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Showing Original Post only (View all)over 30? you grew up eating what adults ate. now kids eat chickn fingers. pizza. mac n cheese [View all]
Death to the chicken finger
Cut up a fresh, bone-in chicken breast and youll notice that it naturally separates into two distinct parts: a larger, teardrop-shaped lobe of flesh the piece of meat that you probably think of when someone says chicken breast and a more narrow piece sometimes referred to as a tender. The chicken finger originated in the need to find something to do with that tender, explains food historian Gary Allen in a short history of the convenience food published online five years ago. Chicken fingers, Allen says, were seldom seen before 1990 or so, but by the end of the 1980s, fear of saturated fats turned many North Americans away from beef and toward chicken. Increased demand meant billions of additional chicken breasts were processed but what was the industry to do with the tenders? The answer is on childrens plates. We can look at Allens mini-history of a mini-food as a metaphor for how cuisine has come to be divided in contemporary North America: The prime cuts go to the adults while the less healthy morsels dressed up in extra salt, fat and sugar and processed almost beyond recognition end up on the kids menu, both in the family restaurants that traffic in such fare, and at home. -
For a generation, many North American parents have indulged childrens picky eating tendencies by sticking them in an endlessly repeating loop of chicken fingers, burgers, pizza, plain pasta, mac and cheese, and grilled cheese sandwiches. Anyone who has sat down for a meal with youngsters over the past 25 years will recognize this list of typical kids foods. Pushed out of the picture, to varying degrees for different children, are fruits and vegetables and anything else that might challenge them, from spicy delicacies to unfamiliar proteins. To picture what this might look like to a visitor from almost anywhere else in the world, imagine we just mashed up some bread and cheese and mechanically separated chicken flesh together, called it Kiddy Chow, and bought it by the bag to rip open to feed the tots.
Mealtimes for children were quite different just a few decades ago. Over the past few months, Ive spoken casually and in formal interviews with dozens of people about food and childhood. As a general rule, people who grew up in North America and are now over the age of 30 recall that when they were children, kids ate what the adults ate. Families usually dined together at the table. There might have been foods you didnt like; depending on the rules of the house you might have been expected to try them or even finish them. Or you might have been free not to, as long as there werent too many foods you were refusing. Either way, it wouldnt have occurred to you that an adult was going jump up from the table to prepare you something precisely to your liking. And if you didnt eat, you might have to wait quite a while for the next opportunity: Studies show that North American kids snack more often and consume more calories than they did in the 1970s.
- See more at: http://news.nationalpost.com/the-kids-menu/#sthash.yrdDg2TK.dpuf
