Green Options

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This post reflects on the fourth week of my seven-part “Healthy Children, Healthy Planet” curriculum, a fantastic discussion group by the Northwest Earth Institute.

So far, our Healthy Children, Healthy Planet discussion group has tackled family dinners, consumer-free holidays, the over-programming of children’s activities, advertisements, and whether parents deserve a Bill of Rights, and what kind of moments can be used to pass down values. This week, the conversation turns to everyone’s favorite enemy: junk food.

Ah, junk food. It’s true what they say: we have become a junk food nation. We are a nation of processed food, of food in boxes, of omnipresent vending machines, of gas stations that stop selling gas, because the real money is in snacks.

Last week, I posted about my love for wild salmon, which is as pure and whole as love gets. The day after I posted — the very next day! — there was some sobering news from the West Coast: wild chinook salmon that run upstream in the Sacramento River are vanishing without a trace. Vanishing. Woosh. They’re gone. We’re talking about the most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska.

Not surprisingly, this is gloomy news for fishing communities. It’s likely that California and Oregon salmon fishing will be halted altogether. Washington fisheries are under threat. Alaska — the source of the majority of wild salmon — is okay for now, but Blogfish reminds Alaska not to get too giddy. Overfishing has threatened Alaskan salmon in the past, too.

But why? Why is this happening? No one knows for sure.

Fish makes me happy. It always has. My love for fish has always been deep and pure — so much that mother once wondered aloud if I might be part seal.

And a good piece of salmon makes our me very, very happy indeed.

That’s no exaggeration; salmon does, indeed, relieve depression and stress. Beyond, that, though, salmon is great for you. It’s an excellent source of protein and B-vitamins. It’s chock-full of essential omega-3s — those handy little fatty acids that protect against some cancers, lower blood pressure, protect against rheumatoid arthritis, aid cardiovascular health, and even help fight wrinkles (that’s right. Salmon fights wrinkles, like nature’s own Botox). But this fish is also quick; you can cook it up after a long day in a matter of minutes, while children pull at your pant legs.

Not to mention, it tastes great.

This week, I splurged on a fabulous piece of wild-caught salmon.

This post reflects on the third week of my seven-part “Healthy Children, Healthy Planet” curriculum, a fantastic discussion group by the Northwest Earth Institute.

40,000 television commercials a year. That’s what the average American child sees. That’s around 100 ads for every 4 hours of television.

What’s that, you say? No TV in your house? Oh, but your kids will still see plenty of ads. There’s online adver-gaming. There are ads on school buses. Ads in the classroom. There’s product placement in movies. Not to mention billboards, posters, textbook covers, …it’s all fair game.

Week 3 of the Healthy Children, Healthy Planet series, the 7-part parenting discussion course from the Northwest Earth Institute, was all about ads. Namely, the pervasiveness of ads in our children’s lives, and whether it is even possible to create ad-free spaces in their lives.

What’s clear is that advertising is different in both quantity and quality than it’s ever been before. The amount of money spent on marketing to children — $2 billion annually — is close to 10 times greater than it was even in 1990. And the nature of it has changed, too — mostly, because there’s no place safe from it. Not schools. Not movies. Not even your daughter’s sleepover party.

Last week, my daughter and I visited a book store, and I noticed a book that I wanted to show her. “Come here, honey, look at this,” I said. She rolled her eyes, ever-so-slightly. At six, she’s already learning that there’s a potential lesson in everything…and that sometimes Mommy goes overboard in trying to teach it.

The book in question isn’t new. but it’s worth a renewed look. It’s named Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, and it’s a brilliant, simple book, by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio. Each chapter is a portrait of a single family (there are 30 families from around the world featured) photographed with a week’s worth of groceries. From the Aboubakar family of Chad, which spends $1.23 per week on food, to the Melander family of Germany, whose weekly food budget is more than 400 times that, the book reveals startling differences in how we all live.

I’d seen it before. But my daughter hadn’t.

Um. Look I don’t want to be an alarmist or anything. But. Um.

See, I’ve got kids? And, see…they’re kind of…energetic enough? I mean really, truly. Spend five seconds in my house and you will see: they are doing just fine bouncing off the walls of their own accord. So, I’ll thank the world for not encouraging them to bounce off the ceiling, as well.

Oh, but I can‘t thank the world, because apparently the world is instead choosing to fill them with caffeine when I’m not around.

As this great article from Metroactive explains, “these days, constraints on caffeine consumption for kids and young teens are nonexistent. Kids are having caffeine early and often.” It’s not just in their drinks, apparently. Candy bars? Increasingly filled with the stuff.

I’ll say it: I like local food. I tend to choose it whenever I can find it, and whenever I can afford it.

I’ll say something else, as well: I don’t just eat local foods.

I’m extremely fortunate, as my corner of the world (Southern Vermont) offers an agricultural bounty unknown to many parts of this country. Within a few miles of here, I can find farms that explode with delicious eats. In the spring, we’ve got baby greens, asparagus, strawberries. Later in the season, there’s chard, zucchini, tomatoes and onions. We have delicata squash and blue potatoes and kale and apples. We’ve got peaches and pumpkins, blueberries and basil, leeks and lettuce, shallots and string beans. We’ve got pastured chickens and grass-fed beef, free range eggs and honey from the comb. We’ve got milk and yogurts and cheeses. I know: I’m very, very lucky…at least from June to November.

Still, I sometimes choose foods that aren’t grown within my own foodshed.

This post reflects on the second week of my seven-part “Healthy Children, Healthy Planet” curriculum, a fantastic discussion group by the Northwest Earth Institute.

You’ve probably met some of these folks before: The mother who so desires a Martha Stewart-worthy Easter that she purchases an egg decorating kit far too complicated for the children and ends up decorating the eggs by herself. The parents who witness their children getting increasingly unappreciative as they open one holiday gift after another. The child who fusses about having to participate in a family dinner until the whole idea of family meals is abandoned.

These folks were all featured in this week’s reading, and they prompted lively discussion among the group’s participants. The truth is, I’ve seen each of these dramas in my own home. Other parents have struggled with similar issues. We also know the loss that comes — a kind of vague dismay, a sense that something just isn’t quite right — from abandoning family ritual.

Sometimes I think I’m like most parents: I want my kids to have a childhood, a real childhood. I don’t expect it to be pain-free — who among us got that? — but I believe it can also be filled with wonder and joy and laughter.

There are plenty of other times, however, that I feel like I’m not like any other parent I know. We restrict television to some carefully-chosen videos. My kids have never walked through the door of a McDonald’s, and they still have no idea what a Happy Meal is. They don’t use the computer. I regularly weed out the many Disney princess products that are given as gifts, crossing my fingers that my daughter won’t notice a toy’s sudden absence (she usually doesn’t).

What’s my problem? other parents sometimes ask. What’s the big deal?

I’m not a foodie. At least I’ve never been one before. I was always a soda-guzzler, a nugget-snarfer, a fan of Lean Cuisine frozen dinners.

But then I started reading about food. Fast Food Nation, Food Politics, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the Ethicurean… What I read frightened me. It scared my pants right off (figuratively, that is. This isn’t that kind of blog).

You probably know all the reasons why it scared me: E. Coli in meat, botulism in cans, carbon monoxide-packaged beef, ecological damage, genetic modification, and an array of health epidemics that are the result of our low nutrition, high fat diet. Our entire food system — Everything I ate! Every single day! — just seemed so…distasteful. I wanted better.

I wanted better for me, of course. But more than that, I wanted better for my kids.

So I started shopping differently. Eating whole foods. And I very quickly learned the bad news: whole foods don’t come with directions.