From the category archives:

Brainy

Food literacy, culture and history

School food: Beyond swapping white for wheat

August 26, 2010 Brainy

We all know Jamie Olivers in the making. A parent, a teacher, a student. Someone who’s making noise. School-food reform is big news these days, the stuff of TV shows, government campaigns and blog crusades. And even before all the hoopla, plenty of parents and others were working below the radar to get better food in their kids’ schools. But what about [...]

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Blackberries unplugged

July 31, 2010 Brainy

It’s the height of summer. Berry season. We’ve been picking and freezing great quantities of strawberries and blueberries. Raspberries are next, if we can catch them before they’re gone. Then the blackberries begin. And that’s got me thinking. About Block Island, RI, one of our favorite places on the planet, about the blackberries that grow wild there, and also [...]

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Send me your children’s menus!
(Because it’s one step forward, 25 steps back.)

July 23, 2010 Brainy

Just when I was feeling good about children’s menus, this depressing round-up crossed my desk. In it, the Daily Beast names the 25 worst meals from kids’ menus at chain restaurants, analyzed for calorie count, saturated fat, carbohydrates and sodium. I’m not into counting calories for kids. And I think standard dietary guidelines like the USDA food [...]

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Creating a better children’s menu: A chef speaks

July 2, 2010 Brainy

So this is fun. A month ago I wrote a diatribe against children’s menus, calling them out for being unhealthy and insulting. A lively discussion ensued. Then Brian Van Etten, the chef at The Owl House, a new restaurant in Rochester, N.Y., got in touch. He wanted input on his children’s menu. I posed the question to readers. Another lively [...]

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Hate children’s menus?
Here’s your chance to create a better one.

June 14, 2010 Brainy

Two weeks ago, we had a raging discussion here on the topic of children’s menus. In a nutshell: They’re loaded with unhealthy food. They’re insulting. They perpetuate the false and damaging notion that “kid food” should be its own distinct (junked-up and deep-fried) category. Brian Van Etten, the chef at a new restaurant about to open in Rochester, N.Y., took note. [...]

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When parents stand in the way of better school food

June 8, 2010 Brainy

I’m a journalist, which means I balk at reporting anything before I can suss it out. So I was going to post about this after I’d attended a meeting planned for tonight and talked to more of the people involved and done all those other reporter sorts of things. And I still will. But in the [...]

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The assault (and insult) of children’s menus

May 29, 2010 Brainy

One of our favorite local restaurants lists grilled cheese on both its regular menu and its children’s menu. Same price. Same bread options (wheat, rye, sourdough). But where the regular menu touts “aged” cheddar, the kiddie version offers “mild” cheddar. The first time I noticed this, I asked the server about the difference, thinking [...]

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Pesticide, organic and other dirty words

May 20, 2010 Brainy

“Organic” was an early word in my now 6-year-old’s vocabulary. (She pronounced it “ga-nan-ic.” Tell me that’s not adorable.) It’s also one of the first words she learned to spell, which is why we have progressively more readable versions written on random bits of paper and newsprint. So when we go grocery shopping, Tess takes pride in pointing [...]

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“Two Angry Moms”: Still too true (redux)

May 7, 2010 Brainy

As I posted earlier this week, I was planning to watch the school-food movie “Two Angry Moms” for the second time. Saw it last night, and I was struck again by the similarities between these moms’ battle and the drama that played out on Jamie Oliver’s show in Huntington, W.Va. It was disheartening, honestly, given that [...]

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“Two Angry Moms”: Still too true

May 3, 2010 Brainy

The school-food movie “Two Angry Moms” was released in 2007, and I saw it probably two years ago, but its message still resonates. That’s both good and bad. Sadly, school food in the United States remains a mess (no surprise to anyone who watched “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” or, frankly, to anyone who’s walked into almost any school [...]

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