I’m watching a morning news show and a bit came on about “how to get your kids to eat more vegetables.”  They were using words like “Food Manufacturer’s” and “Food Industry” and it go me thinking.  What the heck does manufacturing food have to do with growing a vegetable in the dirt?  Seriously.  One of the mothers said, “my kids will only eat fresh vegetables if they can dip them in hummus.” What’s wrong with hummus?  Healthier by a mile than Ranch Dressing, protein, fiber, antioxidants galore.  Then it went on to promote a new version of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese that has freeze-dried cauliflower in the pasta.  FYI,  is NOT fresh.

It just makes me quiver at all these parents out there who do a half-assed job at parenting.  I see it everyday at my job, dealing with the public.  Here’s something to remember, that I didn’t like my parents for as a kid, but thank them every day for as an adult:

YOU ARE THE PARENT! Your job is to raise your kids to be a productive member of society, including manners.  Your job is to teach them the skills to A. keep them alive and healthy B. to pass along when they have kids.  I am a firm believer in firmness, if my parents told me to do something, you did it or faced the punishment.  If they had chores for us, we did them.  It was not all fun and games, but that’s the way it worked and that’s how we learned.  If we complained about what they made for dinner, then we had to make dinner for the family one night, plan, cook and clean-up afterwards.  That happened once for me, and I learned my lesson.  You either shut up and eat what was prepared, or suggested other items and helped make them.  When I was younger, if you didn’t want what they made, you went to bed hungry (missing one meal will NOT kill your child.)

The other great thing my parents did was plant a vegetable garden, yes as a kid in the summer the last thing I wanted to do was go outside and weed the garden with the bugs and sweat dripping down my face, but you know what it did? It taught me that fresh, garden vegetables and fruits tasted better than ANYTHING you bought in a grocery store.  It taught me that if you put in hard work, you get a better reward.  That vegetables grow in the ground, they do not come in a can, in a freezer bag, in a plastic container, from a laboratory, or for that matter, inside pasta in macaroni and cheese.

So THANK YOU Mom and Dad, and to my Grandparents passed, because you taught me how to be a productive member of society, to appreciate hard word, to know where my food comes from, and most importantly, instilling in me a love of real food-not all the industrialized, manufactured crap that hides the good stuff behind powdered, orange “cheese.”