Category Archives: Lifestyle

Let’s Move! Chefs Move to Schools

I’ve been following the Obama administration’s “Let’s Move” campaign for a while now. Led by First Lady Michelle Obama, it’s the effort to end childhood obesity within a generation – no small task given our trends in America! I signed up to receive email updates on the work and the headline below came through on Friday.

Essentially, the First Lady is calling on chefs to offer their services to local schools to help improve the taste, variety, and healthfulness of food served in schools while working within the schools’ dietary guidelines and budgets.

My reaction? BRAVO! This initiative reapplies the successful Jamie Oliver Food Revolution idea which I’ve blogged about here, in an incredibly smart way. I love how this leverages the local presence and often extreme local influence of chefs to help community schools, just like Jamie did in Huntington, West Virginia. The program will be run by the US Department of Agriculture but its success really rests upon the active participation of an eventual ARMY of chef volunteers. I am so hopeful that chefs will step up to serve their communities in this meaningful way. Don’t you just wonder which fabulous local chef will assist YOUR child’s school in this effort?

The fact is, more than 31 million students participate in the National School Lunch program and more than 11 million in the National School Breakfast program – for many children, the bulk of their nutritional needs must be met through this no cost or low cost school-provided food. Amping up the nutritional quality as well as the taste of those meals could go a long way toward rebuilding a nation of people who understand and appreciate fresh, quality food. And of course, the healthier school food is, the bigger impact it can have on reducing childhood obesity in the near term.

i can’t wait to see how this idea plays out across the country!

Here’s the text of the email from the Let’s Move office…would love to hear what YOU think!

Announcing “Chefs Move to Schools”

Posted May 14, 2010

By Sam Kass, White House Assistant Chef and the Food Initiative Coordinator

Since the groundbreaking of the White House Kitchen Garden more than a year ago, local students have spent time on the South Lawn of the White House planting seeds, harvesting vegetables and learning about health and nutrition along the way. Through the garden, the First Lady started a discussion on the role food plays in living a healthy life. The discussion grew into the Let’s Move! campaign and like the garden – we just keep on growing.

Today, I’m excited to announce the “Chefs Move to Schools” program – an opportunity for chefs around the country to adopt a local school to help solve the childhood obesity epidemic within a generation. In the words of the Mrs. Obama:

We are going to need everyone’s time and talent to solve the childhood obesity epidemic and our Nation’s chefs have tremendous power as leaders on this issue because of their deep knowledge of food and nutrition and their standing in the community. I want to thank them for joining the Let’s Move! Campaign.

“Chefs Move to Schools” will pair chefs with schools in their communities to bring fun to fruits and vegetables, and teach kids about food, nutrition and cooking in an engaging way. And by working with school food service employees, administrators and teachers — chefs can help deliver these messages from the cafeteria to the classroom. After hearing fifth graders cheer for broccoli, I know firsthand that chefs can have a huge impact on kid’s health and well being.

Chefs and schools that are interested in participating can sign up here or through www.LetsMove.gov.

This entry was posted in All blog posts, Fitness, Food, Lifestyle and tagged Chefs Move to Schools, childhood obesity, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, Let's Move, school food on May 18, 2010 by Cherylanne Skolnicki.

Do you want to split that?

A few years ago, during one of the best wellness workshops I’ve ever attended, our facilitator suggested that when our team went out to dinner that night in Orlando we should split a meal with someone else in the group.

There was silence in the room. Nervous laughter. Rib poking. You would have thought she’d asked us to share naked pictures with one another, not a simple dinner! She patiently continued, explaining that restaurant portions had become unreasonably large at most places and by splitting an entree, we’d likely end up with much closer to the right amount of food for one meal. She urged us to trust her and to just try it!

Our group of about 16 went to dinner that night and if my memory is correct, there were a total of TWO of us willing to take her challenge. (Yes, I was one of them in case you were wondering!) My friend Sally and I split our dinner, and as you might expect since I’m writing this post, we both left the table feeling completely satisfied and not a bit deprived. It was a delightful change of pace actually from the state in which many of us often leave business dinners …tired…bloated…overly stuffed…and guilty.

