It turns out body shaming starts long before it should.

Do you remember when you started to question your body’s appearance? I do. I was about 11, 12 years old when someone in my class started talking about “big” and “little” kids. After that, I became more aware of my body, and that was not a good thing.

Well, it turns out I wasn’t the only child who began paying attention to her weight before hitting puberty.

The study

The journal Child Development recently conducted a study that examined how soon kids are exposed to weight shaming. Brace yourselves… Apparently, the shaming starts in first grade.

That’s right. Kids who are about six, seven, or eight years old are judging each others’ bodies. And you guessed it. Overweight kids bear the brunt of the verbal cruelty.

“The study included 1,164 kids across 29 schools in Oklahoma, and showed that obese children were neglected by peers, while severely obese children were outright rejected and were more likely to show early signs of depression,” Teen Vogue reports.

“Children who are ostracized, as occurred with the severely overweight children in our study, suffer great harm, with feelings of loneliness, depression, and aggression, and these children are more likely to skip school and drop out later,” Amanda W. Harrist, professor of child development at Oklahoma State University and study researcher, adds.

Younger generations have it really bad

Remember how I said I began feeling “body pressure” when I was 11, 12 years old? Kids now have it a lot worse.

A recent Yahoo News survey asked 1,993 American teens and adults, aged 13-64, when they first felt ashamed of their bodies. The group’s average answer was between 13 and 14 years old. But the younger generations are feeling that pressure earlier, apparently.

“In the survey, teens ages 13-17 reported that their first bout of body shame occurred as young as 9 or 10 years old,” Yahoo News reports.

Kids feel body shame via classmates, television, and social media, and one in four Americans said their parents contributed to their body-conscious feelings.

“For the majority (60 percent) of survey respondents, that initial experience of body shame was because someone—most often a classmate or friend—made a comment about their physique,” Yahoo News adds.

“Other triggers included seeing a photo of themselves (30 percent), closely followed by comparing themselves to someone they know and trying on clothes (28 percent each).”

I feel for all the kids growing up in today’s society. Let’s just hope the body positivity campaigns that have gained popularity over the past few years can make a lasting difference and decrease the shame.

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Image of kids playing via Shutterstock

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Know anyone who thinks that the best parents are straight parents? Well, today is the day you get to bust those small-minded bubbles because science has yet again proved that same-sex couples make great parents, too.

This is totally not surprising, but still pretty rad information comes from a recent Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics study.

The researchers embarked on the study to “compensate for the shortcomings of previous studies, which recruited same-sex parent families,” CNN reports.

About the study

Researchers took data from the National Survey of Children’s Health to examine how parents and their children fared, Vox reports.

The researchers came to their conclusion by using the National Survey of Children’s Health on emotional and physical well-being. The research team matched 95 same-sex female parent households to 95 different-sex parents based on these characteristics:

• Parents’ age
• Parents’ level of education
• Whether parents were born in the United States
• Family residence (urban or rural)
• Child’s age
• Child’s race
• Child’s gender
• Whether the child was born in the United States or elsewhere

One interesting aspect the study did discover was that lesbian parents had a higher level of parenting stress because of “perceived homophobia.”

But “although the analysis found that same-sex parents tended to report modestly more parenting stress, it found no difference in outcomes, such as general health and learning behaviors, among the children of opposite-sex and same-sex parents,” Vox reports.

The importance of the research

The goal of this study was to complete a population-based comparison, CNN adds.

“It is the only study to compare same-sex and different-sex parent households with stable, continuously coupled parents and their biological offspring,” Dr. Nanette Gartrell, one of the study’s authors, says. “Parents feel pressured to justify the quality of their parenting more than their heterosexual counterparts. We also suspect and feel that more study is warranted, but the cultural spotlight on same-sex parenting may be part of the stress.”

While this study is amazing, we hope researchers keep looking at this topic because the more research that’s conducted, the more good science can be shoved in the faces of haters.

Related on EcoSalon

Is This the Formula for a Happy Marriage?

