Yoni Freedoff in his US News’ article You’ll Gladly Die for Your Children; Why Won’t You Cook for Them? (emphasis mine):
I’ve heard all of the explanations—time, cost, after-school activities, lack of cooking skills, picky eaters, etc. But ultimately, I think the real reason parents who would die for their children are comfortable feeding them from boxes and drive-thrus isn’t due to a lack of love or concern. It’s because society has been so firmly and conclusively duped into believing that doing so is both safe and healthful that it has become our new normal.
It’s hard to eat a whole foods diet without the time, energy, and ability to cook. I like what Shari Bambino said on Facebook about this link: “Before we worry about diets we should worry about cooking.”
Word!
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health, & food policy. And cats! 
And if we are going to worry about cooking (and cooking = time), we’re going to have to talk about larger social issues: minimum wage, worker’s rights, women in the workforce, gender roles, etc. This gets into territory that easily becomes divisive.
I appreciate Freedoff’s point, but I have trouble equating feeding your children fast food with allowing them to die. It’s just food. You aren’t poisoning your children. What a mother eats while she is pregnant and what those children eat as adults (people are typically adults for a much longer time than they are children) matters much more than whether or not your kid lives off of chicken nuggets for a year because that’s all he likes. Frankly, I’m sick of making parents feeling guilty for not doing things “right” without concrete assistance in helping parents do what they-the parents, not us the “experts”-think might be better.
I don’t think the intention is to blame parents or make them feel guilty. That’s just making the whole thing be about “personal responsibility” once removed. And I’d bet that Yoni would agree entirely on the “concrete assistance” part!
I’m sure it is not the intention, but it very well may be the effect. In focus groups with mothers about nutrition messages (this is by way of conversation with fellow students who were doing this research in DC during their internships), the overriding response is this: parents are tremendously confused about what to feed their kids & the mixed-and frankly, alarmist-messages they are given by experts in the media appear to essentially make them feel guilty no matter what.
I agree with all of Freedhoff’s suggestions about shifting the balance of power & re-normalizing cooking, but-as a mother of 3 who spent 20+ years getting food on the table-it’s boring, thankless drudgery 95% of the time. Women fought for the right to get out of the kitchen; men don’t seem all that eager to take over (they figured out the thankless drudgery part of the it).
Why can’t convenience food be healthy? I would argue that it can be, but we have to redefine “healthy” first, then we have to make those foods that can be both convenient & healthy accessible, affordable, and acceptable to the public. A drive-thru burger (assuming some major reforms in beef production that don’t all have to do with grass-fedness), a side of carrot sticks, and whole milk is just fine by me-but whole milk has been outlawed by one group of thinkers and burger buns by another. Fried pork chops and applesauce (anybody remember Bobby Brady?) is quick & convenient-but meat is expensive enough, must it be grassfed too, as some would insist? Maybe you shouldn’t be eating fatty pork at all as other would insist. And god forbid, *canned* applesauce? I grew up on box mac & cheese. It was served with canned ham and some canned peas. Y’know, that’s not that bad of a meal.
We need to clear through the information mayhem, lower our expectations in some areas while raising them in others, & walk through each part of suggested solutions as if we are a working-poor single parent of three kids under the age of 10-because, although we may have more or fewer kids, that’s where many of us are these days.
Right. Again, I don’t see that as being different from what’s happening at the individual level. People are confused by mixed messages and troubled by emphasis on personal responsibility (just eat less, move more).
And again, what you wrote wrt needing foods that are convenient & healthy accessible, affordable, and acceptable to the public is also something Yoni advocates.
I apologize if my pulling a quote that resonates with me out of a larger context is problematic.
I think we are all on the same page. I’m just really focused right now on figuring out what we are asking people to do all within a larger context of what people can and will do. If parents feel they don’t have time to cook, we really need to figure out where that feeling comes from. I don’t know, I don’t think Freedoff really knows (the computer is it’s own set of demands & TV numbers don’t make much sense across a population because they are averages). If convenience foods have been “normalized,” let’s figure out why (blaming industry is blaming the consumer once removed).
It’s a great quote. Got me to read the article : ) And I really love the cooking vs. diet quote too. You (and Freedoff) are both doing your jobs (well, I might add), which is getting people like me to think further about these things.
Yes, I too value the questions and comments! As you’re probably aware, the idea that all we needed was more “health integrity” to solve our issues with weight and health pushed my own button.
I think part of it though is the blind men and the elephant metaphor in terms of what we see and what’s important to us. I think you’re right re industry in the sense that industry clearly responds to consumer demand. OTOH, folks like David Kessler and Michael Moss seem to offer compelling arguments that in some aspects, industry is driving or even manipulating demand through their efforts. If true, that probably needs addressed too.
It’s a wicked problem. If it weren’t, we’d probably have made more headway!