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.

You guys are smart, right? You don’t need me to tell you that some artificial food additives appear to cause hyperactivity in kids. Or that a sugar-filled diet is linked with asthma. Or that junk food causes learning disabilities and behavior problems. Or that it increases the risk of diabetes. Or that it rots their teeth. Never mind that, oh yeah, it makes them overweight; since I was a kid, for example, the number of overweight kids has doubled. Thanks to these factors, this generation of children is the first in all of American history to have a lower life expectancy than their parents — a dubious honor if I’ve ever heard one.

What struck me as we talked about the issues, though, is how alone we have all felt in tackling them. For many of us, it literally feels like Lone Parent vs. The Rest of the World, because junk food is just so ubiquitous. First graders do math with skittles. Kindergarteners are given M&Ms as rewards. Well-meaning other parents bring in cupcakes for no reason. And have you noticed that every single holiday — not just Halloween and Easter, but holidays like St. Patty’s Day and Thanksgiving — all have candy attached to them.

Meanwhile, all of us — every single one of us — has felt like that parent. The crazy parent, the unreasonable, hysterical one. The Food Freak. Because, you know, we think that an apple is an appropriate snack.

Which is one of the reasons that this discussion group has been so great. Because we can look around, see other people who look normal, who seem smart, and we can say, “Oh, you mean this bothers you, too?” And then we start jumping up and down, screaming like a couple of 13-year-old girls, because suddenly we don’t feel quite so alone. Now, for the first time, we can point another parent who offers grapes before an Oreo, or who bothers to wonder “is trans-fat laden cookie dough an appropriate fundraiser for the school?”

Now, it’s a Handful of Us vs. The Rest of the World. It’s not just me. It’s me and a room full of friends. A small room, admittedly, but a room nonetheless. We’re short of an army, but I feel a little less like I’m shouting into the wind. For that alone, it’s worth it.

Related posts:
Healthy Children, Healthy Planet Week One

Consumerism vs. Family Ritual: Healthy Children, Healthy Planet 2

Do Ads Hurt Families? (And If So, What to Do?): Healthy Children, Healthy Planet 3

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. It could be that the highly unusual ocean conditions in 2005 left wee little fingerling salmon without food, and more susceptible to predators. Or it could be what some fishery managers and biologists believe: that California drained water at the wrong time to serve the state’s powerful agricultural interests and cities in arid Southern California.

But Mark Powell (who happens to be the Clark Kent to Blogfish’s Superman) makes a terrific point in the Christian Science Monitor: that we have “been guilty of salmon abuse for decades…we’ve been hitting and hammering on salmon with all these different injuries for decade after decade, and now there are so many reasons for decline we don’t even know what has been the last straw.”

All this follows some other discouraging news that large coral species are disappearing, potentially threatening ocean life. And that an international team researchers concluded that not a single square foot of ocean had been left untouched by modern society, and that humans had fouled 41 percent of the seas with polluted runoff, overfishing and other abuses.

This is all pretty tough news for a fish-lover like myself. I really do love fish. (Have I mentioned that?)

So, I’m hoping you can help keep my love alive. It might be too late for the Sacramento River Chinook, at least for a while. But it’s not too late for the other fish. You can contact your elected official to protect our waters from global warming. You can also do your best to choose sustainable seafood. There are lots of great options. They’ve even regionalized the list for you. So go ahead. Make wise fish choices.

And in the meantime, cross your fingers for those Chinook salmon.

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. My salmon was frozen of course. This time of year, the only wild Alaskan salmon you’re going to find will be frozen or canned, no matter what the label says (wild salmon is caught between mid-May and September). Wild-caught is more expensive than its farmed cousin; the fresh stuff can be three times the cost of farmed salmon, and even frozen wild-caught will generally run you several dollars more per pound. But wild-caught salmon has far fewer PCBs and dioxins than most farmed salmon. It has more beneficial omega-3 fatty acids than its farmed cousin. The majority of salmon farms release a great deal of waste into the environment. Not to mention that the farmed stuff has typically been injected with dyes. Though these dyes are synthetic versions of the stuff the salmon produce naturally, there’s something really unappealing about the concept.

Besides, the wild stuff tastes great. I mean really, really great. Wild salmon is lean and dense, with a more complex flavor than farmed.

That’s not to say that there aren’t responsible and mighty tasty salmon farms. Shetland salmon, for example, are farmed in the wild, using environmentally sustainable practices — giving it most of the benefits of wild-caught, for a little less money.

