Posts tagged as:

artificial colors

It’s not just a cookie

February 19, 2011

When I wrote a post last month questioning Girl Scout cookies, I didn’t know what to expect. People get touchy about American icons.  Or they get afflicted with “it’s just a cookie” syndrome. But I plowed in anyway. No pain, no gain and all that. And wow. Talk about hitting a nerve. But in a good way. A really good [...]

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Stop reading labels and start reading ingredients

January 29, 2011

All week I’ve been seeing stories about Walmart-style food reform and food manufacturers’ self-serving nutrition labels, about fake meat, fake blueberries and fake maple syrup. Stories about all the ways the food industry tricks us, and all the ways people get mad about the food industry tricking us.  So here’s a thought: Let’s stop playing the game. Ignore the labels. Don’t look at numbers. Don’t believe [...]

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The color of trouble

January 22, 2011

Before I started Spoonfed, I began collecting “kid food” advertisements with the intention of skewering them on a regular basis. But as those torn pages piled up, I realized they were all the same. Different products, different gimmicks: Lunchables give kids brain power! Pop-Tarts are the cornerstone of a balanced breakfast! McDonald’s is healthy for hipster moms and [...]

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Lesson at the bakery case. But who learned what?

December 17, 2010

We’d left school and were driving to a nearby art studio to pick up a print I’d won in a raffle. Tess was in the backseat, cranky, tired, whining about needing to pee, despite being asked that exact question at least four times before we’d left school. Not wanting to descend upon the artist with a crabby and incontinent child, I [...]

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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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Candy insanity: Halloween here we come

October 20, 2010

When you blog about kids and food, people ask you questions. Especially this time of year, when sweets flow like lava and the sugar high carries you from trick-or-treats to Easter baskets. What do you do about the candy? So here it is. The post about the candy. Our Halloween night strategy is pretty simple. After trick-or-treating, costume [...]

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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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Color me annoyed

April 9, 2010

I’m working with my daughter’s school on a project about local food, so Wednesday I stopped in for a little show-and-tell about the sort of food that grows in New York vs. elsewhere. (Apples and grapes, natch. Pineapples and mangoes, nada.) I’ll admit I had visions of doing my own Jamie Oliver-style Q&A, complete with a dramatic reveal and confused kids. But thankfully my 5- [...]

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Preachy little foodies (and how not to have one)

April 7, 2010

Sure it’s great to teach kids where food comes from and why healthy eating matters. But how do we make sure they don’t morph into pint-sized proselytizers who lecture other kids and make them feel bad because mom didn’t pack an organic apple? I thought about this last week after a comment on my post about teaching kids about industrial [...]

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Dyeing to know: Easter egg science lesson

April 2, 2010

Of all the food additives and ingredients that make me sweat, food coloring is the worst. Because, you see, it’s all about looks. Food manufacturers don’t claim that artificial colors improve the “integrity of food and beverage products,” as they do with high-fructose corn syrup. (Seriously. Read this.) They don’t claim that fake colors help [...]

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