Gastro distress

If stupid were a home run, this would be over the train tracks and bouncing on the Mass Pike:

Kids used to whip up culinary delights in an Easy-Bake Oven or a Snoopy Sno-Cone machine. Today, they're more likely to pull a quiche out of Mom and Dad's Viking.
<snip>
"I call them gastro pups,"* says Rozanne Gold, author of Kids Cook 1-2-3. "They've developed in large part through the influence of the Food Network. This is the generation that grew up with the Food Network, and they are smitten. Why wouldn't they be? It's food and cooking as entertainment, as discovery, as travel."**

Evidently, the millennia of human civilization where families cooked, and parents taught their children to cook, was an anomaly, and as a species, we have been waiting for the Food Network to free our children from their nonage. And those disadvantaged kids, like in Appalachia or on Indian reservations whose parents can't afford Viking appliances and have to make do with Kenmore or whatever? Fuck 'em, I guess. I was incapable of reading the full piece, but it also exhibits the baffling logic of inflating  a  pair of culinary LeAnn Rimeses into a trend:

And some, such as the Gerasole sisters, Isabella, 11, and Olivia, 9, host cooking shows, write cookbooks and win culinary prizes. Last year, they won for best webcast in the prestigious James Beard Foundation awards, becoming the youngest recipients ever.

My guess is that these kids flamed out on the pageant circuit, and this was mom's fallback plan, but  in any event,  it is hard to see how this qualifies as a widespread growth in interest in food among the tweens. It's nice to imagine the utes doing something other than stuffing their faces with Cheetos, but I dread the prospect of a fourth-grader's birthday party unraveling over the failure to use single-estate chocolate in the cupcakes. As is so often the case in stuff having to do with kids and food, lots of room in a sane middle ground, and crowded out at the ends.

*This term must be nipped in the bud. In a world where parents like Neal Pollack are free to roam the streets, this is not the kind of thing to be encouraged. May I suggest "insufferable twerp" as a replacement?

**By this logic, we can look forward to a story about teenagers who, having grown up with the Spice Channel, are keen on sex.

Comments

[Ulrike Meinhof]

HAHAHAHA. Parts that article was lifted from this one in Food and Wine a while ago: http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/star-chefs-the-next-generation

While I do think kids should be encouraged to just eat everything that adults do, all this oooing and cooing over their precociousness is pretty stinky (just like the runny Camembert that Joseph Weissler chooses over cookies!). Then there are the recipes that won the kids' cooking contest, which are completely simple and seem to contradict the article completely. Weird. Three out of four are gross and obvs, but I'm somewhat impressed by the beet and cheddar risotto... It sounds pretty yums and like an adventurous kid would actually put those things together. Artichokes were my favorite food from a very young age (and still are), and I imagine 6-year-old Alexander deals with a bit of ridicule being the only kid in his class that eats beets.

[James Norton]

As per usual, the culture of the despicably rich craps all over something essentially wholesome and laudable (kids learning to cook and enjoying the process.) It's not just about cooking... it's about winning Beard awards! And name dropping appliances, and ultra-luxe ingredients! Way to take a golf club to a worthy target...

[Skeen]

Hear, hear.
Your vitriol is justified.