Anthony Bourdain: My War On Fast Food

'What's the most frightening thing to a child? The pain of being the outsider, of looking ridiculous to others, of being teased or picked on.'

I would put your parents convincing you that you could be kidnapped by a clown pretty high on that list.

You obviously know very little about bringing up a sprog in a world full of advertising meant to brainwash them as soon as they can start thinking. I'm squarely on Anthony's side on this one.

His book was pretty enjoyable

Cool, I just ordered this one.

Oh, are you talking about Medium Raw or The Nasty Bits?

I just ordered Medium Raw.

Huh, he's got some others that I didn't even know where out there. Looks like I need to start a Bourdain collection.

I read Nasty Bits and Kitchen Confidential. Both are good reading. Like this article.

This is actually and edited snippet from his latest book. I ordered it as soon as I finished reading this. I love Bourdain. He speaks on a level I relate to.

Can you define this Level you relate to? Just curious.

Bourdain is really concerned about health as he sucks down 2 packs of cigarettes and a 12 pack of beer every day.

I like No Reservations. Bourdain seems pretty down to earth, he does like to party though. You know he loves to burn good weed with the natives.

Bobo, he speaks and writes from a point of view that I can easily relate to. Basically, Anthony Bourdain and I share a lot of common opinions, as far as socio-political ideals and a desire to see humans return to healthy, sustainable agricultural and dietary choices. I think we're also both smart enough to understand that this is never going to happen in our current corporate/political world. That leaves us (those who care) with the responsibility of at least educating our children about those healthier alternatives and why they should grow up choosing them.

68rebel

Bourdain is really concerned about health as he sucks down 2 packs of cigarettes and a 12 pack of beer every day.

I love how your signal is now just white noise up in this joint.

From funding impoverished school districts to the instalment of playgrounds, McDonald's has not shrunk from meeping with young minds in any way it can.

You can really tell that Bourdain used to love to shoot up. He still talks like he's another plane of existence distributing ground breaking advice to the misguided and informed masses. Mostly he sounds like another idiotic philosophy major.

Sometimes he's funny, sometimes he says something deep; mostly he just babbles about bullmeep and hopes people take him serious. Like here. This tactic would only work on a small child; like smoking cigs, everyone knows that they are bad, but that still doesn't stop them. Its a choice.

I read kitchen confidential and enjoyed the meep out of it-though it is a quick read for sure. Clearly a bright guy, way into his craft, living on the edge and unapologetic. Pure pleasure-reading, hit it up.

Will do.

I would lick that man's matzah meep.

Wotak, I'm on board with encouraging healthy eating, and I actually generally like Bourdain. I was just turned off by the beginning of the article.

And I do know a little about bringing up sprogs that are assaulted by media. I work with 16 of them, and they all want to be/rape Disney Princesses.

Well, working with children is one thing but raising them is quite another. If you were raising your own sprogs, you would understand the value in convincing them that some things are scary in ways that they can understand.

I call bullmeep on this approach. As the parent you lead by example as well as controlling the purse strings. You don't want your kids eating fast food? Don't buy it. Don't eat it yourself. Parents claiming that they don't have time to prepare fresh meals at home are just plain lazy. It takes half an hour of prep work the day before to have a quick healthy supper ready to put together the next day.

It's not about the kids 'getting' it's about them 'wanting'. These are completely different things. As a parent I have learned that convincing a child that they really don't want something like fast food or a pile of brightly colored bird meep is sometimes the easiest way to teach them the difference between right and wrong.

Call bullmeep all you want. You meep your kids up your way and I'll meep mine up my way and we'll get along just fine.

Also, this:

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/BPhRiaNW4UQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0

I call bullmeep on that other aproach. I think that leading by example is all well and good, but quite possibly completely ineffective as a method in and of itself. Kids associate, behave and speak like their peers-not their parents. That you can control purchasing decisions and the food in your house is a given.

Bourdain is saying you have to vilify and demonize fast food to keep your children from desiring it. I'm sure it works. I believe this approach assumes children are incapable of making guided informed decisions.

This is what worked for us. You start with not indulging tantrums right from the very beginning. This pays off in so many ways as your chid ages. One being you don't have to put up with begging and whining for things such as junk food and toys.

Yes, or you could explain to children, in terms they can easily understand, that junk food is dangerous and even toxic.

Since children don't understand the idea of habitual behavior, or have any real concept of time yet, it can be quite effective to teach them to fear something bad for them for bogus reasons at an early age. The silly stories you tell them are forgotten or dismissed as they get older and understand that it's not entirely true but that fear will turn to a general distrust of the thing in question and that distrust is a good thing that can last a lifetime.

My two youngest have never eaten fast food aside from pizza and I'll be perfectly happy to deny them this garbage for as long as I control their diets. I told my 4 year old that fast food has doo-doo in it. He believes me and it's a good thing he does because fast food does have doo-doo in it.

It's not (with every child) a question of tantrums. It's the idea of teaching them that there are certain things that they shouldn't eat because they are bad for them. A child doesn't understand 'bad for me' and the actual implications of how and why but they understand that they don't want to eat meep or be eaten by an evil clown. Just denying them this type of food doesn't teach them to despise it and not trust the people who sell it. Bourdain's (and my) approach does.

As parents we have the ability to have a stronger impression on them than the fast food industry and it's toys and cartoons and playgrounds and commercials do... but to compete for their minds against these professional meep salesmen, you need to be creative. Once you've formulated a lasting impression in their minds that fast food is evil (because it is) it doesn't matter how you convinced them that it was evil. All that matters is that you did. That's what will stick with them.

This is what worked for us. You start with not indulging tantrums right from the very beginning. This pays off in so many ways as your chid ages. One being you don't have to put up with begging and whining for things such as junk food and toys.

When I was about two, two and a half, I was in the grocery checkout with my mom. Some kid a few aisles over was screaming, howling, and hissing because he wanted a candy bar or a toy or something retarded. After a bit, I looked over at that kid's aisle with disgust, back to my mom and said very loudly, 'Well, somebody's kid needs slapped.' I got applause from the closest two aisles (and a candy bar from one of them, I think, with the approval of my mom.) My mom didn't take any bullmeep, and we knew at all times exactly what we could get away with. Which was nothing.