I can’t say it was the first time I had ever split an entree in a restaurant, but it was clearly a seminal moment for me. I was shocked by the general unwillingness of our group to try the facilitator’s suggestion for even one meal. The next day, she admitted that this was often the outcome, explaining that our group was not unique. We’re all quite attached to our extra-large portions in restaurants and that’s precisely why they continue to grow. Moreover, in many restaurants a single entree could actually serve closer to four people than two – unbelievable.

There are a number of reasons people balk at this meal-splitting suggestion. Just a few of them are:

– they worry they might not get enough to eat
– they don’t want to compromise on an entree selection with their dinner partner
– they don’t want to be seen as cheap
– they think they might insult the waiter or the chef
– they don’t want to cause extra work for the kitchen to split the entree

In our group, all of these reasons had surfaced and more. The sad result was that only two of us had even tried the experiment and experienced the benefits!

I returned from that wellness training and shared a lot of what I’d learned with my husband…who patiently listened and (lucky me!) gamely agreed to try anything once. We went out to dinner a few nights later and I suggested we split our dinner. He agreed. And incredibly, we STILL took home leftovers. It was so eye-opening! Since that night, meal splitting has become a routine occurrence for us…a fun game even. It allows us to order more decadently than we might do otherwise, knowing that we can keep the meal reasonable by eating less of each item. (By the way the idea of taking home half of your dinner also works…but some things just aren’t as good when they are reheated!)

This past weekend we went to dinner at Jeff Ruby’s, a fabulous steakhouse here in Cincinnati, famous for great food, a larger-than-life atmosphere and portion sizes to match! We split the following:

2 (reeeeeeally big) pieces of shrimp from the raw bar
Lump crab cocktail with remoulade sauce
A green salad with dressing on the side
12 oz filet mignon (7-8 oz for him, 4-5 for me)
Potatoes Anna (and we still took half of it home!)

So were we frowned upon by the staff? Gawked at by other diners? Not a bit. The waiter at this white-tablecloth restaurant did not even bat an eye as we ordered. And as we looked around the dining room, while still in the minority, there were others ordering exactly as we had done. Maybe this is an approach whose time has come between the heightened awareness of healthy eating and the ongoing economic woes many are enduring.

I tell clients that once they’ve discovered what amount of food feels satisfying to their body for one meal, the goal is to replicate that good feeling at every meal. It doesn’t matter if you are at home or in a restaurant, you don’t want that overly-stuffed feeling when you are finished eating! Meal splitting is one of the routine practices that enables me to savor truly decadent food in restaurants without the negative consequences.

Maybe Lady & the Tramp were onto something….

This entry was posted in All blog posts, Food, Lifestyle and tagged Corporate Athlete, Jeff Ruby's, meal splitting, portion size, restaurant food, sharing entree on April 13, 2010 by Cherylanne Skolnicki.

My beef with Children’s Menus

Have you ever noticed what is ON a Children’s Menu? If you don’t have small children, you may not be able to rattle off a list, but suffice it to say that the menus are incredibly similar from restaurant to restaurant. They generally include some combination of the following items, regardless of the ethnicity or fanciness of the restaurant in question:

Macaroni and Cheese
Grilled Cheese
Cheese Pizza
Chicken Fingers or Chicken Nuggets
Hot Dog
Buttered Noodles
Spaghetti

Not exactly the healthiest or most varied fare for our littlest eaters. I will concede that nearly every child will eat (and moreover will really like!) these dishes given the opportunity, but I’m often left wondering why these are the only choices on kids menus! To me, it reinforces a widely-held belief that there are two types of food in this world – “Grown Up Food” and “Kid Food” – and I just don’t buy that.

As the mother of preschool age children, I’m often asked questions about how I get my own kids to eat healthfully. So many of my clients, friends, and family struggle with children who are either picky eaters or habitual snackers or reluctant eaters overall. The truth is, on certain days I could call my own children the same things…but I have a few principles that generally keep them eating healthy diets full of foods that nourish them.

Here’s what I do:

1) There’s no “Kids Menu” at our dinner table
I cook one meal for the family and the kids can either eat it or not…but I don’t make separate food for them. Since we’ve done this since their very first meals, they don’t know any other way so they agree to this pretty readily. I may “deconstruct” our meal so that they have slices of grilled chicken and mandarin oranges if we are having an Asian Chicken Salad, but I simply won’t prepare different food for them.