Ireland Celebrates Historical Gay Marriage Vote [Video]

Maintenance Sex: Good or Bad Idea? That Depends

Image of same sex parents via Shutterstock

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Researchers at the Boston Children’s Hospital have discovered a significant link between breastfeeding and higher intelligence later in life.

In a study which followed 1,312 Massachusetts mothers from the beginning of their pregnancies (in 1999) to 2013, the research team found that overall intelligence and language scores of children rose for every additional month of breastfeeding they received as babies. Not only that, but babies who were solely breastfed for the first six months averaged 3 points higher on the language test and .35% higher on the intelligence test when compared to their peers who were fed a mixed diet or did not nurse for a full six months.

Although breastfeeding did not show a measurable effect on areas like motor skills or memory, researchers have concluded that the benefits to language and intelligence are  weighty enough to encourage mothers to breastfeed more and more often. Their official recommendation is that babies should be breastfed exclusively for the first six months, then continue to breastfeed while solid foods are gradually introduced.

Another interesting area of the study investigated whether or not a mother’s fish intake (while breastfeeding) might impact her baby’s cognitive development. Although the children of women who ate fish 2+ times per week was slightly higher than their peers, the number was not great enough to be considered significant.

This article appears courtesy of Ecorazzi

Ecorazzi covers news and gossip on celebrities and notables in support of the environment and humanitarian causes. You can follow us on Twitterand Facebook.

Related stories:

Captivity Sucks (And Doesn’t Have To Be Permanent): The Great Dolphin Escape

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Image: coatl28

The post Extended Breastfeeding Yields Smarter, More Articulate Babies appeared first on EcoSalon.

InterviewJessica Alba wants to make sure that we regulate chemicals and protect our children.

You might have seen Jessica Alba kill a bad guy with a stiletto heel in the gory action flick Machete. You might also have spotted her on the cover of Maxim (twice). But fewer people probably caught her on C-SPAN lecturing Congress about the urgency of passing laws to regulate the chemicals in the products we buy. A staunch environmental advocate, the 31-year-old star recently launched the Honest Company, which makes nontoxic, ecofriendly baby gear. She took some time to answer our questions about her commitment to safe chemistry.

Q: Why did you go to D.C. to lobby for the Safe Chemicals Act last year?

A: Basically, it’s legislation that hasn’t been reformed in more than 30 years. It’s about regulating chemicals in everyday products. There are more than 80,000 chemicals in the U.S. marketplace right now — only five have been banned. In Europe, 1,100 are banned because they’re not safe for humans. When they’re creating and selling new chemicals, companies aren’t thinking about how they affect people’s health — it’s about their bottom line.

Q: You had asthma as a kid, right? Does that make you worry more about air pollution?

A: I grew up with asthma and allergies, among other health issues. That forced me from a very early age to look at my environment in a different way. I don’t take things at face value. I don’t automatically trust the conglomerates. I question processes, I question ingredients, I look for a better way. I always try to find a more natural and holistic approach before just slapping on a Band-Aid. Better to prevent something bad from happening in the first place.

Q: We assume that you’re the only woman who’s topped Maxim’s “Hot 100” list and also testified before Congress about environmental legislation. How do you walk that balance?

A: [Laughs] I don’t know. I don’t even really think about it in those terms. The marketing I’ve done to promote TV and film has been wonderful because it’s given me a platform to be able to speak about things that are important to me.Q: What’s the main message you try to deliver about the environment?

A: That there’s a cause and effect to every action you take. So all of your purchasing and consuming choices are going to affect the planet and the people around you in some way, be it positive or negative. Just being a thoughtful, conscientious consumer is the first step.

Q: Do you get overwhelmed thinking about how many chemicals kids are exposed to?

A: I felt overwhelmed as a parent at first. But now I know that there are steps we can take. You can really change the health of your environment by doing anything from buying fresh, organic food to choosing the paint and carpeting in your home. Just understanding the quality of those products and what the potential hazards are. I’ve taken steps to eliminate as much that’s hazardous as I could from my home. So I feel great about the environment now that I’ve been able to create for my family. I know it’s possible.

