From the category archives:

Teachable

Food in school, camp and all those places kids gather

More McDonald’s madness
(Also: critical food legislation)

November 17, 2010

Because my recent post about McDonald’s “nutrition workshops” drew a lot of ire and eyeballs, I figured there’d be interest in the latest jaw-dropping news from the Land of Ronald: For starters, London’s Guardian newspaper reported last week that the British Department of Health is creating food-policy advisory groups that include reps from McDonald’s, PepsiCo, and other fast-food and [...]

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Forget Happy Meal toys. Let’s ban McEducation.

November 5, 2010

I’ve been thinking all week that I need to write about San Francisco’s crackdown on Happy Meal toys. But what to say? News of the decision spread fast, generating the predictable “McDonald’s-is-evil” vs. “parents-get-a-backbone” debate. And, really, my opinion on fast-food marketing hasn’t changed since I wrote about the Retire Ronald campaign in April. I still think the [...]

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Halloween post-mortem. Candy recalls. And why teachers hate the day after.

November 3, 2010

Halloween night, Tess and her best buddy (aka the spider and the witch) went trick-or-treating in a cold rain, returning with a modest array of candy and snacks that they dumped on the carpet and fanned out like peacocks. The No. 1 thing they were hunting down: the popcorn (homemade, plain) that a neighbor had tossed in their bags.   [...]

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Smart kids with video cameras

October 30, 2010

OK, so ignore the fact that I said I was taking a video hiatus. As we enter Halloween weekend, having thoroughly discussed the candy onslaught, I leave you with three (yes, three) videos from Elysian Charter School in Hoboken, N.J. The first one shows kids hip-hopping their way through a junk-food exchange that trades Halloween candy for [...]

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Food (and propaganda) at the state fair

September 17, 2010

I realize that state-fair food is a category unto itself, a passionately defended paean to Americana and summertime. And to criticize it could cause a distracting uproar. Some might even offer me their fried-fave-on-a-stick with instructions to make it disappear right up my behind.      So I’ll just say that we did not partake of the many fried delicacies [...]

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School food: Beyond swapping white for wheat

August 26, 2010

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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When parents stand in the way of better school food

June 8, 2010

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

May 7, 2010

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

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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Retire Ronald? Or reclaim responsibility?

April 29, 2010

I first heard about the “Retire Ronald” campaign on April 1, so I assumed it was an elaborate April Fool’s prank. The website looked legit, and famous foodies were listed as advisers, but I couldn’t believe that anyone would spend so much time and energy trying to bring down a clown.                  Of course I’ve since learned that it’s real, a project of [...]

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