Is My Son The Only Child In America Who Has Never Eaten A Happy Meal?
During my years as a cooking instructor, I spent a lot more time than the average person in the grocery store, and I became very observant about the things that other shoppers purchased. It always saddened me to see a young mother pushing a cart filled with Twinkies, Spagetti-O’s, and Hot Pockets. I always got a smug sense of moral superiority whenever I pulled up behind one of these shoppers in the checkout line, especially on those days when my cart was filled to overflowing with fresh produce. Yes, I was overweight at the time, but it wasn’t from eating frozen processed crap.
How sad is it to realize that you can actually buy individually wrapped, frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts already cut off? I’m sure the kids can really taste the love when you send them off to school with one of those, along with a bag of partially hydrogenated chips, a twin pack of Little Debbie snack cakes, and a juice box filled with high fructose corn syrup. Don’t we have a moral obligation as parents to take better care of our kids? Is it any wonder that childhood obesity is on the rise?
Having a 4 year old and a heart attack victim in the house makes meal planning a real challenge. We’re also trying very hard to stress the importance of family meal times, and we’ve recently begun to insist that Robert eats the same things we do on most evenings. It’s not always easy, but he’s starting to enjoy a much wider variety of foods. He was very skeptical when I cooked a rack of lamb last week, but he ended up cleaning his plate and asking for more. He did insist on ketchup, but that was a concession I was willing to make. This is the same kid who once put ketchup on cantaloupe.
Compared to the average American home, our pantry and freezer are remarkably free of junk food. We never buy chips or sodas, and there are no frozen pizzas or sugar coated cereals. The closest thing to pure crap you will ever find are fish sticks, but Robert eats those less often now that he is developing a more sophisticated palate. Yes, I do consider lamb with ketchup to be fairly sophisticated, at least in terms of the average 4 year old.
We try our best to feed our child well at home, but the situation at HoneyTree is another story altogether. Even though they claim to have a full-time nutritionist on staff, the menu choices are appalling. Robert’s favorite school lunch is corndog nuggets, and we can always get him excited about getting ready in the morning on nugget day. As a former professional cook, I can fully appreciate the challenges involved in feeding several hundred young children daily, but for eight grand a year you would think they could do better than corndog nuggets.
Traveling with kids is another huge challenge. The offerings available at most fast food joints are even worse than the daily fare at HoneyTree. In spite of this, I’m proud to say that my kid may be the only child in America who has never eaten a Happy Meal. There is one healthy fast food choice available that we discovered by accident. Arby’s actually offers some great choices for kids, including a turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread, and they even cut the crust off. Instead of fries, they offer a cup of fresh fruit as a side. The portion sizes are generous enough that Jennifer usually orders from the kid’s menu as well. As an added bonus, their toys are even better than the movie themed junk from the Big Three.
As Robert gets older, I’m sure it will be harder to control his diet and help him resist the temptations of junk food. After struggling with my weight for most of my life, I’m determined to get him started on a healthier path. As I’ve discovered on my own personal fitness quest, it’s easier to stay healthy when you’re young than to get healthy when you’re old.
My child is 10 and has never had a Happy Meal at least under my supervision.
That’s great news for you and your kid.
Chris, you’re my hero. Another great, honest post. I have a 3 year old and 1 year old, who are also in the camp of “never having had a Happy Meal.” They are both outstanding eaters and I am very proud to say it’s because of me. No, it is not easy. But most good things in life require some effort.
If you”re interested, I wrote an article on my cooking blog about how they came to be the eaters they are (so far!) – http://veryculinary.com/_blog/?p=38
I intend on forwarding your post onto many.
The other day I saw something that made me want to slap the person pushing the cart. Her husband was so heavy he had a special made motorized transport and a respirator so he could breath and their child was so obese his chest rested on his chin and in her cart were six 2 liter bottles of Coke, 2 boxes of “frozen fried chicken” and too many frozen pizza’s to count, and she was thin as a rail.
Makes you wonder.
My kids have eaten at McDonald’s but they’re so active you would think they sleep outside so I’m not too concerned about them. It’s the ones that eat at McDonald’s and plop down in front of their Xbox for 8 hours afterwards I’m more concerned for.
No kids meals for my son.
Go to a fast food restaurant and look at the shapes and size of the people.
Go to a grocery store and look at what people have in their shopping cart.
Now imagine National Health Care.
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