I first embraced processed foods in the 1990s when I decided to combine bringing up children with a career. Back in the 1980s, however, we even crushed our nuts by hand! Well, not me personally but I knew people who used stone rollers instead of electric appliances. On the other hand, one of my friends used electricity to advantage and found local fame through the use of her ‘whazzer’, a portable pureeing wand. When the children were babies her ‘moozle-doop’ (pureed milk and muesli) was much admired and the endless soups and sauces that she produced from that point on, from the wholest of fresh ingredients, were a source of much mouth-watering.
I, on the other hand departed from my wholier youth and embarked on a journey into a partnership with the food industry to nourish my offspring. In the early childhood years it is immensely hard to resist the lure of ‘finger foods’ – nuggets, pizza slices – because these are presented in exactly the way small children find it easiest to eat, small pieces to pick up with their fingers to part suck and part chew. I once attended one of those history brought to life days in a civil war time house in north England (17th century). In the nursery there was a young child sucking on a ball of muslin in which was wrapped a piece of meat. I was fascinated by this cunning device to introduce nutritive juices to the small-toothed child.
But of course the problem with modern processed finger foods is that many products contain excessive amounts of salt, sugar and fat and correspondingly low levels of fibre and vitamins. My strategy was thus to mimic this easy-to-eat format as much as possible with convenient fresh foods and to ensure that any processed finger foods that were consumed, were diluted with a good portion of fresh, fibrous fruits and vegetables. The result was the deployment of crudités in liberal proportions – carrot sticks, cucumber chunks, tomato quarters, apple pieces. The latter in particular I found I could provide almost endlessly by leaving and refreshing a plate of apple quarters sprinkled with lemon juice in the vicinity of the play area. In later life the chunks of vegetables became almost exclusively whole carrots and this seemed a perfectly acceptable solution – if the children were prepared to eat several whole carrots a day I couldn’t see the point of insisting on other modes or vegetables.
Filed under: product diary