Q: What else do you do to go green in your personal life?

A: I spend time outdoors with my kids. I have a nontoxic turf lawn instead of grass so we don’t have to water it. We have all energy-efficient appliances in our house, and most of the materials that we used to build it — probably 70% of them — are upcycled. I bought them off Craigslist or at flea markets or vintage stores. With the rest, I made an effort to buy sustainable materials, bamboo flooring, recycled glass tiles, things like that.

Q: Are people surprised to see a Hollywood actress buying things from them off Craigslist? 

A: I don’t go and pick them up [laughs]. I don’t even think that’s safe for a girl by herself to go to a random address and go pick something up. No, I have a family member — a guy, obviously, my husband or someone — go and pick up a piece here and there.

Q: You’ve said that your favorite place in the outdoors is Franklin Canyon Park in Los Angeles. Why that spot?

A: I like any piece of nature in urban environments because it feels like you can get a break from the hustle and bustle of the city. You can just escape and quickly be surrounded by nature. One of my favorite places in New York is Central Park, for that same reason. In L.A., Topanga Canyon is another really great place, and so is Malibu Canyon.

Q: What made you want to start the Honest Company? 

A: Frankly, I needed a company like it. As a parent, I think there’s a lot of confusion in the marketplace around what’s eco, what isn’t, toxic chemicals and how they affect the health of your family. There’s just so much information out there that there needed to be one company that’s done all the research and finds the formulations that perform best.

Q: How does the Honest Company work?

A: It delivers nontoxic products straight to your door, everything from laundry detergent to bubble bath to diapers and wipes. We also have what we call an “essentials kit”: Out of 16 items, you get to choose five, and that’s what you get delivered every month. Ninety-nine percent of our products are made here in the U.S. Our diapers are really the best on the market — they’re made from plant-based materials, are completely nontoxic, and have the cutest designs. We really wanted to innovate the diapering space. It was important for me as a parent to make sure that everyone could get these products delivered straight to their door.

Q: Do you have Hollywood mom friends who’ve signed up to use the service?

A: Yeah, quite a few!

—interview by Orli Cotel / photo courtesy of the Honest Company

This post originally appeared in Sierra magazine.

Sierra is the magazine of the Sierra Club. Our motto: Explore, Enjoy, and Protect the Planet. Follow Sierra magazine on Twitter.

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Republicans are doing everything in their power to make sure more babies are born, but, frankly, no one seems to want them around.

For the last eighteen months, Republican legislators have been proposing dozens of laws to restrict access to abortion and birth control and defund Planned Parenthood with the aim to stamp out abortion so more babies will be born. Yet, once they’re here, our country doesn’t have many programs in place to support families and there is a wave of public sentiment that wants children to not be seen or heard.

U.S. Maternity Policies Are Ridiculously Inadequate

America calls itself family friendly, yet in our current climate, that hardly seems true. A 2011 report by the Human Rights Watch, Failing its Families, shows that 178 countries guarantee national paid maternity leave for mothers and 50 countries have it for fathers, and the U.S. is not among them. The U.S. does have a national policy in place for unpaid leave for up to 12 weeks, but it only applies to companies with more than 50 employees, and with the increase in small business growth and freelance work, it helps fewer and fewer workers. Janet Walsh, deputy director of the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch told David Crary of Huffington Post:

“Despite its enthusiasm about ‘family values,’ the U.S. is decades behind other countries in ensuring the well-being of working families. Being an outlier is nothing to be proud of in a case like this.”

The report found that other countries’ maternity leaves were much more generous, even though they were paid. Malta gives 14 weeks, while Sweden gives mothers 16 months and allocates at least two months exclusively for fathers. In the U.S., only California and New Jersey have paid leave programs (Washington state does as well, but it was never implemented because there is no funding), and although both states have severe budget problems, the leave programs are thriving. They are financed wholly by small payroll tax contributions by workers and offer six weeks of paid leave for parents to bond with a new child or workers to care for a seriously ill child, spouse or parent.

