Listen To The Renegade Lunch Lady. Please.

October 25, 2008

Meet Chef Ann Cooper. She’s changing the way we feed children.

I LOVE THIS WOMAN.

Chef Ann Cooper

I love her message.

I love her topic.

I love her passion. She has a fire in her blood that sparks out her brown eyes.

I love her devotion to children that are not even hers.

If I got a closer look at her boots, I think I’d love them too.

Chef Ann takes on the lunch bureaucracy at TED.

This is the right woman for this job.

Who’s the grownup here?

Don’t explain to kids why they need to eat green food. You don’t negotiate toothbrushing, do you? Give them the choice of this green food or that green food, but one of them is going in. This is what “freedom of choice” looks like, and not “Do you want green food today?”.

You don’t ask your kids what lane of traffic to choose or how to spend investment money because they are incapable of knowing. You wouldn’t take a 15 year old’s advice, much less a 6 year old’s. Giving choices to those who cannot make them is just plain dangerous.

You are the grownup. You, and only you, have a responsibility to decide which foods are right. When you became a parent, it was in the job description. You also took on the role of teacher. You are teaching them to make the right choices for themselves for the rest of their lives, about everything. Food just happens to be the most important one.

I know it’s a daily fight. I know if you make a deal out of it, life escalates into a stress feast for everyone. But if there are chips, cookies, and ice cream in your house, none of your efforts will work. They can hold out longer than you because they’re the ones with the energy.

Does your dog play the food game?

I meet many folks who tell me their dog can choose what food its body needs. Hogwash. Does your body tell you what foods it needs? The last time you were stressed, did you reach for lentil casserole or that bag of Dill Pickle chips?

Dogs are as equipped to make decisions about nutrition as kids are, and they will make the same mistakes.

Don’t agonize over whether it’s fair or right or respectful of their rights, or if it’s natural. Dogs quickly learn to play the game of needing a new taste sensation every 4 days if you enlist in that program. Masters of extortion, they learn that if they don’t eat supper for a day or two, the selection only gets better. Small breed dogs, especially the white ones, drop into this world having mastered this beyond any level you can hope to achieve. Don’t bother engaging because you will lose.

Dogs and kids do what works. Stop letting it work and they’ll stop doing it almost immediately. They may move on to something new to annoy you, but look at each situation and think about what you’re doing to let it work. With children, as with dogs, food is entirely a control issue. It is not a taste issue.

Why your dog ate your couch

Kids and dogs also do what they’re used to. Being destabilized causes them anxiety so they’ll expend energy to keep the status quo. If, for some unfathomable reason, you want a dog (or a kid) that needs a new kind of food every three days, then start feeding him that way. If you want a dog that needs constant acknowledgment and reassurance all her life, then start off by paying her constant attention, especially when she demands it.

Then, you’ll doom yourself to dreaming up fancy dog food options, when you’re not cleaning up the couch the dog chewed because it loses its mind if it’s being ignored. Once you’re done cleaning, you’ll need to run to the vet to pick up the dog who had the couch buttons cut out of its stomach yesterday. Have you any idea how many people choose to do this?

If you have a few other things to do that sound more fun, let the dog learn that the food stays the same and they can learn to be ignored without harm. The decision lies entirely with you. Start them off the way you want them to end up.

Good Habits are hard to break too

Once they’re in their teens, children get ideas that they’re suddenly controlling us. The underlying psychology of Grade 8 seems to me to be that they have the adult world where they want it. If I remember myself correctly, that belief remains in place till one’s early 20s.

That’s why you have to start ASAP, so good choices aren’t choices at all, just habits. I think they like having a solid sense of “how things are in our family”. They can feel that they stand for something.

Think of how we would look if we’d started wearing sunscreen when we were 2!! The skin on our face would look like the skin on our other cheeks. And to think that that is a very real option that was squandered. Let’s at least give it to our children.

Now that mine are over 12, I encounter more resistance about everything, but I persevere. They’re just making the point that I can’t control them and I am not the boss of them. They’ll avoid anything they perceive as parental guidance.

They care more about how they look. I’ve talked to them a lot about long term investment and the payoffs at the other end. We talk to them about smoking. They see the long term effect. We teach them to respect their bodies. They see women who are capable and strong. We teach them about savings and investment. They see restraint in the present for reward in the future.

Can every one of us be our kids’ food advocate, like Chef Ann Cooper? Or are we, as parents, just too damn tired to fight with kids and with a destructive bureaucracy all the time?

Should we bypass the grownups entirely and teach the kids? Is this generation smarter about sex, seat belts, driving drunk, and smoking? Sadly, I don’t think they are. Our species is hell-bent on destroying itself. Then we turn 40 and finally think …

Chef Ann’s other books

Within 10 seconds of landing on a new website, I’m at the About page. The snaking path that throws choices our way reassures me that everyone’s life can be varied and rich. You don’t have to be stuck at the same desk for 30 years. Chef Ann’s About page is a great one. Don’t miss the books she’s written, at the bottom of the About page.

Lunch Lessons by Ann Cooper and Lisa M. Holmes

Have a look at some of the recipes this cookbook contains.

Do you agree that Mother’s Kitchen (shown below) looks beautiful as well? Don’t we all remember the foods our mothers, grandmothers, and aunts were renowned for, that we loved (or dreaded)? Cooking with a child nourishes their body as well as their spirit, teaches them pride in their contribution to the family, creates memories that last their lifetime, and forges traditions that they will teach their own children.

Kids LOVE learning and they LOVE knowing that you want to spend time showing them what you know. More than that, they NEED it to survive.

In Mother's Kitchen by Ann Cooper and Lisa M. Holmes

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Food & Recipes

Comments

2 Responses to “Listen To The Renegade Lunch Lady. Please.”

Heather on October 27th, 2008 6:07 am

Cool, I’m glad this is happening elsewhere – here in the UK chef Jamie Oliver exposed the shameful state of school lunches a couple of years ago, and various authorities are trying to improve things – though unfortunately this generation of parents missed out on cookery at school so it’s only if they’re motivated or had good parents who took the time to teach them that they even have the basic skills to assess nutrition or tackle menu planning (hopefully this is changing too).
My son is not yet 3, but already he cooks with us (even trying to cut veggies by himself, but I only let him near the knife when I’m touching it too!) and eats only ‘adult’ food, and being involved definitely keeps him interested – he loves zucchini, eggplant, olives, chilli, curry (and chips and chocolate) – hopefully these habits will stand him in good stead for a lifetime of greens-loving.
It upsets me so much when I see other kids subsist on a diet of fizzy, artificial and processed foods, when there are so many good things out there.
Christine Scaman on October 27th, 2008 5:45 pm

Heather,

I completely agree that if kids can help buy the food, handle it and be part of the preparation, it doesn’t seem so strange to them, and they get a sense of what real food really looks like.

I’m not even sure cooking classes should be needed. People know good eating matters, but it takes time and change and parents are tired out (I’m not going to say lazy). I see educated young women sending kids to school with pudding cups, apple juice, and Lunchable cheese spread and crackers. Everybody knows better.

I believe part of the problem is that kids are not given enough time to eat. I remember having to come up with all sorts of foods that needed minimal chewing. Then they come home, they’re emotional wrecks, and trying to feed them Brussel sprouts is doomed to fail.

What shocked me most about Chef Ann’s presentation was when she said that we are raising the first generation of children who will not live as long as their parents’ generation. How absolutely frightening is that? And disgraceful considering the embarrassement of plenty in our stores.