unfortunately
rare, it seems worthwhile to report on what they like to eat. Both my
kids ask for sweet potatoes, baked with maple syrup drizzled on top, as
bedtime snacks. Neither of them cares for soft drinks ("Too spicy," says
my son). Both like almost any kind of vegetable, and are particularly
fond of kale (with sesame seeds and tamari sauce), broccoli, and peas.
Elijah has a special enthusiasm for avocados and cole slaw. Both are
willing to try new foods, but Faith has the more adventurous palate.
Elijah prefers to stick to the tried and true; he is big on eggs, beans,
toast with olive oil, and any kind of soup.
 
Both of them cycle through food aversions in ways that seem fickle and
irrational. One week Faith suddenly proclaims that she hates bananas and
always will. The next week, she complains that there are no bananas.
Elijah announces that tomatoes are detestable. A few days later,
tomatoes are okay again. But no raisins! (Jeff and I treat these
sudden-onset reversals of preference respectfully but casually.) Black
and green olives, on the other hand, are always desirable, as are brown
rice, tofu, red peppers, chickpeas, and corn. Watermelon is the ambrosia
of the household, closely followed by cantaloupe, strawberries, and
cherries. Apples are a staple.
 
It also seems worth reporting the following story: About a year ago,
while traveling with Elijah and Faith, I was delayed in Chicago's O'Hare airport for several
hours. We ran out of snacks. Forbidden from leaving the gate area -- the
problem was alleged to be a computer glitch that could be resolved at
any moment -- I looked around for something to eat. The only vendor
within earshot of the gate was McDonald's. And that is where we went.
Well, this is a watershed moment in parenting, I thought, as I handed
each of my hungry children a little red and yellow sack, warm with food.
 
They hated it.
 
"Too spicy," said Elijah.
 
I urged him to eat it anyway; we wouldn't be home for another four
hours.
 
"Look, Mama," Faith shot back. "Look at their sign."
 
I looked over at the big yellow "M" to which she was pointing.
 
"Even their name is made out of limp French
fries," she asserted. "Why would you want to eat their food?"
 
That's when I realized that she didn't see the world-famous logo as
golden arches at all. No one had ever told her that's what it was
supposed to be. To her, the M in McDonald's looked like two yellow,
bent-over fries. Yuck.
 
Faith has already begun school, and Elijah will follow her in another
year. I know that their
innocent, unpropagandized view of food will change once they spend some
time at the lunchroom table, comparing the contents of their lunchboxes
with those of their friends, hearing other comments, encountering other
habits. I can hope that some remnants of the habits and tastes that
they've developed so far will remain, but I'd like to do more than just
hope. Already, Faith has noticed that many of her school friends, as
well as characters in books, have disparaging things to say about
spinach.
 
"I guess children don't like spinach," she observed. And then she added,
"but I am a child who does!"
 
-------------------------------------------------------
This essay by Sandra Steingraber is taken from Thinking outside the
Lunchbox, an essay series of the Center for
Ecoliteracy, <http://ecoliteracy.org>ecoliteracy.org © Copyright 2005
Center for Ecoliteracy. All rights reserved. Printed with permission.
 
Biologist and author Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D. is
the 2001 recipient of the Rachel Carson
Leadership Award. She is the author of
<http://alternet.bookswelike.net/isbn/0375700994>Living
Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the
<http://alternet.bookswelike.net/isbn/0738204676>Environment
and Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood.