I felt sheepish and stupid and uncomfortable all at the same time. How crazy was I that this teacher remembered our deal four years (and probably 150 kids) later? I shudder when I think about how I probably made that teacher feel way back when. “Yes,” I said. “we are still all organic, but it’s okay. She can have the occasional Goldfish cracker.” The director was standing there listening. I looked over and felt like I had to explain. I told her something that most parents of more than one kid have probably said: “I’ve mellowed a bit with the second one.” She smiled and made me feel better by telling me quite honestly, “That happens a lot.”

So why have I relaxed my stance on Goldfish? Here are the ingredients in the cheddar version:

Unbleached Enriched Wheat Flour [Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Folic Acid], Cheddar Cheese [(Pasteurized Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, Enzymes), Water, Salt], Vegetable Oils (Canola, Sunflower and/or Soybean), Contains 2 Percent of less of: Salt, Yeast, Sugar, Yeast Extract, Leavening (Baking Soda, Monocalcium Phosphate, Ammonium Bicarbonate), Spices, Annatto (Color) and Onion Powder.

It doesn’t seem all that offensive. Are Goldfish crackers organic? No, but a handful here and there isn’t going to hurt my kid, either. Now, let me add that the cheddar ones are the only flavor I will feed Little Girl. I hate the colorful ones — my kid doesn’t need artificial dyes (Blue 2, Red 40, Red 3, and Blue 1), thank you very much. My husband likes the pretzel ones, but I think they are too hard for a toddler. Definitely a choking hazard. And the flavor blast version? I want my child to like subtle tastes and textures. There’s no need to give her that much salt and flavoring.

Still, I decided that I was going to be a good parent and help the school out so we went shopping yesterday for healthy snacks. Little Girl was allowed to pick out five bags and boxes to bring into the classroom. She picked some organic cheddar duck crackers, Earth’s Best Organic Sesame Street Letter of the Day Cookies, a bag of organic raisins, some Pirate’s Booty. This morning we delivered our little care package to the school. (And as a result Little Girl got to be the snack helper today! She was thrilled!) Plus, now I don’t have to think about Goldfish for a while. That’s a really good thing.

This post is how I am participating this week in Real Food Wednesdays and Fight Back Fridays — two awesome campaigns to get people eating real food again.

I was way more careful with my big girl. I never used food as a reward. Hugs and kisses, yes. A cup of yogurt or a bite or two of ice cream — never. I understood the dangers, of course. Still do. Equating food with anything other than nutrition starts a child down a slippery slope that ends with obesity or an eating disorder, according to researchers and child psychologists. It connects food to emotion. It places too much importance on food. And it definitely makes it harder to get the kid to do the desired behavior without food being involved.

I’m doing it, though, because she’s too thin, according to my doctor. Regular readers will remember that last month we had that whole well visit scare where the doctor told me that my little girl didn’t gain any weight and that she needed to see at least a pound gain by the next well visit. I’ve been trying to get her to eat more, but it’s hard. She doesn’t like to stay still for very long. Why take the time to stop and eat when there are so many more interesting things you could be doing? So I started offering bribes. “Please eat your potatoes? If you eat your potatoes I’ll give you a cup of yogurt.” And she’d eat the potatoes.

I know I need to stop. I know it. Kids should want to eat their scrambled eggs with mozzarella omelets without the need for a strawberry or banana chaser. They should welcome a sunflower butter and jelly sandwich even if there’s no cookie for dessert. But I’m afraid to stop — at least until June 30th when we have our next well visit. And then? I have a feeling going cold turkey is going to hurt her — and me. Sigh

This post links me into Real Food Wednesdays, a real food movement taking place across the Web. Check out some of my fellow bloggers by clicking through.

Belonging to a CSA is sort of like going on a treasure hunt. You never know what you’re going to find. CSAs work like this: You pay a set amount at the beginning of the growing season. Our season on Long Island is 26 weeks long; the annual cost of the CSA is $550. (I’ll do the math for you. It’s about $21 per week.) Then, once crops start coming in you go to a local pickup spot with your own reusable bags and get your veggies and fruit — whatever is ripening that particular week.

You get a lot for your $21. Boxes, even in the spring, are overflowing. Lettuce is usually plentiful. Potatoes and kale are, too. My CSA plants about 45 varieties of vegetables along with an assortment of herbs. Some of the veggies are common — cucumbers, broccoli, spinach (yum, nothing like baby spinach fresh from the fields), tomatoes, and carrots. Some are, to be honest, not something I would ever think of buying. Celeriac, Chinese broccoli, fennel, the aforementioned kale, kohlrabi, and swiss chard. But these veggies old and new really help us eat better. I feel bad wasting anything, so I am always looking for new ways to cook up these items. Big Girl, who usually comes with me to pick them up, loves seeing vegetables in their natural state, and she, like her mommy, loves the way real, fresh produce tastes.

A lot of my friends tell me their kids won’t eat veggies. They ask me how I get my kids to chow down on salad and spinach and — their favorite — broccoli. I always tell them that I exposed the kids at a very early age to many tastes and textures. So now when Big Girl says she doesn’t like summer squash, I can accept that because I know it’s not because it’s a vegetable. It’s because she truly doesn’t like the taste. A CSA, I think, gives kids more of a chance because they are constantly seeing new vegetables appear on the table in plentiful portions.

If you’re interested in joining your own CSA, check out Local Harvest, a directory of U.S.-based farms. Can’t afford $21 per week? Do what I did: split a CSA share with a friend. I shared my share last year and still found myself giving away food towards the end of the week. After all, there are only so many kale chips (baked in the oven with a touch of oil and salt) that you can eat!

I’m writing this post as part of Real Food Wednesdays. Check out the other 50-plus bloggers who are supporting the real food movement by reading some of their posts.

It’s Saturday, so I’m not going to write a long blog. I’m sure you don’t want to read a long blog. But I did want to put this out there: Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution is great. But while we’re at it how about fostering some love and concern for our earth? Jamie says he wants real, unprocessed food, but where are we going to grow that food if we keep polluting our waterways and killing our ground with plastic and chemicals like Bisphenol A (BPA), which NEVER go away. Never.

So on this Saturday evening I say can we take it to the next level? While we’re teaching those kids to love what is found in nature, how about we show them that it’s important to protect nature. We must find a way to eat while at the same time avoiding waste. Kids should be recycling and — if they have to use disposables — they should be using more earth-friendly options. Companies like BioSmart Packaging are a good example. But I still think that the best option is to teach kids how to go completely green by using metal utensils and ceramic plates and cups like they do in Nashville or some of the other schools that have taken the waste-free lunch challenge.

Because the real revolution is more than just eating the right foods. The real revolution keeps our bodies and our environment clean and healthy.

Hope you’re having a good weekend! How does your school handle the environmental issue of food service? Would you consider advocating for a waste-free cafeteria?

Anyway, last night I told her that aside from the fact that I didn’t like to see her possibly hungry at school, I don’t like wasting food. So from now on she’s going to pick her snacks. I’ll pack them, but she’s got to pick. This morning she picked raisins, popcorn, and two vanilla cookies. She told me she wants cantaloupe and strawberries as options. I need to go to the store. But she also said she needs more choices. Okay, that I can do. A while back I put out a call for healthy snack suggestions. I got a bunch of ideas. Here are some of the ones we’ve tried and liked. (And some that we’ve eaten for a while.)

FruitaBu: When I was little I got to eat Fruit Rollups. Here’s the problem with them: They have a lot of added sugar. A lot. And other chemicals, too, like Red 40, Yellows 5 and 6, and Acetylated Mono and Diglycerides. FruitaBu is the same thing (you can even get the roll up kind) but the only ingredients are fruit. And more fruit. And they are really yummy.

Funky Monkey Snacks. When I was little I loved dried fruit. Our options were limited: dried apples, bananas, and apricots. Funky Monkey is an update to the dried fruit snack. There are seven flavors — banana and cinnamon, for example, or pineapple and guava. The nice part: no added sugar, no colors, just plain old dried and yummy fruit.

Healthy Handfuls. We get these at WholeFoods. So yummy. Cookies and crackers that are organic and free of chemicals and junk. Love the Lemon Vanilla cookies. Just love them.

Panda Licorice. I can’t keep these in the house. They are so yummy that I eat them. But the fact that I can buy candy for Big Girl that isn’t filled with artificial colors or chemicals is pretty nice.

There are more, of course, but these are the ones we’ve tried lately and liked. Are there any great snack foods you’ve been packing into your kid’s lunch box? I’m always looking for suggestions.

Next thing you're going to tell me is that Corn Flakes eliminate the need for hand sanitizers.

I’ve been talking to Katelyn about marketing since she was barely able to talk. She’d be sitting there, all cozy in her cart cover, asking for all the colorful, fun-looking products. The ones with characters on the labels, and bright, garish labels. I’d explain how smart the marketers were; how well they had done their jobs. The marketers want kids to want their so-called kid-friendly wares, so they make packaging and in-store signage as loud and appealing as possible. Then I’d go one step further, pulling out those boxes and tubs of yogurt and cereal and bars and reading the labels to Katelyn. “Does that sound like food,” I’d always ask, making it a game. “Nooooo,” she’d say, and we’d laugh together. Then we’d pick up one of our favorite brands and read the label. Low sugar content. No chemicals. No artificial colors or flavors. No junk. Since she didn’t watch TV, she didn’t have that siren song of ads in her head, so I was able to steer her towards better fare such as Kashi’s Mighty Bites, Barbara’s Best Puffins, or Trader Joe’s Os.

I am especially sensitive to marketing practices because I’ve written about them for more than a decade. I get what sells. So do the manufacturers, according to a new 102-page report from Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

It was covered last week in the mainstream media, but the stories didn’t really do the extensive report the justice it deserves. I won’t lie. I actually skipped some of the pages, too. But when I saw another sort-of-related story in USA Today that reports how Kellogg’s added the word, “IMMUNITY” in great big letters on boxes of Cocoa Krispies, I had to take a go at this.

First, let’s look at the original report out of the Rudd Center. Basically, researchers found that the most heavily promoted brands — on TV, on social media sites, and in stores — are generally the worst for children. Kids who buy these bad choices are also the ones eating the most cereal. Sometimes, up to twice as much as a kid eating something healthier that’s got less advertising behind it.

Those super-sugary brands are spending big bucks for those results, according to the report. “The average 2- to 5-year-old also viewed over 500 television ads for child cereals in 2008, 89% of them for General Mills and Kellogg products.” Sigh. I won’t even comment. I’ll let the study authors do it for me: “In spite of their pledges to reduce unhealthy marketing to children, the large cereal companies continue to target children with their least healthy products. Child cereals contain 85% more sugar, 65% less fiber and 60% more sodium when compared to adult cereals. In fact, not one cereal that is marketed directly to children in the United States would be allowed to advertise to children on television in the United Kingdom.”

I think this proves that I was right when I told my daughter, way back when, that the food manufacturers don’t care about our health. All they care about is making money. Getting kids hooked, and keeping them hooked. Today’s news just solidifies this. Kellogg’s is marketing to parents, getting them to think that by buying Cocoa Krispies they are going to help their kids avoid N1H1. It’s sick, actually, this idea to prey on people’s fears to sell a product. But fear, like sex and wacky cartoon characters, sell. I’m hoping now, that more parents are aware of what’s going on, they will let their money doing the talking and stop buying cereals that are making our kids unhealthy and fat.

Want to see how your favorite cereal stacks up? Check out pages 65 and 66 of the Rudd Center report, or search for your cereal or manufacturer on the organization’s tool for consumers.

What kind of cereal did you eat as a child? What do your own kids eat today? Will your purchase decisions change after reading the report? Talk back and let us know.