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" As a girl, I was famously finicky. As a calorie-counting adolescent, I reduced food to memorized tables of numbers (\u00BD c. puffed wheat: 25 calories). Over the years, food has been an enemy, a challenge, a comfort, a distraction, rote tradition, fuel for pregnancy\u2014but never what I would call an enjoyable companion. For, oh, the last 15 years, I&amp;#039;ve thought about food the same way I did shoes or diapers: as a commodity that my four kids needed incessantly (and the less time and money required to dole it out, the better). What happened? Heirloom tomatoes.   Well, not the tomatoes all by themselves. But they&amp;#039;re emblematic of my happy discovery of Real Food. When I was a girl, Real Food was hidden in casseroles or smothered under mayo, oleo, gravy or cheese sauce. That&amp;#039;s sad. These days, Real Food is increasingly processed away by empty additives, hormones and chemicals that simulate tastes or smells. That&amp;#039;s scary.   My conversion came to a head in northern California, where I ate lots of fresh, simple, seasonal and yes, often organic foods (including the aforementioned tomatoes). My doofus-y realization: Real Food tasted great! The taste, in turn, made me want to eat more. Which made me feel better.   And if I felt better, my kids\u2014my not-overweight but over-o&amp;#039;d (as in Cheeto, Tostito, SpaghettiO, Ho Ho, Oreo) kids\u2014probably would, too. In fact, they deserved to.   Thus Oreo Mom was reborn as Foodie Mom.   Foodie Mom is not, however, going to join the omega-3 chorus exhorting you to do this or that or else your children will blame you for their heart attacks in the year 2050. I don&amp;#039;t believe that stocking the occasional &amp;quot;o&amp;quot; food is tantamount to child abuse. And personally, I think whole-wheat pasta tastes like shredded box.   All I want to suggest is that there&amp;#039;s a middle ground between stick-your-head-in-the-chemicals and willful ignorance and stick-your-nose-in-everybody-else&amp;#039;s-pantry nutrition piety. How to get there?   Don&amp;#039;t Go Free-Range Cold Turkey I once watched a TV show where the mother, goaded into dietary reform by a peppy nutritionist (and a conflict-loving producer, no doubt) threw out everything her obese family used to eat and dished up plates of wholesome vegan substitutes. Unfortunately, everyone made faces until they were excused from the table\u2014and shot their pooled allowance money on chips at the nearest convenience store. That&amp;#039;s good intentions backfiring.   It&amp;#039;s OK to Start Really Small  I buy iceberg lettuce. To true foodies, this is the equivalent of green air, nutritional nothingness. But it happens to be the kind of lettuce my younger daughters finally decided they like. I even serve it with ranch dressing, because that dressing is what enables one of the girls to eat the iceberg lettuce. Here&amp;#039;s my theory: Bland, nutritionless lettuce is still fresh and fibrous and therefore better than no lettuce at all. It&amp;#039;s a stepping-stone lettuce, a tip-of-the-iceberg lettuce. Today, air\u2026tomorrow, arugula?   Beware Sneaky False Assumptions Don&amp;#039;t assume that cooking is hard to learn or to do. I, for one, am a terrible cook! But even I can throw together half a dozen &amp;quot;real meals&amp;quot; my kids enjoy, including such exotics as scrambled eggs, veggie pizza and their new favorite, &amp;quot;California chicken.&amp;quot; (Small pieces of saut\u00E9ed chicken breast served on salad or in a tortilla with tomatoes and good ol&amp;#039; iceberg.) Don&amp;#039;t assume, either, that cooking from scratch is time-consuming and expensive. A great dinner is a piece of grilled fish, green beans and fresh bread\u2014and fixing it takes less time and cash than navigating a drive-thru window (and spares you heartburn and a smelly car).   Flirt with a Naked Vegetable I&amp;#039;ve lived in the South for more than half my life (as a nonnative), and though I love the people and the winter weather, what&amp;#039;s too often done to vegetables down here is a crime. Doesn&amp;#039;t matter what the veggie is\u2014it gets boiled beyond recognition to a mushy, greased-up ladleful, or else smothered in a mystery coating whose main ingredient seems to be buttered flour or buttered cornbread. The secret to coaxing kids into vegetables? Don&amp;#039;t cook the color and taste out of them.   Skip the Label-Gazing, If You&amp;#039;re Just Not Into That I get ice-cream-style brain freeze when I&amp;#039;m advised to stand in the store aisles with a calculator adding up fat grams and looking out for killer acronyms and additive codes. There&amp;#039;s an easier way. Pick foods in their natural state (fruit, nuts, cheese, popcorn). Pick what smells good. Or pick the crackers or cereal with the fewest total ingredients with the shortest strings of syllables possible. Worry less about calories and more about freshness, wholeness and what&amp;#039;s going into those growing bodies.   Remember, Sugar is Real Food, Too!  I get cranky when I hear parents who are inconsistent about discipline blame out-of-control behavior on a cookie. I&amp;#039;m relieved preschool sugar bans weren&amp;#039;t trendy while I was hauling pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins to snack day. Sugar is a form of energy, and guess what kids are running through tons of as they grow and play? The difference: I like to serve up the real thing\u2014real sugar (not fakes), real fat (no oleo or olestra). My girls love to make cookies from scratch. I love to treat them to a brownie from a good bakery. And I&amp;#039;ll never give up (in moderation, dark) chocolate!   Walk Softly and Carry a Big Carrot Stick Lecturing and threatening are great ways to get someone to do the opposite of what you want. So my best advice is, don&amp;#039;t say a word as you inch toward Real Food reform. Tinker quietly as you shop. Sample. Experiment. (Spaghetti squash? Quinoa? Maybe!) Mix asparagus and fresh fish into your meal rotation. Slice up a local apple as a snack. And see if you don&amp;#039;t love it. See if you don&amp;#039;t get hungry for more. See if you don&amp;#039;t get hungry for your kids to know what Real Food is, too\u2014and to befriend it forever. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/family-friends/a4631/momfidence-me-a-foodie-102021/>