Michael Pollan on food marketing sheds light on baby formula discussion

An interview on Alternet with best-selling author Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food) ties in to our recent discussion on breastfeeding and formula marketing. Emphasis mine:

Michael Pollan (MP): I remember my mother dutifully giving us all margarine instead of butter. She would say, "Some day they're going to figure out that butter is actually better for you than margarine," and we thought she was nuts. In fact, it turned out that margarine was lethal and butter is fine.

Alternet's Terence McNally (TMN): She was still feeding it to you suspecting that would happen...?

MP: The authority of mothers was essentially destroyed by the food industry. The $32 billion a year in marketing muscle out there has undercut culture's role in determining what we eat, and culture is a fancy word for your mom.

TMN: Just to emphasize that number, that's not the food industry, that's the food marketing industry.

MP: That's advertising, studying us, packaging, figuring out how to get us to eat more.

TMN: Food industry folks say, "We don't think we should regulate this sort of thing because Americans believe in individualism and free choice, but we're all for public education." So maybe we'll throw $100 million of education up against that $32 billion of marketing.

MP: $100 million is one snack food's annual budget. The entire USDA/FDA effort to educate people about food equals one chip. [laughs] There's no contest. They control the information about food.

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The state of the nation in shul on Yom Kippur

People expect to pray peacefully on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But the shul is overfull and there are distractions. Especially children.

The acceptable level of noise and activity varies according to the community and physical facilities. But one person's kavanah (concentration during prayer) should not come at the expense of others'. Just because a mother can tune out her children during davening doesn't mean everyone can.

On Yom Kippur, I mentioned to a friend that her two-year-old had pushed down a child in the aisle. The other child went to his mother to be picked up, without crying, so my friend hadn't noticed. This happens. But if parents can't keep an eye on children who wander, the children may be better off at home.

Reports from other communities:

• A dispute over noisy children in Raanana Rambling's shul led to hurt feelings.
• I heard about mothers in Beit Shemesh (not Ramat Beit Shemesh) who fail to reprimand their children in shul because they are observing a "taanit dibbur" on Yom Kippur. During a taanit dibbur one may not speak except to pray.
• One community's email discussion on the subject of children in shul pitted old-timers against newcomers. The community hopes to attract young couples, but rigidity about this issue could deter them.

And grant me a moment to kvetch about other annoying things that people do in shul:

My son noticed a family who gave the 5-year-old son snacks to keep him in shul for the davening. After finishing the snack, the child was allowed to go out to play. I don't believe that kids should eat in shul, especially on Yom Kippur, but I'd be happy for that to be the worst thing to happen.

I don't understand why a child who just finished seudah hamafseket (the final meal before the fast) needs a bag of Bamba the minute she gets to Kol Nidrei. In this case the child went outside to eat. Was junk food invented as a way to keep kids quiet? (Don't answer that.)

And one last, cranky complaint: The shul was freezing, so people opened the windows. This wastes electricity and makes the shul even colder, because the air-conditioner must work harder to maintain the pre-set temperature of the thermostat.

So how were things in your shul this year?

Things I might be posting about, if I felt like blogging

Our cooperative summer camp adventure continues. Based on past experience (read: lots of fighting), we split the boys and girls. We have five boys aged 5-8, with two 12- and 13-year-olds serving as counselors. I hosted them last Friday while my 12-year-old A ran the whole program. The girls' group consists of 4 preschoolers and 7 elementary-school-age girls. They exempted me from hosting the girls, since my 14-year-old (DiI) helps out several days a week. The other two days she has a regular babysitting job for two little boys who adore her. I have been getting positive feedback from the mothers about my kids. I needed it.

Some of the camp mothers live about a mile away, but my four-year-old walks back and forth with a minimum of complaint. When we met to make up a schedule, we asked not to give out junk food. Some mothers complained, "What will we give them if not Bamba?" We suggested melon. The children bring sandwiches; surely that's enough food for four hours. The junk-food rule hasn't been strictly enforced, but who can say what would have happened otherwise.

A disadvantage of segregating by sex is that activities tend to fall along gender lines. Yesterday the boys made models of an army camp and the girls baked cookies with red jelly. Today both groups went to the zoo and my junior counselors stayed up till all hours preparing games and crafts.

We are leaving on our annual trip to the US next week; camp may or may not be active when we return. My 4yo loved our visit last year, but now she doesn't want to miss camp. She said I should go without her and bring back special (flavored) yogurt, a treat we rarely buy. I'm taking her, DiI, and my 7-year-old.

Last night we went to a memorial service for a convert to Judaism who had made aliyah and died eight months later after collapsing in the street from a blood clot. The body sat for a month while her fate was decided; eventually her mother insisted on a Christian burial in the US. I had only spoken to her once on the phone, but we wanted to show support, and we met a family from Maale Adumim who had been exceptionally close to her. The family described how every Shabbat between her death and burial, mysterious things happened in their house: Crockery fell off shelves, and candles fell down, for no apparent reason.