When working with a good piece of fish, I’m a believer in the KISS method…(meaning I try to Keep It Simple, Stupid). Which is why my own salmon was kept simple: sauteed in olive oil or butter, with lemon juice and a touch of dill and parsley. Quality ingredients, my friends: they invariably yield a mighty tasty meal without much effort.

But if you’re looking for a more complex meal, Eating Well has got you covered, with recipes for everything from Broiled Salmon with Miso Glaze to Salmon Panzanella, and from Southeast Asian-Inspired Salmon Soup to Black Bean-Salmon Stir-Fry.

As with any good meal, it’s important to make enough for leftovers. I did. Since it’s just about lunch-time now, it means I’m about become very happy, once again.

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.

Why does it matter if your kid gets bombarded with ads? It matters, because research shows that ads make your child unhealthy. They also make your child unhappy. And they weaken families by creating a wedge between parents and children (let’s pause to reflect on the fact that advertisers claim that it’s parental responsibility to protect their children from, say, junk food, the most heavily advertised product, even while advertisers try at every turn to undermine parental authority. Oh, don’t get me started).

What can a parent do about it, though? Some say we should ban advertising to children altogether, as has been done in Sweden. But short of that, there’s no single, simple solution.

Turn off the TV. Sure, that’s a good start. But it’s only a start. Limit computer time. Get involved with your schools so you know what’s being advertised there, and by whom. Teach your children about what ads are, how they work, what strategies advertisers use, and how the ads make your children feel. Others have tried that strategy, and found it worked. And there’s another thing we can do: spend a little more time with the kids, away from the media — out of doors, or reading together, maybe — helping them discover the stuff that matters.

The conversation brought me back to one I’d had that morning, as I was driving my daughter to school. She’d asked about these “parent meetings” I’d been attending. She’d wanted to know what we talked about.

“Well, today we’re talking about advertisements.”

“What’s the matter with advertisements?”

“Well…” I paused. “Remember last summer?” I asked. “When you caught that frog, the one you named Tony?” I wasn’t sure if she’d remembered, but I remembered it well. We’d spent a week at a cottage by a lake, and she’d spent hours digging around in the reeds, looking for snakes and water bugs. One afternoon, she caught a frog, and was absolutely thrilled. She named him Tony, and she whispered to him, and studied him closely, wonder in her eyes.

Then, when it was time, she let him go, watching him hop toward the water.

Sitting in the car now, she exclaimed “Tony! He was the best frog ever!”

“Right. He was. And the problem with ads is that they make you think that products like Barbie dolls are really important. But they’re not. They just take you away from the really fun things…things like catching Tony.”

She smiled, and I could tell she was thinking about that week, the one with fresh lake water, and canoes, and tiny fish that nibbled her toes if she stood still, and lakeside blueberries fresh from the bush….and in the midst of all, a beautiful bright green frog named Tony.

“I get it, Mom.” For that moment, at least, she did.

We’ve got plenty more talking to do as time goes on. But at least the conversation’s started.

Related posts:
Healthy Children, Healthy Planet Week One

Consumerism vs. Family Ritual: Healthy Children, Healthy Planet 2

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.

She came over to me and we sat down on the floor together, turning the pages slowly. Several things struck me as I looked at these images — how prevalent Coca Cola is across the planet, the voluminous plastic packaging that surrounds the foods of industrialized nations, the beauty and color of diets with lots of fresh produce, the amount some families spend on bottled beverages and fast foods.

But my daughter, with her six-year old eyes, noticed only one thing: how little some people had. She flipped back and forth between the Chad family and a grinning family from North Carolina. “I mean, look at this, Mommy. Just look at how little is here…and how much is here.”

Eyes wide, she flipped the pages. Back and forth. Then she looked at me, eyes searching me for an answer.

I often tell her how lucky she is, because — protestations of “I’m hungry!” when she really means “I want sugar!” aside — she has never known what it is to be food insecure. Her good fortunate is not simply a function of growing up in America. After all, more than 38 million Americans, including nearly 14 million children, are living on the brink of hunger, not sure of where their next meal will come from (according to Second Harvest, that’s more than the population of the 30 largest cities in this nation combined).

No, her luck is based on some constellation of factors over which even her dad nor I had little control: where we were born, our time in history, what our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents did, and just plain dumb luck.