On the other hand, the report, compiled after interviews with dozens of parents, stated that lack of paid leave has many harmful consequences, including exacerbating postpartum depression, early breastfeeding cessation, and causing some families to incur debt or go on welfare.

A 2012 report, the 13th annual State of the World’s Mothers report by the Save the Children foundation, agrees with the Human Rights Watch in its assessment of U.S. maternity policies, ranking our nation near the bottom of developed countries and last in breastfeeding support. This report also found that mothers in the U.S. faced the highest risk of maternal death of any industrialized nation at one-in- 2,100. The U.S. mortality rate for children under 5 is eight per 1,000 births, comparable to Bosnia and Herzegovina. An American child is four times more likely to die before age five than a child in Iceland. The U.S. ranked below 40 other countries on that score. In addition, USA Today reported that U.S. birthrates have fallen along with the economy, to a 25-year low (from 2.12 in 2007 to an expected 1.87 this year), and is not expected to recover for at least a couple of years.

No Children Allowed

There has also been an enormous backlash against parents and their children in public places, with businesses quick to show them the door and the general public disdainful of their presence. #youngchildrenshouldbebannedfrom was even trending on Twitter.

Restaurants, movie theaters and airplanes seem to be the main venues of discontent. JetBlue ejected a family from a flight home from vacation when the pilot decided that their two-year-old’s crying was too disruptive, and airlines claim that passengers have asked for adults-only designated flights and “family areas” of the plane, citing crying and ill-behaved children as their number one complaint.

Restaurants in Atlanta, Pennsylvania and North Carolina have enacted various limits and bans on small children. The Olde Salty restaurant in Carolina Beach and Grant Central Pizza in Atlanta have both posted signs warning parents to take their crying children outside. Olde Salty’s sign shouts, “Screaming children will NOT be tolerated!” and the restaurant told its local NBC affiliate that not only has it not hurt business, patronage has increased. McDain’s Restaurant, in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, recently banned children altogether.

These policies by the restaurants have generated a lot of attention with the majority of the comments negatively against children and what people consider to be their rude, clueless, and entitled parents. In hundreds, even thousands of comments (the airline story has over 10,000), the majority of them were anti-children by not only baby boomer and childless adults, but other parents as well, who claim that they aren’t part of the problem since their children are always perfectly well-behaved, but it must be those OTHER bad parents with the out-of-control children who are the problem. Many expressed vitriolic comments about the children themselves and were roundly applauded.

The recent shooting in Aurora, Colorado at the Batman premiere even turned into a criticism of parenting once it was reported that some small children were injured and one was killed. The judgments were fairly evenly split between those who thought it was poor parenting to a) bring a small child to the midnight showing of anything, much less a violent PG-13 action film, and b) those who didn’t care what time or content was playing, but just thought they shouldn’t have brought the kids at all because it was disruptive to other viewers.

The outcry has swelled such that the few let’s-all-learn-to-get-along comments like this one that appeared were shouted down.

So America, with its politicians who preach about family values, is inhospitable to children financially, professionally and socially, and doesn’t really like kids much at all, unless they stay home with their too-big strollers, sticky fingers, germs and tantrums.

image: telmah.hamlet, Mari Rose Moretti 

The post America Make Up Your Mind: Do You Want Kids or Not? appeared first on EcoSalon.

What we don’t know about beauty products will kill us.

I thought that I was in the clear. That I dodged some bullets. I had two healthy pregnancies, during which I tried to do all the right things: I avoided gas stations and mainstream cleaning products. I didn’t color my hair, polish my nails or smoke.  Now nine years later, I have two healthy and thriving little girls, and we try to create a healthy home together.

