Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Littlest Epicure

It's strange how your thoughts can wander when you're making a sandwich. Well, my thoughts, anyway. The sandwich was straightforward and one of my favorites:hummus and avocado. Plain 'ole avocado, no guacamole, although gauc' is good too. For interest I applied a few grape tomatoes and oil-cured olives. Sometimes I'll do cheese instead, like hummus, avocado and brie with tomato. All on a nice, rough textured oat bread from the bakery in town. Ymmm.



Anyhoo, as I was planning on sharing the sandwich with the wee one, I started thinking about nursing. Actually, it stemmed from an incident at work earlier this week about nursing, but more on that some other time. There's a great benefit of breastfeeding, especially extended breastfeeding, that no one talks about: developing baby's palate. There's a reason why Indian babies develope a taste for spicy chili dishes and Japanese babies love fish and Jamaican babies love meat pies and jerk chicken. It's because by the time they are ready to eat "adult" food, they have already tasted it through their mother's milk. Big deal, you might say, so my kid will never appreciate baba ghanoush. So what? But it's more than just enjoying the taste of things. Think about it, by 1970, the breastfeeding rate in the US was in the low teens. Every baby drank formula that tasted pretty much the same all the time no matter who the manufacturer is. Now think about what American adults eat. McDonald's. Outback. Bennigan's. God-help-me, Taco Bell. In a word, crap. Food that tastes exactly the same whether you eat it in Bangor, Maine or San Diego, California. Food that is loaded with fat, salt and high fructose corn syrup. Food, that despite what the commercials tell you, comes from a can or a freezer.



I'd like to see a study that shows the effects of breastfeeding in obesity. Oh, wait, here's one: from the CDC no less, I thank you. I'll bet you my last drop of breastmilk it's because breastfed babies develope a taste for better, wholesome food than bottle-fed babies. And breast fed infants are less likely to develop asthma, diabetes and heart disease later in life. The original super food.

I was breastfed for six weeks, pretty good for 1968. And my mom used cloth diapers, but that's another post. We ate a LOT of processed food. Cheese Wizz in a can, spaghetti-O's, instant mashed potatoes, Hydrox cookies, Tang, Hi-C, Rice-A-Roni. And God knows we never ate a vegetable that didn't come out of a can. My mother, God bless her, worked four nights a week, so we ate a lot of warmed up leftovers. No nibble of food was too small for my mom to wrap up in tinfoil. Wasting food is a sin, ya know. In the time before microwaves, she'd save little bits of whatever in tins that she saved from, I don't know, food that came in tins-chicken pot pie, for example. At least once a week, Dad would place a dozen or so tins of various leftover stuff on a cookie tray and heat it up in the oven. I think it reminded him of C-rations. All of that may explain why I tend to keep leftovers in the fridge until they are absolutely, without a doubt, beyond consuming. "Is this still good?" "I don't know, but wait a week and we'll know for sure."

None of this explains my love of good food today, though. I have my Italian grandmother to thank. We ate over their just about every Sunday and holiday. I was so amazed by real butter as a child I ate it by the pat-full. And sauce that didn't come in a can. So my childhood wasn't totally devoid of flavor; it had garlic and oregano, onions and fresh grown basil from my grandfather's garden. On very special occasions I was even allowed to drink a little watered down wine.

When Pooter was starting on solids she was crazy for pureed fruit and veggies for, like, 3 weeks. Then, suddenly, she didn't seem interested. One night my husband made a kickin' penne with vodka sauce. The baby crawled over and stuck her entire face in the bowl. Is it in the genes or the breastmilk? She's not saying, she's too busy eating.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I was just thinking about this sort of thing the other day. I breastfed my twins for a year (they self-weaned) and they love all sorts of food.