But my telling her how fortunate she is has never been enough. On this Thursday afternoon, however, during a few stolen moments in a bookstore’s corner, she seemed to understand. And that understanding brought questions: why and how come and Mommy, can’t we give them some of our food?

I had no clear answers. Only gratitude and sorrow…and a renewed commitment to doing what we can. Like buying fair trade whenever possible.

Hungry Planet came out recently in paperback, but I’d advise you get the hardback if you can — this one’s a keeper. In the meantime, you can see a slide show, with images from the book, at the Time Magazine site.

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.

Now, the question that kept going through my mind as I read this was “have these people ever been around kids?”

But apparently they have; the Metroactive article notes that it’s not just nasty food marketers that are jacking our kids up. Apparently competitive-minded parents are happily showing up at sports events with high-caffiene drinks or packages of uber-charged candy and goo to help their kids have an edge on the field.

Thanks to folks like that, turbo-charged goodies are becoming big business.

Personally, I’m wondering where our sanity has gone. But I don’t have time to contemplate it, as my kids are now scaling the side of our house. Excuse me while I go try to catch them.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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. I’ll happily buy kalamata olives and feta from the Mediterranean. You won’t find a salmon swimming within hundreds of miles from here, but you might find it on my plate. And I don’t think I could survive, frankly, without my coffee that’s harvested thousands of miles away.

But I do try to eat with a conscience.

I’m fond of a T-shirt, sold by Herbivore, that says “Eat Like You Give a Damn.” That’s my goal: to eat thoughtfully, to participate in a food system that doesn’t blithely destroy the natural environment, that doesn’t put quarterly earnings statements above the quality of the food they sell. I want food that connects me…to…something - other people, I suppose. And the planet.

Eating locally is one way to do that. But it’s not the only way.

Recently, the New York Times published an article about foods from small “local” dairies. This fed the ire of Wooly Pigs pork producer, Heath Putnam. Putnam produces pork from Wollschwein and Berkshire pigs and a brief tour of the Wooly Pigs web site makes clear that this guy cares — a lot — about the quality of his food. In a blog post, Putnam expresses frustration with the local movement, noting that a California chef who insists on buying “local” pigs is almost certainly buying inferior pork than that of Wooly Pigs.

It’s certainly a point worth thinking about. Fortunately, Casing the Joint did exactly that in this beautiful post on what it means to eat thoughtfully. He notes that local is only one means to an end:

By consistently engaging a single foodshed or small group of foodsheds — presumably one(s) near where we live — over time, we can start to understand the land we live on and the people we live with, and develop meaningful connections with both. It’s the idea of understanding, sharing and belonging…the idea of home.

By his definition, “local” doesn’t have to mean food from your back yard, but rather food that comes from somewhere, that introduces you to someone. It can happen with local food, absolutely. There’s nothing like meeting the people who grow your food. But it can also happen, as Casing the Joint makes clear, with farther-than-a-stone’s throw producers like Wooly Pigs.

It’s a beautiful post, and it’s enough to make even a local-food-cynic want to start eating like they give a damn.

Thanks to the Ethicurean for the heads-up about these posts.

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.

It often strikes me how often we parents use the words “I want to give my child…” I understand the sentiment. As parents, we want to give our children everything they need. Through all of human history, it’s that impulse that has kept children safe, has helped them to grow up healthy and strong. And in 21st century America, we want to give them all the “advantages” we can.

They want to take skating lessons? Sure. To participate in the school play? Of course — who would deny that opportunity? A playdate with a best friend? Absolutely. They want to learn to ski, to dance, to play instruments, to dribble a basketball, to score higher on the SATs. And we want these things for them. Unfortunately, on our attempts to make our children’s lives as enriching as possible, other things get sacrificed: family ritual is one of them.

That’s a huge thing to lose. According to William Doherty, author of Take Back Your Kids, ritual is the glue of family life. Rituals offer a sense of order and predictability. They offer a connection, and a sense of being part of a family. They are a chance to act out particular values, and to make a child aware that he or she is part of something bigger than him or herself.

Sure, my own daughter is proud when she masters a new trail on the ski slope. She loves knowing the answers at school. But after we delivered Meals on Wheels as a family? I saw a sense of groundedness and pride that outweighed anything I’ve ever seen from a “personal” achievement.

