A baked potato has got to be one of the easiest meals around. You wash it, prick it and throw it in the microwave for 3-4 minutes – voila! Or, slightly more complicated – you wrap it in tin foil and throw it in the oven at 200C (400F) for an hour. It’s simple, filling and nutritious so why haven’t I done it for years, I wondered?

“Let’s bake some potatoes tonight,” I suggested to my 8-year-old son this morning. He rolled his eyes in total disinterest and asked, “Why?” I switched into ‘enthusiastic mummy’ mode: “Because I want to teach you how to do it – it’s so easy – and then you can put baked beans or corn or cheese on top – it’s so delicious. I’m sure you would love it. It’s just like having cheese or baked beans on toast, except it’s a potato!” The sell job didn’t work and we ended up with grilled salmon and vegetable fried rice!

“That’s the reason!” I realised as we sat eating our dinner with a fork. This generation eats mostly fork food – meals that can be balanced on your knees in front of TV and eaten with one hand. A baked potato, on the other hand, needs a knife and fork – both hands and a good solid table.

Potatoes New Zealand believes that ‘if a child can bake a potato, they can make a meal’. So they are calling all grandparents to teach this simple skill to their grandchildren. I’m sure they won’t mind if parents take up the challenge too. There’s three days left of school holidays and I’m determined to bake a potato with my son. It can’t be that hard, can it!

Related:

The new hero food – potatoes

I have fond memories of the Cadbury chocolate factory in Dunedin, NZ. They offered free tours of the factory which I and my fellow starving student friends would attend – with just one thing on our mind – the free samples! In the early 80’s they were particularly generous and we would come away laden with enough chocolate to keep us munching for at least a couple of days.

But my rosy memories have been ruined this week. Cadbury’s are replacing some of the cocoa butter with palm oil to cut costs. All the media attention seems to be on palm oil’s effect on the environment but I am disappointed for a different reason: yet another food is losing its authenticity. Oh, I know palm oil gives the chocolate a smooth mouth-feel but when I eat chocolate, I want to eat real chocolate made from cocoa butter, not vegetable oil.

We do this with so many foods – water them down, bulk them out, add some flavouring to make them taste like the original food – all to make them cheaper so we can stuff more in our mouths. Then we feed it to our kids and they grow up enjoying these less than natural flavours. When they become adults why would they want to pay more for real juice, real bread, real chocolate?

No wonder we have a serious problem with obesity. We’re doing the exact opposite of the French secret to staying slim. In true French style, I can satisfy my chocolate craving with a couple of squares of dark, flavonoid rich, real chocolate. But with the sweeter, cheaper stuff it’s easy to gobble up half a block before the guilt light flashes on. And when you read about the health aspects of chocolate, they are talking about real chocolate made with cocoa butter.

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Related:

KFC dumps palm oil

Cadbury leaves a bitter taste

Palm oil blend to replace cocoa butter?

“Chocolate is actually quite good for you,” my ten-year-old niece informed me yesterday. “It’s got iron and calcium in it.” “Not much,” I replied, bursting her hopeful bubble. What it does have is stacks of kilojoules (calories) which is why we’re meant to keep it for occasional treats… unless you plan to row across the Atlantic Ocean.

My cousin, Rob Hamill, and his rowing mate, Phil Stubbs, ate around 350 Cadbury chocolate bars during their world record breaking 41 days rowing from the Canary Islands, Spain to Antigua. “We could have eaten 12 (50g blocks) a day but we had to ration them,” he told me. Rowing two hours on, two hours off, they needed all the energy they could get. Chocolate, with 30% fat and 60% sugar was ideal – along with cereal and milk powder, macaroni cheese, fruit paste energy bars and heaps of fluid replacement drinks.

Never one to sit still for too long, Rob has taken on many challenges since the Atlantic race. But perhaps his greatest challenge is the current one – meeting and testifying at the trial of the man who tortured and executed his brother during the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Chocolate won’t give him the strength he needs to meet this challenge – he needs something more than food. Our thoughts and prayers are with you, Rob.