But then I found myself at the 20th Anniversary celebration of the Breast Cancer Fund in May. The Breast Cancer Fund fights to get scientists, the medical establishment and policy makers to pay as much attention to the cause of breast cancer as the cure. During the evening, I was reminded once again how vulnerable women are to environmental exposure to chemicals, how our breast tissue is particularly sensitive. And most importantly, how puberty is a crucial window of vulnerability for girls, opening up channels of influence to chemicals much like those months in-utero. Only now our kids are older, a little more out of our grasp and control than when they were babies. Her speech shook me to the core. Suddenly, it feels like that bullet is coming right at me again.
My older daughter is on the cusp of puberty at 9 years old, my younger just a few years behind. All of those potent feelings I experienced during my pregnancies and their babyhood came flooding back. The momentary and false sense of control – if only I can buy the right sunscreen/feed them the right foods/clean with the right products, I can avoid unwanted exposures to environmental toxins like mercury, bisphenol A, phthalates, or flame retardants.  But now we know that exposure to these chemicals is beyond the control of any of us alone.

We as a society, for reasons complex yet unfolding, are foisting young girls into the turmoil of puberty long before they are developmentally ready. In 2010, researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center published a report on the effects of chemicals found in products we all have at home, like nail polish, cosmetics, perfume, lotion and shampoo. The results show a direct relationship between use of these products and early puberty development in girls. Studies have also linked early onset puberty to common household items, and foods like dairy and fish.

If only we collectively decided to honor their bodies’ natural trajectories and let them remain little girls for as long as was meant to be. Now, history is apparently a moving target, as implied by the title of a recent New York Times magazine article on the topic of early puberty: Puberty Before Age 10: A New Normal? An article that unfortunately failed to mention any solutions to the problem of early puberty, like changing the way our country regulates the use of chemicals.

Which brings me to policy change, which is more imperative than ever. We know that changing our personal eating/cleaning/makeup/chemical use habits will only get us so far.  As consumers, we should push the personal care, household products, and agricultural industries in the right direction. But at the same time, our legislators need to act to reform the outdated and broken 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act and pass the new, updated Safe Chemicals Act of 2012, which focuses on children’s health as a benchmark for chemical safety. Authored by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and co-sponsored by 16 Senators, the Act will increase the safety of chemicals used in consumer products, and protect those most vulnerable to chemical exposure, like women and children.

Take action today to let your elected officials know there is strong public support for changing the way we regulate chemicals in the United States.

Lena Brook has advocated for environmental health and justice for over ten years with organizations like Clean Water Action, Health Care Without Harm and Physicians for Social Responsibility. She’s currently a strategic communications consultant with HavenBMedia in San Francisco. You can follow her on Twitter: @Lena_Brook

Image: J Ronald Lee, Lena Brook

The post Safe Chemicals Act: What’s A Mother To Do? appeared first on EcoSalon.

You have a child. Congratulations! Now you just have to raise it.

You’ve been living in the lap of green luxury with your partner. You spend a minimal amount on food because you’re so good at gardening, farmers’ market shopping and home cooking. You recycle, compost and ride your bike everywhere. Life is good. Simple, affordable and semi-logical. Then one of you brings it up: children.

“It’s a good time to start,” says one of you. “Plus, we’re not getting any younger.”

Children: a perennial favorite. Children are wonderful! In celebration of this, let us ponder on all the reasons they’re not.

20. They might have that one family gene that Uncle Bob has. The one where he thinks he is part alien, part groundhog. Or was a spy. While also being a famous rock star.

19. Someday, somehow, you know that it is your children who will act as the agents of your own death. They’ve already stolen half of your chromosomes. Who knows to what other lengths these tiny genetic replicants will go? You’ll have to watch every move they make. Haven’t you known since your own childhood that all it takes is step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back? Children cannot possibly be trusted to maintain your spinal integrity. The world is full of aging sidewalks bulging with rips and tears, and your bone density is low enough as it is.

18. What if they’re all cisgendered? What will you blog about then? 

17. The manifold and shimmering joys of spinsterhood will never be yours.

16. Your daughter is going to have an iPhone by her fifth birthday, and she’s going to use it exclusively for internet bullying.

