Kids food blog
Looking for inspiration I googled “kids food blog” and the differences between the first two blogs that show up in the search results are striking. The writers are both stay at home moms who blog about what they feed their children. Both bloggers post recipes and pictures of the foods they serve. Both moms obviously love being mothers and love feeding their kids. But after that the similarities end.
The first blogger from the Google search lists her weekly menus with some links to recipes. I know it’s wrong to judge (especially since Sam had french fries for dinner on Friday) and that’s why I’m not linking, but the blogger’s daily menus, briefly annotated as they are, strike me as partially hydrogenated salt licks. Hot pockets with a side of mac and cheese, burger king, and corn dogs are listed as lunch items and a recipe for burgers (that require three separate Kraft products) is what’s for dinner. I’m sure the meals are served with love, and I scrolled down a bit, and maybe the family is just going through a rough patch because not everything in the sidebar was appalling, but first impressions are key and my first instinct was to click out of there quickly before my cholesterol skyrocketed by association. Dude, what is she feeding her kids?
The next blog in the search, Vegan Lunchbox, is a blog I’ve read before. At some point in the past few years someone linked to a picture of one of the blogger’s son’s lunches which are gorgeous, and I was immediately hooked. I’m not vegan and have no aspirations to be a vegan, but if Jennifer McCann packed my lunches every day I’d happily give up all animal products. Just take a look at some of her lunches. The Monkey Chow, The Rocking Rainbow PB&J and the Musubi Easter Eggs all look amazing (really, click on the links if you haven’t seen the blog before- the lunches are works of art), and they’re healthy. Seriously healthy. Her son, Shmoo, rates all of his vegan lunches on a five star system and most of them get pretty good results. If he’s giving sticky rice balls with cashew butter filling five stars, it must be good.
I didn’t even click beyond the first two links, the dichotomy was so apparent. What are we feeding our kids? On the right we have a typical all-American housewife feeding her children high sodium, prepackaged microwave meals and crockpot dinners that specifically call for processed cheese, and on the left we have the stereotypical, socially conscious left coast stay at home mom feeding her son environmentally sound, nutritionally balanced, animal-free masterpieces. I don’t think it requires further commentary it just leaves me with a few questions.
What level of education has each mother completed?
What is the socio economic status of each of the families?
How much money does each mother spend meals?
How much time does each mother spend on food preparation?
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June 20th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
It’s hard not to judge, but I’ll admit I still do it. When I cook at home, it’s primarily Indian, which is actually quite cheap to cook and doesn’t take that long (well, South Indian doesn’t. North Indian can take a little longer, I guess). I think the biggest problem is that cooking is becoming a lost art and families are stretched for time by after going to work an commuting long distances home. It’s sad.
October 17th, 2007 at 6:51 am
[...] lunches by Jackie I posted a bit about bento meals months ago, when I wrote about Vegan Lunchbox. I love everything that the mom at Vegan Lunchbox does, only [...]