Diet Guidelines: More of Same Old Junk

My two daughters have divided up the known food world so that dining is virtually impossible. One hates Chinese food, the other hates Mexican. One won’t eat chicken, the other won’t eat meat. They have achieved unity on fish and French cuisine--neither will eat either.

Concern about what the children eat follows two decades of emphasizing the importance of breast feeding, as fomented by those friends of the breast, the La Leche League.

The league, which I always suspected grew out of the French obsession with the mammary gland, issued a pamphlet, “The Womanly Art of Breast Feeding,” that urged women not only to nurse their babies, but also to do it in public. They were aided in this effort by a male support group, the La Lechers League.

It became gospel that a child who got off to a good start by consuming nothing but healthy breast milk would be hooked for life on simple natural foods. But has a truly scientific study ever shown that any child (or adult, for that matter) who spends long hours at the breast is any more intelligent for the experience?

Nevertheless, a generation of well-educated, busy, working women devoted themselves to breast feeding. We nursed our babies in offices, we nursed them on buses, we nursed them at the tax accountants’ except when the trauma made our milk dry up.

And what did we get for our effort? Offspring who, as soon as they could talk, demanded “Jell-O Pudding Pops--now!”

Well, we tried. Maybe we tried too hard. Maybe it’s hopeless, in this crazy Ronald McDonald world, to think you can do something as simple as feed children well.

There are several theories on how to overcome the junk lust and get kids to eat decent food. Scientific studies have shown that if allowed to pick at random, a baby will eventually select all it needs to satisfy its nutritional needs.

A similar approach can be taken with older children, but it is best done if the parent provides some structure. Here are some guidelines based on the Seven Basic Junk Food Groups.

The Chip Group. Try to steer the little ones toward the pure, natural potato chip. Skip barbecued anything. The children will enjoy exercising choice concerning the morphology of the chip--ruffled versus flat--as well as selecting among the Cajun spice and the nacho chips, which provide an opportunity to become acquainted with a different culture.

The Nitrate/Nitrite Group. Whether it is the result of a missing gene or of a mutation is unclear, but children are born with an innate need for nitrates and nitrites. No child’s lunch is complete without the protein portion consisting of salami, bologna, bacon, hot dog. . . . Further evidence of the biological need for nitrates is seen in the child’s refusal to eat nitrate-free versions of these products. The child will claim that these foods taste “gross.”

The Grainless Bread Group. Thanks to modern marketing, a wide variety of nearly grainless bread is now available. And because of improved food technology, one can even purchase a variety of whole-wheat bread indistinguishable in flavor and texture from white.

The Fruitoid Group. Children quickly learn that there’s a whole world of fruit-related products that are much sweeter and more interestingly packaged than actual fruit. These range from canned fruits, which save wear and tear on teeth and jaws, to fruit rolls, in which the uninteresting pulp portion of the fruit is removed, leaving only the important sugar portion. These products are useful for restoring the natural balance between the tooth enamel and Mr. Cavity.

The Cake and Cookie Group. The addition of a treat is always welcome. Many children prefer a sandwich-style cookie so the filling can be scraped off and the remaining cookie can still be traded with a friend for something else.

The Health Food Group. Many supermarkets now include a health-food section where delicious snacks are displayed in large, old-fashioned wooden bins. Here one can find a variety of treats from plain carob chips to mint-flavored yogurt-covered nuts to honey-soaked granola cereal (said to have nine times more sweetener than a Hershey bar).

The Drink Group. Choosing a drink used to be a battle. But today’s sophisticated kid is reaching out for such oddities as cola-flavored seltzer water. Exciting developments in fruit drinks go beyond the traditional teeth-rotting apple juice to a whole range of drinks that boast of being fruit-flavored. One orange-drink label brags: “20% Real Fruit Flavoring!”

In my Dec. 16, 1990, column, I described a boy from my grammar school, using his first name and the last name of the boy who sat next to him. It turns out that name, Vince Cimino, is the name of a man in Huntington Beach. The Vince Cimino alluded to in my story is not Vince Cimino of Huntington Beach, and I regret any embarrassment this may have caused him.

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The addition of a treat is always welcome. Many children prefer a sandwich-style cookie so the filling can be scraped off and the remaining cookie can still be traded with a friend for something else.

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