15. Capitalism, you know, man? Capitalism.

14. American children eat practically every day. Do you have any idea how wasteful that is? Do you even know how many small female-run businesses you could support in Nigeria with that kind of money? Seven. You could support seven, and they would all make the most amazing shoes. Well, not shoes exactly. More like slippers. Incredibly comfortable slippers. But you decided to have children, so instead of reviving their local economy, all of these women got malaria and died, leaving behind 26 motherless children, none of whom have any slippers.

13. There’s an 80% chance that any child born after 2011 is going to end up posting at least four videos of themselves wearing a cat mask to Xtube. I’m sorry, but there it is.

12. What’s your family’s stance on negotiating with terrorists? What if one of your children is kidnapped? Do you pay the kidnappers, or do you write off your losses and focus on the survivors? What’s your absolute price ceiling? Do you adjust for yearly inflation or stick to a flat rate? If one of your children is ransomed, won’t that set a dangerous precedent for his or her younger siblings?

11. They probably don’t even know what Dim Sum is.

10. Your children are going to absolutely hate Radiohead.

9. If you take your baby on a plane with you to visit your family on the East Coast, and your baby cries, and the man in the seat in front of you whips his head around and glowers unpleasantly, you’re going to feel really uncomfortable for the entire six-hour flight. Also, the flight attendant will forget to bring you your ginger ale, but you’ll feel too self-conscious to remind her to bring you one the next time she checks in on your row. You don’t deserve a ginger ale, because you’re a terrible mother who can’t even keep her own baby from crying, you terrible mother of a crying baby.

8. Think of all the juice boxes, granola bar wrappers and other packaged crap they’re going to beg you for. YOU, the queen of recycling and organic eating!

7. Your son is going to have a Flickr account if Yahoo doesn’t kill it first, and it’s going to be absolutely terrible.

6. None of your children will finish graduate school before the age of 35. The only degrees available will be an MBA in gaming apps or a doctorate in dessert photography. All of your offspring will be unemployable. This is also right around when Social Security will give out.

5. Any child born after the Global Banking Act of 2017 must serve three years as an unpaid intern in Bank of America’s deep-sea titanium mines.

4. You’re still going to die, you know.

3. You know that cats suck the air right out of babies’ mouths, don’t you? So you’ll always have to worry about that. Cats are witches, and witches hate babies.

2. What if only one of your children is gluten-intolerant, but you convince all of them that they’re gluten-intolerant because it makes arranging dinner easier? What if then your daughter goes to a birthday party without your supervision and accidentally has a cupcake and realizes that you lied to her and the revelation drives her to madness?

1. You can’t just walk away. Ever.

Image: photologue

The post Children Are Great, Except When They’re Not appeared first on EcoSalon.

A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Anything But Shorts, Please is a fun look at a summer trend we simply cannot embrace unless hiking, biking or post surf: shorts. Instead, we give you a nice round-up of some great skirts that will love you for who you are and add a little more style when cruising about town.

EcoSalon Editor-in-Chief Sara Ost writes that DailyWorth is a “fuss-free, no-nonsense, wouldn’t-even-think-about-patronizing financial tips, guides and advice for women. From growing your savings, making your money work for you (instead of the credit card company), and ensuring you negotiate a pay raise on par with the guys, DailyWorth takes women and money seriously. Because we’ve come a long way, baby, and so have our bank accounts.” Don’t you owe it to yourself to know more about what your money can do? Read the article here to find out more.

Fast furniture retailers show no sign of slowing down, but the essence of slow furniture is something we can settle into. In Slow, Meet Furniture. Furniture, Meet Your Maker, Shelter Editor K. Emily Bond writes: “Like the slow food movement, the slow furniture movement is sweeping cities from Los Angeles to Toronto and is a reaction against mass-produced, cataloged, assemble-it-yourself, “disposable” furniture. Slower also denotes organic, as in the fabrication process is completed with human hands using sustainable materials. Slow food advocates seek a connection to the origin of each meal; slow furniture makers identify with their raw materials.”