2) I put at least one KNOWN hit on their plate at each meal.
To help with the first principle, I make sure that there is at least one thing on their plates that I know they love at each meal. While they then at least try everything, when they don’t love ALL of their dinner, there is something healthy there to fill their bellies.

3) I don’t have a “Clean Your Plate” rule.
Since I’m constantly introducing new flavors and textures at the dinner table, and since it’s unlikely they’ll love everything I ask them to try, I don’t force them to completely finish their lunch or dinner plate. When they are full, they stop, and that’s cool with me! The beauty of this is that they stop eating when they are full…even on nights when one of their favorites is on the table! I’m far more interested in training them to listen to their bodies for fullness cues than I am in policing them while they reluctantly choke down those last bites of potatoes. Kids will not starve themselves. Trust me. They may not be hungry when we want them to eat a meal, but when they get later, they will eat healthful, nutritious food if it is what is offered to them.

4) I use condiments like catnip and kids dishes like art canvases.
All kids LOVE LOVE LOVE to dip! I will let them dip anything in anything if it works for them! Ketchup is a favorite…homemade salad dressings….sour cream….mustard….barbecue sauce…kids can handle a few extra calories if it gets them to eat REAL FOOD for dinner! Try it. I swear to you my kids eat their vegetables FIRST because of this. I also have those sectioned-off kids dishes and often artfully arrange their food in fun presentations. They love the visual fanfare as much as you love it when a great restaurant stacks or fans your food on a gorgeous plate. We eat with our eyes first – kids do too.

5) I keep healthful snacks on hand all the time.
Kids have small stomachs and need to eat smaller quantities more frequently. Rather than fighting the “not now it’s almost time for dinner (or lunch)” battle, I keep healthy snacks on hand and let them eat when they are hungry. If that means they eat a smaller dinner, so be it. As long as what they are eating for snacks is nourishing, it doesn’t really matter WHEN they eat. This means snacks are things like turkey and cheese, fruit, raw vegetables, soups, plain nonfat yogurt with fresh add-ins, leftovers from previous meals, healthy cereals, dried fruit, etc. Get the good stuff in. Don’t be picky about when it happens.

6) I teach that treats and snacks serve two different purposes.
We have “healthy snacks” (see #5 above) and we also have “treats”. My kids love cookies and ice cream and french fries as much as any other child does, but I’m trying to teach them that those are things we eat because they taste good and are a fun treat…NOT because we’re hungry. When we are actually hungry, it’s time to fuel our body with healthy food..not to go digging for a cookie. Incidentally, this reduces the craving for “treats” overall because their bellies are full of GOOD stuff…and when they do have a treat, that’s exactly what they call it and how they see it. One is not a substitute for the other. When you want that chocolate chip cookie, let’s face it, nothing else is going to scratch that itch. I think there’s a place for both and the important lesson is learning to tell the difference.

7) I let them eat treats!
I absolutely admit that I give my kids “treats” on a daily basis. My objective is not to withhold indulgences from them; in fact I often indulge right along with them! My goal is to help them learn how to integrate these things into an otherwise healthful, nourishing diet. We keep portions kid-sized. If my 5 year old asks for chocolate, she means 1 or 2 Hershey’s kisses or 10 chocolate chips in a little pile….NOT a king sized Snickers or 4 cookies. Make sense?

8) I try to cut myself some slack.
That means when someone asks my daughter what her favorite meal is, and she says “chicken nuggets and french fries” I try not to cringe! The truth is that she really DOES love it when we let her have lunch at McDonalds…it’s just not a frequent occurrence in our house. My answer to the favorite meal question may be Maine lobster with drawn butter eaten on the coast….but that doesn’t mean I eat it often, right? Every meal isn’t going to be perfect…in your house or in mine…but I take heart in knowing that on most days my children are getting healthful, nutritious foods into their bodies and learning how to really enjoy food!

So, what do I do about Children’s Menus? I rarely have my kids order from them. I’d rather get them a plate to share my meal or order an adult meal or side dishes for the two of them to share than give in to the conformity of the ubiquitous Children’s Menu.

Do you have other ideas to share? Comment here and tell us what YOU do to keep the kids in your life healthy and thriving!

This entry was posted in All blog posts, Food, Lifestyle and tagged children's menus, cooking at home, healthy cooking, healthy snacks, treats on April 9, 2010 by Cherylanne Skolnicki.