Child obesity task force: stacking the deck against parents and health

Feb 11, 2010 by Anna Migeon

As of Tuesday, a White House task force made up of cabinet secretaries and other officials has 90 days to come up with a strategy to reduce childhood obesity. It’s a worthy use of their time. One-third of American 8- to 10-year-olds are now obese.

I’m sure the first thing this bureaucratic task force will no doubt tackle is the government’s own role in causing the problem. Our food system, which includes government subsidies for growing the ingredients of processed foods, notably the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup, has conspired to make junk foods the cheapest eats option. We pay the huge food companies to grow and produce junk food, and they in turn spend millions on advertising to kids and the rest of us.

I bet the first thing the task force will do is to insist we quit subsidizing processed…

New Sacred Appetite discussion/support group starting next week

Feb 10, 2010 by Anna Migeon

ARE YOU hoping to get better results this year as you try to get your children to eat more healthfully, without turning the dinner table into a battle ground? Anna Migeon, author of the blog “Sacred Appetite” and mom of two teens who have always eaten anything put on the table, from cow tongue and liver to tofu and turnips, with never an argument (well, once there was an argument), is starting a free discussion /support in her home in San Antonio, where one in three kids is obese. Starting Feb. 19, she’ll share her successful techniques for raising kids who eat absolutely everything. Topics to be included:

· Key common mistakes to avoid if you want your child to eat healthfully now and for life.

· “Masterly Inactivity,” or how…

How we cured our son’s ADHD

Jan 20, 2010 by Anna Migeon

Much of what I have to say about feeding children comes from my experience with my son, which I haven’t said much about here at “Sacred Appetite.”

Almost from birth, my son had symptoms: of what, we didn’t know. I later came to blame it all on him being put on antibiotics at birth and the hospital failing to give him the breast milk I was pumping faithfully while he couldn’t nurse because of the IV stuck in his head. I also wonder what role the immunizations he got as a tiny infant (who stayed home with his mom, risking no illnesses) might have played.

Starting early and continuing, he had asthma, insomnia, enuresis (a fancy word for bed-wetting), digestion-related ills, crusty eyes,…

Ratatouille: Everybody can cook

Jan 11, 2010 by Anna Migeon

Anybody can cook, right? That’s the main message of the animated kids’ movie Ratatouille, out last year, and which I finally watched. That message seemed pretty sound to me at first glance.

But what the film actually means by “anybody can cook” gave me plenty of food for thought. I wish I could rewrite the film to convey instead, “everybody can cook.”

The story tells of Remy, a rat of humble origins, who becomes more than human through a superhuman genius for cooking.

Remy gets his inspiration to rise above the garbage-eating gluttony of his rat culture through exposure to humans, in particular their cookbooks, TV cooking shows, higher quality foodstuffs and discriminating tastes.

Without condemning or rejecting his rat family and friends, Remy the rat…