You might have seen the headline, All We Are Saying Is Give Peas A Chance, and thought columnist Susan Goldberg was really into The Beatles – but no, she’s really into not tricking kids into eating veggies. Goldberg writes: “Besides the inherent ethical issues of deceiving one’s offspring, the problem with tricking children into eating vegetables is that they will grow up completely unaware that they have ever eaten or enjoyed a vegetable. If you steam, strain and puree spinach only to hide it in brownies, your kid will have no idea that he likes spinach – he will only know that he likes brownies. With childhood obesity at epidemic levels, do we really want to push more desserts on impressionable young people?”

In this week’s Sex By Numbers: Taking You For Granted, writer Abigail Wick encourages us to stop wasting time being so self-conscious and instead, live life to the fullest. She writes: “It’s this disproportionate focus on perceived lack that has really started to rub me the wrong way. Rather than celebrating their abundant gifts, there is a systematic zeroing-in on self-doubt. It frustrates me to see lovely, lovable female friends mired in such petty preoccupations. ‘Wake up!’ I want to scream. ‘Stop taking it for granted, stop thinking about yourself so much, stop this self-indulgence. Don’t wake up 30 years hence and rue the potential and pleasure you frittered away in a misery of your own making.’”

The post The Friday Five, Vol. 22 appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnTricking your children into eating their veggies presents an ethical and culinary dilemma.

Several years ago, Jessica Seinfeld (or as she is more commonly known, “that woman who married Jerry Seinfeld”) was involved in a messy court battle over a book she had written. Another author, Missy Chase Lapine, had just written a cookbook that advocated “hiding” nutritious vegetables in kid-friendly foods (pureed yams in yellow cake, for instance), thereby tricking children into ingesting small amounts of fiber-rich tubers, as well as other veggies. Seinfeld came out with a similar book around the same time and Lapine accused her of ripping off the concept.

The case against Seinfeld was found to be baseless and her book went on to become a huge success, far outselling the book already published by Lapine – a writer who had the bad luck not to be married to America’s favorite funnyman.

But while these ladies were duking it out in court, I couldn’t help feeling that there was something unseemly about two accomplished and well-heeled women fighting over a concept that boils down to lying to six-year-olds about what’s in their food. No matter who thought of it first, the whole idea behind Seinfeld’s book, Deceptively Delicious, seemed flawed, not to mention slightly immoral.

Besides the inherent ethical issues of deceiving one’s offspring, the problem with tricking children into eating vegetables is that they will grow up completely unaware that they have ever eaten or enjoyed a vegetable. If you steam, strain and puree spinach only to hide it in brownies, your kid will have no idea that he likes spinach – he will only know that he likes brownies. With childhood obesity at epidemic levels, do we really want to push more desserts on impressionable young people?

And how much nutritional value is ultimately is being gained by all this deception? Seinfeld’s Trojan Horse brownie recipe calls for half a cup of spinach in a recipe that will yield 12 brownies. Do the math and you’ll  find that each brownie contains one third of an ounce of spinach. Is it really worth all that steaming, pureeing and trickery – not to mention mucking up a perfectly nice pan of baked goods – to yield such a negligible serving of greens? Wouldn’t you be better off just trying to get your kid to actually eat some spinach? Or else openly and honestly giving him a Flintstone’s multivitamin and calling it a day?

In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I was not even a little bit successful at getting my own kids to eat produce when they were young – a maternal shortcoming that caused me a great deal of guilt and shame. My son, when he was three years old, made my failings in this department all too public when he pointed to a fruit basket in a store window and yelled, “What’s that stuff?” (This from a child who, even as a toddler, could distinguish a Lorna Dune from a Nilla Wafer at 40 paces.) So maybe it wouldn’t have killed me to be a little more aggressive in getting my kids to eat healthier.

I must also admit that I have, at times, been intentionally and flagrantly dishonest with my children. My husband and I, on several occasions, taught our baby daughter the wrong words for certain things, just to see how long it would take her to figure out the deception. My only defense is that we were young and sleep-deprived, and we thought it would be an interesting social experiment. Also, we found it amusing as hell.