If our discussion was any indication, kids will resist the family ritual at first, citing any number of things that are more “important” than a family dinner, or a visit with relative, or a holiday tradition that focuses more on meaning than on material good. But after a while, they will become participants themselves — blowing out the candle at the end of a Shabbat dinner, building a stronger relationship with a grandparent, learning to prepare a new food, lending a hand to help a younger sibling or cousin. From that, they will gain a sense of connectedness and pride.

Our children have been turned into consumers by a wider society. But what we realized as we sat around the room is that they don’t have to be consumers within the family. They don’t get to choose only the parts of family life that appeal to them. They’re not just consumers, after all — they are still children, with lessons still to be learned, and values that need to be imparted. Family ritual can be a part of that.

Healthy Children, Healthy Planet is just one of many discussion courses offered by the Northwest Earth Institute.

Previous posts on this series:

Healthy Children, Healthy Planet Week One

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?

To me, the big deal is this: there’s just something that feels wrong marketing products — most of them bad for kids — to children who are too young to understand what an advertisement is. There’s something offensive about turning a child into a consumer.

That’s why I was excited when I got an email from a fellow parent inviting me to participate in Healthy Children, Healthy Planet, a 7-part class series from the Northwest Earth Institute.

Healthy Children, Healthy Planet is designed as a reading and discussion group that examines the pervasive effects of advertising, media, and how our consumer culture can influence a child’s view of the world. Along the way, it promises to discover ways to create meaningful family times and healthful environments for children, to explore ways to develop a child’s connection to nature, and to foster creativity.

Every participant is given a workbook with readings and some questions to think about. Then, each week, we come together and talk. It sounds kind of Koombayah, but the truth is, the readings are insightful and thought-provoking — like whether or not parents deserve a Parental Bill of Rights to protect their kids from commercial influences, and how we, as parents, can stop modeling consumerism to our kids (because yeah, most of us do).— and our first week’s discussion was grounded and practical.

Here is the best thing about the program, though — the very, very best thing: When you do it, you will find others like yourself. You’ll find that others are wrestling with some of the same pressures — from a 12-year-old child begging for a cell phone, to a 5-year old that begs for candy in her lunchbox so she can be “like all the other kids,” to the discomfort we feel when we see little girls embracing doe-eyed, blatantly sexual Bratz dolls.

You’ll start to be aware of certain trends, too: movies that invariably show parents as fools and children as the wise ones (a message that surely undermines a parent’s authority). Or the expectation that children should be separated from parents nearly all the time — whether it’s through large finished basements filled with toys and utterly distinct from the “adult” places in the home, or through the endless stream dance classes and swimming lessons and science school and soccer practices that keep us from meaningful family time.

For the first time, perhaps, you’ll start to see some of your own struggles not as conflict between you and your child, but as a larger fight. And you won’t feel nearly as alone.

If Week One was any indication, it’s going to be a fantastic program. The Northwest Earth Institute offers other discussion guides, as well — Voluntary Simplicity, Choices for Sustainable Living, Exploring Deep Ecology, Discovering a Sense of Place, Globalization and Its Critics, Global Warming: Changing CO2urse. All courses are designed for small groups.

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.

Lean Cuisine dinners? They’ve got directions. Kraft mac and cheese? Yep, they’ve got directions, too. Dinty Moore stews? Oh, yes. Even they come with directions.

But vegetables? A slap of fish? An egg? You won’t find any directions printed on them. What does a novice cook do with a bag of green beans? How to take a parsnip — a parsnip, for Pete’s sake! — and turn it into something edible?

There were, inevitably, mistakes. Painful, but true: I ruined perfectly lovely vegetables, I have destroyed hefty chunks of meat. But they’re right about mistakes: you do learn from them.

What I learned turned out to be the best news of all: the tastiest dishes are often the simplest ones. All those exotic ingredients you see at the gourmet store? Forget ‘em. The truth is that anything — anything, save perhaps chocolate — can be made delicious with garlic, lemon, and olive oil. Grill it, roast it, or pan-sautee it. You won’t go wrong with those three simple ingredients. Do all the meals taste the same? No - that’s the beautiful, amazing thing. They mingle differently with different ingredients, bringing out new flavors in a way that is always fresh…and always good.

Beyond that, the tricks are simple: don’t burn the garlic. Keep your vegetables from getting mushy. Use a meat thermometer to determine when your meats are done. And use the freshest, highest-quality foods you can find. The best ingredients? Local, of course.

The results? Much tastier than a frozen dinner. And much, much better for you. Now that’s good news!

(photo credit: Royalty free stock photography)