Oh – and if you want to know the calcium and iron content of chocolate… To get as much calcium as in a glass of milk you need to eat five big blocks (about 1kg) of dark chocolate or a 150g block of milk chocolate. And our body doesn’t absorb calcium so well from chocolate as from milk. With iron, dark chocolate actually has quite a bit – 2.3mg iron per 100g. That’s pretty close to lean beef at 3mg per 100 grams. But there are two big differences: how much is absorbed and how many kilojoules each has. Iron in meat is far more easily absorbed than iron in chocolate, and 100 grams of chocolate has 2230kJ (530cal) compared to 770kJ (180cal) in 100 grams of lean beef.

For most of us who will never row across the Atlantic, it’s best to eat small amounts of chocolate for pleasure, not nutrition!

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Read about the making of  “Brother Number One” – a documentary about my cousin Rob’s journey to Cambodia to confront what happened to his brother at the time of Pol Pot.

Follow up: 18/8/2009 -  Rob at S-21 commander Duch’s UN trial in Cambodia.

Found these digging around on the net … mostly from down under!

Glenn Cardwell: Getting kids to eat their veggies … Vegetables were probably never that big in the human diet. We evolved eating meat, seafood, nuts, seeds, fruits, tubers, fungi, berries and insects because that’s where the kilojoules are. When you need energy (kJs/Cals) each day to survive, why bother eating a leaf (lettuce), a flower (broccoli) or something else that is mainly water …

c: I don’t subscribe to the evolution theory, I’m more a creation girl – it makes me feel more special. And the people I have read about who lived 3-4000 years ago definitely knew their grandparents.  But I love the idea of talking positively to your children about vegetables! What about kids and meat?

Dieticians missed point on story: 60 Minutes – National – NZ Herald News … TV3′s 60 Minutes says criticism by nutrition experts on its report on the effects of food colouring on children was disappointing and failed to focus on the real issue – that Britain is phasing out some artificial colours while New Zealand is doing nothing….

c: Medical and other science experts such as dietitians get exasperated with some media reporters who either deliberately or out of ignorance use anecdoctal evidence or dubious ‘studies’ to sensationalise their story. Of course dietitians don’t condone artificial colours and, whether or not  they cause your kids to ‘lose the plot’, it would be good to see these unnecessary additives phased out.

Editorial: Don’t tinker with our daily bread – Health – NZ Herald News … It is not too difficult to see why many public health authorities support the mandatory fortifying of bread with folic acid. No one questions folate’s effectiveness in reducing the incidence of certain birth defects, notably spina bifida, if it is taken in sufficient quantity around the time a woman becomes pregnant …

c:Nice commentary but there are hints of negative effects on the US population -update today on kiwiblog and read my own folate posts.

Omega-3 deficiency causes 96,000 US deaths per year, say researchers … Omega-3 deficiency is the sixth biggest killer of Americans and more deadly than excess trans fat intake, according to a new study. The Harvard University researchers looked at 12 dietary, lifestyle and metabolic risk factors such as tobacco smoking and high blood pressure and used a mathematical model to determine how many fatalities could have been prevented if better practices had been observed …

c: This is really interesting but keep in mind it’s an analysis of numbers – and we all know how they can be manipulated! Still, I’ll be sure to keep up my weekly salmon dinner and salmon sushi snacks – delicious.

A rural town in Australia has voted overwhelmingly to ban the sale of bottled water over concerns about its environmental impact. … Campaigners say Bundanoon, in New South Wales, may be the first community in the world to have such a ban…

c: Good on them! Why pay for something you can get naturally. Bottled water has its place – it’s made it trendy to drink water – that’s got to be a good thing. But if you want to be even more ‘on trend’ and eco-friendly simply drink filtered tap water (see TIME mags megatrend on this).

Blood glucose control ranks high in US death causes

c: From the same mathematical analysis as the omega-3 story.  Blood glucose ranked 5th and omega-3 ranked 6th in preventable causes of death ie it doesn’t include accidents. I’m surprised at inactivity ranking 4th. I’d better go for that bike ride – even though it’s freezing cold outside and I’d rather sit inside and eat cake!

Price of milk too much for many families, study finds – Nutrition – NZ Herald News … Price increases for milk and other dairy products are having a detrimental effect on children’s health, University of Otago researchers say …

c: This means almost 2 out of 3 Kiwi kids don’t drink milk daily – that’s terrible! Instead of cereal with milk what are they eating for breakfast – toast and a can of fizzy? Perhaps we will have to re-introduce milk at schools. How about banana smoothies or Milo instead of sausage sizzles and lollies (see my article on toddlers healthy bones).