Ironically, one of the words we messed around with at the time was “broccoli,” which we taught my daughter to call “dumplings,” (inspired no doubt by the fact that both of those foods could be found in our usual Chinese takeout order). Looking back on this parental deception, my daughter has let me know that she thinks her father and I were massive tools – she also thinks she might be owed some kind of monetary reparation. To this day she will spear herself a forkful of broccoli, glare at me and hiss, “dumplings indeed.” On the bright side, however, she is 18 years old and eats her vegetables without needing to have them boiled and mashed and hidden in chocolate pudding. Jessica Seinfeld’s children may not be so lucky.

Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

Image: Nick Harris1

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ColumnWhen your youngest kid goes to college, it’s time to throw out the booster seat.

The female of the species, while expecting her offspring, frequently becomes engrossed in preparing her home for the new addition. This phenomenon, which has been documented in birds, humans, and other mammals, is known as “nesting” and it hits the mom-to-be with a freakish surge of energy, along with an urge to make a comfortable and welcoming spot for her child. Typical nesting behaviors are cleaning, organizing, and badgering one’s mate to assemble a hand-made Italian crib. Nesting may also lead to the irrational purchase of high-end taupe carpeting, which the newborn’s vile and projectile bodily functions will ruin instantly.

What no one prepares you for is what occurs at the other end of the parenting cycle: the infinitely sadder and slower process of de-nesting, which involves preparing your home for the next, child-free stage of life. I am heading into this phase – morosely and entirely against my will. My oldest child has graduated from college, started a career, and left home for good; the youngest is leaving for college in two short months. With this in mind, I have had to face the fact that it’s time for my home to become less child-centered. I have forced myself to de-clutter: to throw out boxes full of soccer cleats, flash cards, and decapitated Barbies. I have admitted, finally, that the old changing table will not really make a good potting bench and I have given it away. And I am feeling a healthy compulsion to take apart the swing set that is quietly rotting in my backyard, long untouched and devoid of all activity, except for a good-sized wasp nest that comes alive every spring.

In the spirit of recycling, I feel like I should pass along all the kids’ toys and artifacts, but there are some things I can’t bear to get rid of. Giving away the red plastic Little Tykes car would feel like saying an irrevocable goodbye to the sleepy toddler who liked to nap in the front seat, one hand holding his bottle and the other holding the steering wheel (this led me to worry that my son, as an adolescent, would have a similar tendency to drink and drive). The oversized rocking chair I used to lull both children to sleep takes up too much room in my basement, but I would part with my spare kidney before I’d give that away.

There are some parts of my house that have matured, organically, over time – my bookshelves used to be crammed full of childcare manuals by Dr. Spock and Penelope Leach, along with Dr. Ferber’s Guide to Solving your Child’s Sleep Problems. Now those shelves are filled with books that have grimly aspirational titles, like Letting Go and Surviving and Thriving in the Empty Nest. I am sure I’ll survive but I’m not so sure about the thriving part. I can’t help feeling that I am being fired without cause from a job I have loved beyond reason.

My husband is a devoted father, but he is protected by a stoic Y chromosome from feeling the same desperate need to hang on to our youngest child. My daughter is seldom home this summer, as she goes out into the world, trying her freedom on for size. While she is out, my husband tries to distract me with movies and dinners and outdoor concerts, but I find myself hanging around the house on the off chance that she will come home and ask me to make her a sandwich. And while I’m at home, I fill albums with baby pictures, and I frame my daughter’s grade school self-portraits, all of which depict a happy girl with a big pink hair bow that I don’t recall her ever actually owning or wearing. I am not de-nesting so much as making my home into a shrine to the kids who have flown the coop.

But I refuse to be a buzzkill. My daughter is overjoyed at the prospect of going to school, and she can’t wait to perform in college plays and study her twin passions of psychology and theater. So I put on a happy face and act like I am not feeling acute despair at the thought of her leaving. And somehow I am pulling it off – my daughter pirouettes happily through her last days at home without seeing any hint of the anguish I work so hard to stifle. She may be the budding theater star, but it seems that I am a pretty good actress as well.

Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

Image: haydnseek

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