This is true! I tell my husband I don’t feel right when there’s only one vegetable on the menu for dinner, and he finds it hard to believe (he grew up with a German/Irish diet. Meat and Potatoes, I feel like it’s a sacrilege when he doesn’t touch the one vegetable on his plate next to the meat and potatoes). My son was eating a great variety of cooked vegetables in his food when he was going to nursery in Taiwan. Now that’s he’s with me abroad, with my indifferent Chinese cooking, I can say his ability to eat vegetables has definitely slipped… : (
I don’t know if there might be a thing in ‘communal eating’ in the classroom that ties the memory of eating food with their peers to their affection for it. I really really wish I could do that. Hey, maybe you could hire a Chinese cook for your school! lol.
I know exactly what you mean. I wish we had more than one vegetable for dinner, too, but now that we are back in the US, everyday I see green (or red or orange) on the dinner table, I call it success. We ARE hiring a Chinese cook for my school! We will offering breakfast/lunch/snack at my school, and there will be a lot of Chinese food!
Funny thing is, I was looking at the French lunches and thinking “Nah, that just looks normal. Possibly 2/3rds the food variety we’d get in our school lunches in Taiwan. Plus they would never serve us ice-cream.”
and then the American ones blew my mind. If, for some children, that is the one steady meal they depend on, they are truly being cheated out of the food heritage we have as human beings, even for Americans.
Well-said! By the way, I also think it has a lot to do with variety. It is just so hard to get a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables here in NYC. I mean, it is ridiculously hard to find a decent-tasting fruit besides apple, pears and bananas, especially during this time of the year. I’d like to feed the children papaya, pomelo or dragon fruit. Though you can probably find it, they taste horrible here. In Taiwan, there are delicious fruits all year round. You really don’t need candy or ice cream when you can eat a ripe summer mango. Stroll down any market in Paris and you’ll find amazing produce as well. But not here, not even at the best grocery stores like Whole Foods. *sigh*
星期三, 十一月 26th, 2014 12:52 pm | Stephanie Woo
This is a great piece!! I can really relate to the eating habits being about what they see everybody eat and are given! Its great to see its not just my imagination!!
This is true! I tell my husband I don’t feel right when there’s only one vegetable on the menu for dinner, and he finds it hard to believe (he grew up with a German/Irish diet. Meat and Potatoes, I feel like it’s a sacrilege when he doesn’t touch the one vegetable on his plate next to the meat and potatoes). My son was eating a great variety of cooked vegetables in his food when he was going to nursery in Taiwan. Now that’s he’s with me abroad, with my indifferent Chinese cooking, I can say his ability to eat vegetables has definitely slipped… : (
I don’t know if there might be a thing in ‘communal eating’ in the classroom that ties the memory of eating food with their peers to their affection for it. I really really wish I could do that. Hey, maybe you could hire a Chinese cook for your school! lol.
I know exactly what you mean. I wish we had more than one vegetable for dinner, too, but now that we are back in the US, everyday I see green (or red or orange) on the dinner table, I call it success. We ARE hiring a Chinese cook for my school! We will offering breakfast/lunch/snack at my school, and there will be a lot of Chinese food!
A Chinese cook! How awesome! Just saw this article btw. Picture really tells a thousand words!
http://eatlocalgrown.com/article/13610-french-kids-school-lunch-vs-american-lunch.html
Funny thing is, I was looking at the French lunches and thinking “Nah, that just looks normal. Possibly 2/3rds the food variety we’d get in our school lunches in Taiwan. Plus they would never serve us ice-cream.”
and then the American ones blew my mind. If, for some children, that is the one steady meal they depend on, they are truly being cheated out of the food heritage we have as human beings, even for Americans.
Well-said! By the way, I also think it has a lot to do with variety. It is just so hard to get a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables here in NYC. I mean, it is ridiculously hard to find a decent-tasting fruit besides apple, pears and bananas, especially during this time of the year. I’d like to feed the children papaya, pomelo or dragon fruit. Though you can probably find it, they taste horrible here. In Taiwan, there are delicious fruits all year round. You really don’t need candy or ice cream when you can eat a ripe summer mango. Stroll down any market in Paris and you’ll find amazing produce as well. But not here, not even at the best grocery stores like Whole Foods. *sigh*
This is a great piece!! I can really relate to the eating habits being about what they see everybody eat and are given! Its great to see its not just my imagination!!