Jeremiah and I are now officially hooked on Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution," and although we love cooking shows ("Iron Chef" and "Top Chef" have been staples in our viewing pantry for years), there's something very different about this show. So much so that we even have our five-year-old daughter watching episodes with us, with interest, on Hulu. (More on that in a minute.) If you haven't heard of Jamie Oliver yet, he's a celebrity chef from England who worked to get the junk food out of British school lunches. Last year he came to America (specifically, to the "most unhealthy city" in America) to try to change how children eat and how their schools and families feed them.

A few things stood out to me in the first few episodes. In one of the more shocking scenes, Oliver held up a variety of vegetables and not one first-grader at the school he had been allowed to make some changes at could name a single vegetable. I'm not talking about showing first graders sea beans or sunchokes, but tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, and cauliflower. (They also were unaware that French fries are made from potatoes.) It was pretty eye-opening when Chef Oliver literally compiled (prepared and piled up on the table) a week's worth of the food that one family ate in a week of their regular diet. Beyond the obviousness of this being a nasty pile of junk food, the entire pile was brown in color - there wasn't a red or a purple or a green thing to be seen. He did the same trick at the school to show parents what the kids there ate in a week, and again, it was brown, brown, brown.

In our household we don't put a lot of weight to the food pyramid; instead we try to have a balanced and colorful diet. We also try to buy in season as much as we can, so that means that we don't always get red in the winter (for instance) but over the course of the year, we try to hit all the colors of the rainbow as often as we can.

After Jeremiah and I had watched it, I thought it about some of the questions it raised for days. Would Z be able to name the vegetables? (None of us really like cauliflower so she probably wouldn't know that...) What would the primary color of our weekly food intake look like if we piled it all on our table? (I can't afford to waste that much food but maybe we can experiment in a different way.) What are we doing to our children to raise them without knowing how to use a knife and a fork? (In England, Oliver said, teachers help the kids in the lunchroom learn how to use utensils - an idea that felt radical and obvious at the same time at a school that had as policy preferred food that required a spoon or better yet, no utensils at all.) What does this say for etiquette in our country? Or for the types of food we choose to eat?

Later that weekend, I took Z to a garden shop to buy some seeds for our garden, and we looked at all the different kinds of seeds and young plants - melons, tomatoes, pumpkins, beans, peas, lettuce - and picked some out. (Last summer, Z stood at the tomato plants and picked the cherry tomatoes off the plant - more of them ended up in her belly than in our basket!) As we looked at the seeds, I talked to Z about the show and later, we decided to let her watch it. She was surprised at the brownness of the food, at the lack of knives and forks (and children's inability to use them) in the lunchroom - she has been proudly learning to use a "sharp knife" to help us cook - and at the inability of the other children to identify vegetables.

We think exposing her to this kind of information is important to her knowledge about food and health. If we shield her from the side effects of our junk and fast food country then what happens when she goes to college and doesn't have that information? Will she fall into the eating habits of her peers? Or even earlier than that - what happens when she is pressured or ostrasized by her peers for drinking green smoothies or preferring water to soda or for her love of sushi or fruit or oatmeal?

Little by little, if we can teach her to value her food - to value the resources that nurtured the plant while it grew and the people who grew it, to recognize the difference between an in-season, ripe tomato and the tasteless blob of red that poses as a tomato in the December grocery aisle, to treasure the health of her body and to nurture it by making healthy, colorful food choices - then maybe she will grow up outside of this brown, fast food America. Maybe she - and others like her - will be able to change the system, support the farmers and the earth and live and grow in health. And maybe she will teach me to instinctively reach for an orange when I need a snack or to satisfy my crunching need with carrots or dried cherry tomatoes instead of chips and salsa, and I'll be healthier too.

Jeremiah and I both highly recommend the show, and showing it to kids, too. There is a lot to it, even more than just info on healthier eating - watching the ways Oliver goes about doing community organizing as a chef, the way he tackles the project from various angles at once, and the way he personalizes the issues involved are all fascinating and inspiring.



Since then, we've planted about twenty tomato plants (mostly cherry tomatoes), a dozen pepper plants, and lettuce and spinach, plus peas, beans, melons, squash, and a few things I'm probably forgetting. Come on, color!

For further info on the state of school lunches (and to learn about other people who have been tirelessly working on changing the system for years) see the links below:

• Jamie's Food Revolution: Sign his petition!


• Let's Move


• Fed Up With School Lunch


• Chef Ann Cooper: The Renegade Lunch Lady


• The Edible Schoolyard


• School Lunch: Subtract the Additives

You can watch episodes online for yourself here. Bon appetit!

