Food Snob

One of a slew of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant jokes asks, "What does a WASP serve for dinner?" The answer is something like a hearty meat, a leafy salad, a green vegetable, and a nice dessert.

I'm far from WASP, but that's my dinner.

You will find no Cap'n Crunch in my cabinet, no white buns in my bread box, no high-fructose corn syrup in my snacks or applesauce, and no Twinkies, Ho-Hos, Ding Dongs, and Pop Tarts in my pantry.

BO-ring, you might be singing to yourself, but you would be WRO-ong. Because good food is far from boring. Besides, it's not for me; it's for my daughter, who's developing healthy habits now, so she doesn't wind up the neurotic dieting mess that is her mother.

I grew up on Tab (or Faygo!) with every meal. I sat in front of "Captain Chesapeake" with a spoon and a jar of Jif. And don't get me started on my love for pink frosted Pop Tarts with red sprinkles. It set me up for a lifetime of bad food choices.

Don't assume this means we are a sugar-free, snack-free household.

The freezer is usually stocked with ice cream, and my husband and daughter have their cashews, chocolates, and cookies stashed where I can't find them because, well, I'm a neurotic dieting mess and can't control myself. My daughter has dessert just about every night. Sometimes it's even candy. (We're well into March, and she's just now down to the last Smarties in her Halloween bag.)

But we earn dessert--with plenty of physical activity and good food. That means a good, high-fiber, high-protein breakfast. Even my seven-year-old daughter knows that a high-carb morning means sluggishness and starvation in about an hour.

We use natural peanut butter, 100% whole grain breads, unsweetened yogurt (we sweeten and flavor it ourselves). If I gave her the choice, she might pick one of those awful Gogurts, but only because she sees other kids with them. Later, she'll confide that mine is better, just like she did when I chose Juicy Juice over Capri Sun.

Dinner is right out of the joke. It includes a vegetable (she loves most of them), some naturally sweetened applesauce, and something homemade, like 40-clove chicken, baked salmon, steak, or pork chops. When I tell my daughter we're having stuffed peppers or meatloaf for dinner, her tongue comes out, and her eyes roll in the back of her head as if she were having some sort of foodgasm. Sometimes I could swear my daughter is a Sleestack.

Don't assume we're not flexible, either!

Hey, we have to be. She's at a school where someone has a birthday (or a half birthday, for the summer celebrants) every day. But I am fine with the cupcake or cookie or white sheet cake (GOD am I fine with white sheet cake). Because I know she's eating right at home. Except for the occasional root beer with Dad at Red Brick Station (during the growler-refill run), we shun soda. And fast food is a rare treat usually reserved for grandparents.

Last Saturday, our daughter made her bed and did some math to earn the privilege of watching "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." Breakfast was waffles--Kashi Go Lean, whole grain (absolutely delicious!)--with 100% maple syrup, not that silly chemical crap in the lady-shaped bottle. She'd already eaten a banana at the park, when we walked our dogs at 8:00.

And last night, before bed, my daughter actually said to me, "I can't wait for breakfast tomorrow! I want the taste of cereal and milk in my mouth!" (This is Kashi! Not Cap'n Crunch!)

I wasn't always the nutrition nazi--"No crap for you!"

After curing my six years of insomnia through diet (!) by eliminating sugar, I stumbled upon a book that ingrained the change. In The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry is Destroying Our Brain and Harming Our Children, nutritionist Carol Simontacchi makes solid connections between chemicals and sugars in our foods and the illnesses that are too common in our children--and adults! She delivers a one-two wallop to the folks over at Kid Cuisine and their icky ilk. Simontacchi is not an extremist nut job who's sometimes right; she's simply a smart woman with uncommon sense.

Now my husband and I are those annoying shoppers who stand in front of the salad dressings, engrossed in label lit while you're just trying to reach for your Hidden Valley Ranch. But when you put a jar of sunflower seeds in your cart, a healthy topping for your healthy salad, aren't you expecting to get seeds and maybe oil? Buy the Safeway brand, and you're getting high-fructose corn syrup, sugar, hydrogenated oils, and a lot of crap you can't pronounce. These are seeds, for heaven's sake! What should be in nuts but nuts?

I once bought my daughter a bottle of lemonade from a deli and was surprised to find in it something called ester of wood rosin.

You don't even know what it is. Do you really want to feed it to the five-year-old love of your life?

Being a food snob is no picnic. It's hard work on top of hard work. But once the research is done, you needn't do it again. You know to buy the Musselman's natural applesauce because all the others have HFCS. You know that Costco's Chicken Dinos are made with real whole chicken and not ground up in a processor with crap and reformed into mutant T-Rexes. And you learn that a kid who eats natural peanut butter instead of Jif will say, "This peanut butter tastes different. It's good, but it's just different."

I've put a lot of chemicals into my body in my lifetime. The ones I've chosen to put there have no doubt cost me a few brain cells (though probaby fewer than I lost with pregnancy!), but at least I had the choice (and some fun!). There's nothing fun about a Nutri-Grain, which lists HFCS three times within the first few ingredients. While I admit to a double standard for my own meals--sugar of any kind is out for me, so the pink stuff and the yellow stuff (the blue is poison, truly) are my substitutes--I worry most about my daughter's relationship with the sneaky devils: the hydrogeny and high fructosity.

It boils down to two things. First, who are you going to believe: the food industry and the FDA, who brought you diabetes and tainted meat? (Don't kid yourselves; you don't get diabetes from eating too many whole foods.)

And what will you do about it?

How about a little at a time?