I met with two bloggers in one day. I sat with RivkA for a Coffee and Chemo date, and while in Jerusalem I hopped over to Leora's hotel to say hello. We have several mutual friends and I am sure I have met her, but it was my first time seeing her adorable children. By then I was already anxious to get home, because the bus in the morning had taken me three hours. When we were renting our first apartment in Israel, I asked my husband how far we would be from the bus to Jerusalem and he said five minutes. He must have misheard me. It's a twenty-minute ride, and the inter-city bus took forever to arrive. It was too crowded so I waited a short time for the next one. Then we ran into traffic, and the bus to the hospital also took ages. Then I ran around the hospital looking for RivkA, because the oncology ward told me she was in the ER. I eventually found her back in oncology. Even though she was having a long, hard day she was in good spirits and we had fun catching up. She even came up with some shidduch suggestions.

Speaking of sponja: One evening I noticed a puddle, which turned out to be coming from under my neighbors' door. The neighbors are out of the country and their army-aged son was in Jerusalem, but a neighbor had a key so after turning off the water and closing off the source of the leak, we used several squeejees to sweep all of the water into the shower drain--in our apartment. It was a family effort. Their water purifier had cracked open, but the neighbor was still sure it must be the ozeret's fault. The son told me that the only damage was to their rug. If this had happened in the middle of the night, we might have been the ones with the serious damage.

We are going to a bar mitzvah for Shabbat, and staying in my single brother-in-law's apartment. When I heard his voicemail message asking to tell him some good news, I informed him of our upcoming visit. He took it in stride, or at least he had recovered by the time he called us back. Two of the kids chose not to go, but my oldest son feels close enough to the family to drag himself away from yeshiva for two weeks in a row.

My seven-year-old inserted our rechargeable camera battery backwards. It slid in easily, but wouldn't come out. The repairman removed it without taking the whole thing apart, after giving me a lecture about letting my kid play with it. I didn't tell him about the movie that could only have been filmed from a few inches outside of my sixth-story window; my seven-year-old was three or four at the time. Instead I told him that it wasn't nice to lecture customers. He didn't charge and even advised me on how to fix a different problem with the camera.

My response to Rachel

New immigrant Rachel is undergoing culture shock on behalf of her children.

A friend once told me that I do my children a grave disservice by delaying their attendance in gan until they are 3, 4 or 5. She claimed that they need the gan experience in order to develop that tough exterior so useful in Israeli society. I don't know if she's right or not, but every action involves a tradeoff. If you only associate with American families, they will not learn Hebrew as quickly nor the ins and outs of Israeli society. And Israeli culture has positive values such as love of the land, close extended families, and less materialism. Even "protektzia" is positive when you are the beneficiary.

Rachel raises three specific issues.

1. Neglect and benign abuse that are considered normal. Stick by your American standards regarding safety issues. Make sure the mother giving your kid a ride puts a seatbelt on him, and isn't planning to leave the house when he is visiting. Check who is supervising your kids' school trips and youth activities. Some parents will give you a hard time, but others will thank you even if it's only in their "hard" (as my 4yo puts it). Schools are allowed to release kids after 12:45 (not sure from what age, but definitely upper elementary grades) without notifying the parents. Your kids have to know what to do in that situation.
   
2. Junk food. I've gathered that junk food is also a huge problem in the US. I've given up this battle for the most part, I'm sorry to say. My first-grader's classmates are constantly reminded not to bring junk, but the quantity given out at school makes up for this. I still control what I buy, but not always what comes into the house. My 4yo told a playgroup mother that we had had homemade pareve ice cream with food coloring and chemicals on Shabbat. In reality, a guest had brought cookies filled with colored gel. My kids know what's healthy and why we don't buy certain things.
   
3. Manners. When we see others push into line, we can explain to our children how it feels to be pushed and the prohibition against "gezel zman" (stealing the time of others). Saying thank you and you're welcome is important. However, our ultimate goal is for children to feel gratitude and be sensitive to others. I don't insist that my children use these words, but hope they will follow my example. And they generally do. But that is more about my parenting approach than cultural difference.
   

Here are more tips on keeping kids close.

• Send them to gan as late as possible. Less junk food and bullying, fewer parent meetings and birthday parties--what more could you want?
• Look for like-minded parents, including Israeli ones. Find people who will teach you about the system, in order to understand and influence it.
  
• Focus on the positive--both in your children and in Israeli life. Israel has improved in many areas such as safety awareness and handicapped access.
  
• Limit the amount of time your kids spend with friends and get to know the parents. Remember that just because someone is American doesn't mean they have the same values and standards as you.
  
• Invest time in building up a support network for your family.
• Depending on where you live, you may be exposed to a much wider variety of cultural experiences and mindsets than you were in the US. The parents who are unaware of safety issues may have grown up in a home where those issues were not on the radar screen.
  
• Limit time spent in gan, daycare and afterschool programs, hugim (afterschool activities), and youth groups, and stay on top of what happens there.
  
