Mother Confesses to Food Fraud

A VIEW FROM THE KITCHEN WINDOW
By Chris Sherman
Mother confesses to food fraud
They say confession is good for the soul, so I'm coming clean: I've been lying to my kids about the foods they eat. That's right ladies and gentleman, for 15 years my culinary fare has been nothing but a sham.
It all started with ground turkey. I was hearing so many bad reports about beef, so I said to myself, "Good mother, why must you serve ground beef to your family? Ground turkey would work just as well." So listening to myself, I gave it a try with tacos. I bought a ballet pink pound of ground turkey, and quickly cooked it up in the frying pan before the kids came home from school. After it was cooked through, I couldn't help but stare at it. It was white. A grayish white. I knew if it did not look very appealing to me, it would look even worse to the kids. They like food to be bright colors like the red of maraschino cherries, or blue like Fruit by the Foot, not granite gray and definitely not poultry smelling. Then I remembered the handy packet of taco mix I had in the cupboard. Saved the day completely! I sprinkled on the taco mix powder, added water and there it was, beef colored turkey meat! I then proceeded to wrap the turkey meat packaging in a small, opaque bag and brought it right out to the garage trash bin and buried it under a bigger bag of garbage, well out of the way of child sight. (Imagine warning labels on tofu, KEEP OUT OF VIEW OF CHILDREN.)
The end justified the means. They ate the fowl faux tacos and were none the wiser. There were a few questions at first, like, “Why does this meat look different?” And “Why isn’t this meat more juicy?” Well, one lie leads to another and I found myself telling them it was 100 percent fat free beef, raised in Hollywood, California. That was good enough for them, and they munched happily on what must surely be a Mexican Thanksgiving specialty.
If the kids ever get wind that something is good for you, they won't go near it. I sneak home from the supermarket with bags of healthy nutritious food, and then proceed to spend the rest of the afternoon disguising it. I buy low-fat crackers and cookies and store them in handsome Lucite containers, eliminating their garish boxes with the dreaded words LOW-FAT printed a mile high on the front. I pour decaf powdered iced tea mix in the container reading REGULAR iced tea, I put 100 percent Juicy Juice in the Hi-C jug, and the skim milk goes in the gallon labeled 2 percent. It's no wonder the kids think that food tastes better at everyone else's house. Everyone else is serving the real thing.
I've also picked up from my mother, that mistress of deceit, a talent for giving foods super-nutritional powers. She used to say things like, “Drink up all your milk and you will grow six feet six inches tall like your uncle Lenny. Your grandmother had to take a second job, just to keep him in milk.” (It never occured to me that I might not want to grow six feet six inches tall. It just sounded like something really cool to shoot for.) So I tell my kids, “Eat lots of carrots and you’ll have X-ray vision when you grow up.” Spinach gives you muscles. Milk makes your teeth white.
I have also been known to scare them into not eating certain foods. "One French fry, and your arteries will clog up and blood won't be able to get through and you'll be dead inside of a week." "One bowl of that sweetsy cereal and you will be in the dentist chair for an hour with all your lips pinned back, drooling like a St. Bernard." "Lunchables have so much sodium in just one little package, I read somewhere that a 10 year old girl in Minnesota went blind.
I only tell these tales to get my kids to eat better. (And Hubby, too. If he ever knew cookies had eggs in them, oh boy!) Like the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, the truth will eventually come out, but hopefully by then, they will all be six feet, six inches tall, with rippling muscles. I know I've compromised morality for nutrition, but every good mother worth her sodium free salt does the same.
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