Do you ever have a parenting week when you feel like someone shoved a great big wrench right into your finely orchestrated plans? You are busy and you have it all mapped out just right. It is a delicate game, but you are certain you can do it all.

Until.

A kid gets sick, a pet runs away, a partner gets laid off... We have all had things happen right at the wrong time.

Two weeks ago, my toddler had a bike accident and broke his foot. It ended up being a minor injury that could have been much worse so we felt very grateful. He is not in much pain and is hobbling around on his cast quite well.

But it was just not the week for an accident. I was already behind with work, we had plans to go to the coast for a relaxing weekend of sand and water (cue the evil laugh) and our budget right now does not include all the medical bills.

I should just be happy he is okay, but I can't help but get frustrated about the timing.

Until the end of the week, when I took him to his little preschool, feeling relieved that he could play for four hours so I could complete four writing pieces and answer about 300 emails.

But he would not let me leave him at the school.

He was clingy and wanted me to hold him. I couldn’t get him connected to his teachers or playing with his peers. After staying for two hours to help him settle in, we left when he finally said: "I want to go home," with tears in his eyes.

All my work would have to wait. My little guy had a major trauma this week. He was injured, rode in an ambulance and is hobbling around in a heavy cast. He is feeling vulnerable and needs me.

I took some deep breaths and made a new plan. I let go of some things I thought I should do. I asked for help from my partner in getting some time to work in the evening. And, I decided to share my story with you instead of the more complicated post I was planning.

When I ask myself what is really important to me, I know that my loved ones come before my to-do list.

How about you? What do you do when your big plans are derailed?

Have you ever met a parent who allows free access to sweets and desserts for their children? It isn't likely - most parents feel it is important to restrict their child's sugar intake in one way or another, with the goal of teaching smart, long-term feeding behaviors about food.

But what if the opposite was true? What if giving your children unlimited access to sweets and desserts would set them up for lasting healthy relationships with these foods? As a pediatric dietitian, I am not necessarily condoning this approach, but just asking you to consider it. And I'll be testing this theory with my own 2.5-year-old daughter in my own home - but more on that in a minute.

Several years ago, I attended an unforgettable lecture given by James, a childhood feeding expert. Although I can't remember the exact title of the lecture or the speaker’s last name, I do recall one specific story that he shared with the audience. James told us about his son, age 10 at the time, and his peculiar eating habits at home. He went onto to explain that when his son was just a toddler, James decided to create a "sweets drawer" at home, which was always easily accessible for kids. He filled this drawer with all types of typically restricted desserts - chocolate bars, candy, cookies, sodas, etc. And for the first week after the snack drawer was created, James' son went crazy and stuffed himself full with these sweet treats. But after only one week, he started to notice that his son was paying much less attention to the sweets.

Ten years after creating this drawer, James couldn't be happier about his decision to create the sweets drawer so many years ago. He asked the audience to guess who ate 99% of those sweets in the drawer in the years that followed? The answer: All of his son’s friends! Most of the time, other children couldn't believe that such a thing even existed and they went crazy to come over to his house! James went onto to elaborate on the concept that restricting foods, for kids and adults alike, often increases the desire for it.

I can't make up my mind how I feel about this approach for my child, but it is an interesting concept. What do you think?

Growing up in my family, we were not allowed to drink soda pop. Every once in a blue moon, my mom allowed us to have a caffeine-free root beer. But on my first day of high school, I found the vending machine in the hallway and learned that you could take soda to class with you - I thought I had died and gone to heaven! So guess what I did? I drank a Dr. Pepper every single early morning of my freshman year in high school! And this begs the question - what if my mom had given me soda pop just once a week as a child? Would I still have overconsumed these sugary drinks as a teenager? It is a really tough one to answer!

In 1999, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a study on this sweets and sugar restrictions among the families of preschool-aged children. According to this study, if you restrict children's access to "forbidden" foods, it may lead to overindulgence later.

When my daughter turned one year old, I started to think a lot more about this concept. Should I create a drawer like this?

Intuitively, it simply doesn’t feel right to stash a bunch of junk food into a kitchen cabinet and give her free access to it. But I also want her to grow up with a healthy approach towards all foods, particularly the nutritional nightmare foods. But, believe it or not…I am going to try it for my now 2.5-year-old daughter. It will just be a trial, and I can’t promise that I will keep the drawer forever, but I will do it as a test run for all of you. (And I am still going to be diligent about preparing balanced, nutritious meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner). For two weeks, I will also give her unlimited access to desserts when we are outside of the home. And of course, I will let you know how it goes!

When you were a kid, how was dessert time handled in your family? How do you think that impacted your relationship with food today? And how do you handle desserts in your home now?