• Let your kids know why you do things differently, without criticizing other parents. Their approaches may be valid, especially in a different cultural system.
  
• Be realistic and avoid stereotypes. Are kids in American dayschools always welcoming to new kids? Do teachers always have complete control of the class? Do all American parents put their kids in seatbelts every single time?
  
• Teach children to respect their own individuality and that of others. Give them the confidence to withstand negative social pressure.
  

How to raise kids in a place where neglect is normal (!?)

In response to my recent post about neglectful parents, Rachel writes:

I just moved to Israel and I'm shocked that what I consider neglect and benign abuse is considered normal. And not doing it puts you in the category of "freier" [sucker] (which I consider a compliment because it is the type of behavior I want). So my question is how to raise a family when all the values that you consider important go against the norm? I want my children to have better supervision. I want them to eat healthy and not eat Bisli all day long. I want them to have manners, respect people, not cut through lines, etc.
It is easy to say to simply do it at home and they will imitate you, but kids spend so many hours in school and with friends. The environment has a huge influence on kids and as much as you want them to have your values it seems that you are the minority in this country.
So, my question again, how do you raise kids to have your values and not society's values?
rachel | 02.10.08 - 5:06 pm | #

Rachel, before I let my readers reply in the comments section, I suggest printing out your question and looking at it again in another ten years.

Is homemade food worth the effort?

Reading the ingredients on purchased food spoils my appetite. Even canned tomato paste now contains fructose, making it taste like catsup. (Luckily I can still find the "pure" variety.) And I don't like to think about what's in food from restaurants, bakeries, and caterers. When I see borekas I just think "transfat."

I also don't enjoy paying for extras like starches, sugars, artificial colors, preservatives, and more.

That's why I avoid a slew of Israeli staples, including soup mixes, catsup, breakfast cereals, soy shnitzel, soup nuts, soft drinks, flavored yogurts, puddings, and snack foods (yes, you can entertain without serving Bisli). Mayonnaise used to be on the list, until I gave in to one of my children who prefers the jarred stuff. I won't share the ingredients of this item, which does have that stand-up-by-itself texture mine lacks.

Some commenters mentioned that they find it cheaper to buy applesauce than to make it. I haven't priced store-bought applesauce in a while, since we don't eat it regularly. But five or ten extra shekel for a homemade Chanukah treat is worth it for me.

A lot of things I make from scratch may not be more economical, gram per gram. I use canola instead of cheaper soy or corn oil. Whole-grain flour is a lot more expensive than the subsidized pasty white stuff. But savings on whole grains, fruits and vegetables, all very cheap in Israel (when it's not shmitta), make up for those costs. Also, what's not "worth it" for a small family can make a significant difference for a large one.

What about the cost of my time? Well, I consider money saved by cooking from scratch as part of my income, tax- and childcare-free. And cooking healthy food doesn't have to mean hours and hours in the kitchen, as I mentioned in an earlier post. In fact, a recent study compared meal-prep times between two groups of two-career couples: those cooking from scratch and those relying on convenience foods.The ones who bought prepared foods didn't save time because they tended to make more elaborate meals.

One family made a simple meal of sandwiches and edamame, using bread, cheese, greens and salmon and tomatoes. That meal took about a half-hour to prepare. Another family had a six-dish convenience-food meal of microwave barbecued ribs, macaroni and cheese, prebagged salad, bagged dinner rolls and a cookies and ice cream dessert. That meal also took a half-hour.

I had to look up edemame, but not in my Webster's. (It's amazing how many ethnic food items, like quesadillas, have become mainstream in the seventeen years since I left the US.) It won't be on my table anytime soon. Then I read this bizarre statement:

The study authors noted that the biggest time savings of convenience foods may be at the grocery store, where it's faster to grab a frozen entree than to collect six separate ingredients to make the same dish from scratch.

Well, that might be true if you're shopping for only one meal at a time. It didn't occur to the clueless study authors that four or five of the six ingredients would be used for several meals. I imagine that those who rely on convenience foods make more trips to the store because (a) they don't have room to store all those bulky packages for more than a few days and (b) they are unable to improvise when they run out of a particular item.

I have another question about this study, which says that Americans spend 22 minutes on a grocery-shopping trip. Are American stores really so efficient? Twenty-two minutes doesn't leave much time for reading ingredients and comparing prices, either.

Some convenience foods don't save any time, like matza balls from a mix. I tease one of my friends about using it because matzah balls only contain eggs, matzah meal, salt and maybe a little oil--once you are getting the bowl dirty there's no advantage to the mix. Of course the mix contains all kinds of things that make the matzah balls fluffy.

Even so the mix is probably healthier than Robin's recipe containing six tablespoons of margarine. Try her recipe for ribollita, the ultimate winter stew, instead.

I can relax a bit now that our annual family Chanukah party is over. We used Carolyn's idea for Chanukah magnets, impressing my guests.

New blog posts can be found at A Mother in Israel.

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