before visiting us they swung by the farmers’ market. Palo Alto set up a Saturday morning farmers’ market in 1981 to offset the disappearance of grocery stores in the downtown area. Whole Foods has long since moved in, but the Saturday downtown market still buzzes and now there’s one on Sunday as well.
Lisa took more to the market than to farming. At the garden, Jacob liked to wander around and pick wild berries. Lisa preferred the downtown carnival scene. From the comfort of her stroller, she listened to the banjo players and the shouting about “sweet English cucumbers” and accepted tastes of just-picked peas offered by the professional farmers. She took after Ned in appreciation of free samples. Both also loved Costco, despite its cold concrete vastness, because of the sampling opportunities. The store near us initially made it difficult and foolish to bring young children: There was no riding in the industrial carts, and strollers were not allowed. Costco management soon wised up.
Ned’s downtown Saturday rounds included an old-fashioned, frosted cookie-type bakery that made great wheat bread and hamburger buns, and the twenties-era Peninsula Creamery for milk in glass bottles. When we needed staples, we shopped at the Co-Op, a funky nonprofit from the sixties that did not survive the eighties. We joined a produce co-op as well as the cheese co-op.
“That’s the store we don’t like,” Jacob, age two, informed a visitor as we drove by the Safeway supermarket near our house. Apparently we had badmouthed Safeway in his presence. When we did shop there, we read labels to the kids, noted how it was usually crackers and soft drinks piled high at the ends of aisles, and counted the sugary candies and gum while waiting in the checkout line. “Yeah, I see the Kit Kat bars. We don’t need them, we didn’t come to buy them, but they’re placed right here so we’ll be tempted. Look at all that packaging. You’re paying for that. Does it help the apples to be wrapped in plastic?”
That was one side. The serious Marion Nestle side. Nestle, arguably the most prominent nutritionist in the land, advocates for consumer protection against marketing hype. We taught the kids to make informed food choices, and that new products and packaging are about making a profit, not our well-being. In What to Eat , Nestle follows the money: “What industry or group benefits from public confusion about nutrition and health? Here the list is long and includes the food, restaurant, fast-food, diet, health club, drug, and health-care industries, among many others.”
On the less serious side, our most-quoted food text when the kids were young was Yummers! Writer and illustrator James Marshall is better known for his George and Martha books, about hippopotamus best friends who learn when to tell the absolute truth and when to soften it. Yummers! is about being open to new experiences—foods in this case. That’s what we thought at the time. A less blessed-out interpretation would be that Yummers! is about the hazards of overindulging. It opens with Emily Pig, looking distraught on the bathroom scale: “She was gaining weight and she didn’t know why.” She resolves to live healthier. Her friend Eugene Turtle suggests getting some exercise by going for a walk, but walking makes Emily hungry. On the way she downs two sandwiches, corn on the cob, a platter of scones, and three Eskimo pies. Then Eugene buys a box of Girl Scout cookies, which need a milk chaser. They stop by a drugstore and Eugene sips skim milk while Emily plows through a vanilla malt, a banana split, and a dish of peach ice cream. When Eugene stops by the supermarket to buy a box of tea, Emily finds free pizza and speaks the line that was our mantra: “It’s so important to sample new products.”
Is Eugene an enabler? Emily is certainly a binge eater. We didn’t see it that way at the time, but rereading Yummers! and Yummers Too: The Second Course got me
Lisa took more to the market than to farming. At the garden, Jacob liked to wander around and pick wild berries. Lisa preferred the downtown carnival scene. From the comfort of her stroller, she listened to the banjo players and the shouting about “sweet English cucumbers” and accepted tastes of just-picked peas offered by the professional farmers. She took after Ned in appreciation of free samples. Both also loved Costco, despite its cold concrete vastness, because of the sampling opportunities. The store near us initially made it difficult and foolish to bring young children: There was no riding in the industrial carts, and strollers were not allowed. Costco management soon wised up.
Ned’s downtown Saturday rounds included an old-fashioned, frosted cookie-type bakery that made great wheat bread and hamburger buns, and the twenties-era Peninsula Creamery for milk in glass bottles. When we needed staples, we shopped at the Co-Op, a funky nonprofit from the sixties that did not survive the eighties. We joined a produce co-op as well as the cheese co-op.
“That’s the store we don’t like,” Jacob, age two, informed a visitor as we drove by the Safeway supermarket near our house. Apparently we had badmouthed Safeway in his presence. When we did shop there, we read labels to the kids, noted how it was usually crackers and soft drinks piled high at the ends of aisles, and counted the sugary candies and gum while waiting in the checkout line. “Yeah, I see the Kit Kat bars. We don’t need them, we didn’t come to buy them, but they’re placed right here so we’ll be tempted. Look at all that packaging. You’re paying for that. Does it help the apples to be wrapped in plastic?”
That was one side. The serious Marion Nestle side. Nestle, arguably the most prominent nutritionist in the land, advocates for consumer protection against marketing hype. We taught the kids to make informed food choices, and that new products and packaging are about making a profit, not our well-being. In What to Eat , Nestle follows the money: “What industry or group benefits from public confusion about nutrition and health? Here the list is long and includes the food, restaurant, fast-food, diet, health club, drug, and health-care industries, among many others.”
On the less serious side, our most-quoted food text when the kids were young was Yummers! Writer and illustrator James Marshall is better known for his George and Martha books, about hippopotamus best friends who learn when to tell the absolute truth and when to soften it. Yummers! is about being open to new experiences—foods in this case. That’s what we thought at the time. A less blessed-out interpretation would be that Yummers! is about the hazards of overindulging. It opens with Emily Pig, looking distraught on the bathroom scale: “She was gaining weight and she didn’t know why.” She resolves to live healthier. Her friend Eugene Turtle suggests getting some exercise by going for a walk, but walking makes Emily hungry. On the way she downs two sandwiches, corn on the cob, a platter of scones, and three Eskimo pies. Then Eugene buys a box of Girl Scout cookies, which need a milk chaser. They stop by a drugstore and Eugene sips skim milk while Emily plows through a vanilla malt, a banana split, and a dish of peach ice cream. When Eugene stops by the supermarket to buy a box of tea, Emily finds free pizza and speaks the line that was our mantra: “It’s so important to sample new products.”
Is Eugene an enabler? Emily is certainly a binge eater. We didn’t see it that way at the time, but rereading Yummers! and Yummers Too: The Second Course got me
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