This celebrity chef disapproves of what you are dishing up at your child’s birthday party.
Parents right across Australia are feeling shame today.
Shame and guilt at the burger.
Shame and guilt at the extra-thick chocolate shake.
Shame and guilt at those little orange quarters filled with brightly coloured jelly
We’ve been food-shamed once again. Indirectly slandered for our acquiescence.
Mega-guilted for allowing our children to indulge in something we surely should have known better than to allow.
PARTY FOOD.
The shame has come from the (well intentioned, I am sure) words of celebrity chef George Calombaris who has given an interview stating that he “sends his young son to birthday parties with a packed lunch because he doesn’t want him eating the fast food that is served up.”
Do you feel it? That vritual tut-tutting we, more normal folks, are getting all across cyberspace.
The weight of disgrace and disgust knowing that only last week I allowed all three (yes ALL THREE) of my kids to eat hot dogs, party pies AND drink lemonade at a birthday party in a neighbour’s garden.
And just two months prior they had pizza and chips, along with multicoloured ice-cream adorned with lashings of fluorescent pink topping at a 5th birthday in a play centre.
If only I had thought to follow in George’s footsteps and pack a tupperware container of rabbit spanakopita, bean skordalia and licorice ice-cream for my kids. Imagine how much happier they would have been?
Surely any sensible person’s gut reaction to this is a calm and considerate: GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK. It’s an occasional occurrence, what harm can the odd bit of junk now and again do?
But perhaps the Calombaris kids are so super sparkly they have a social calendar which rivals Kim Kardashian’s and each and every weekend is filled to the brim with festive occasions at fast food restaurants and Frozen parties at the local park.
Perhaps the Calombaris kids are brain washed educated about healthy foods and happily trot off with their goats cheese dampers and goji berries without a backward glance at the plastic bowls filled with jellybeans and Milky Ways.
Perhaps (big stretch here) the Calombaris kids are okay with this.
Obviously George just wants the best for his kids, like we all do. There is nothing wrong with encouraging your children to make healthy choices and no one could deny the importance of giving them a good balanced diet, but you have to wonder about taking such nutritional zeal to an extreme.
Calombaris continues his food fervour in the schoolyard, an article in The Daily Mail stating:
“The 36-year-old says he clearly orchestrates healthy lunch boxes for his son to take to school, shunning the easy option of buying pre packaged goods or sugar loaded treats.
Instead, George whips up a balance meal of freshly made sandwich, yoghurt and raspberries and a snack of cornichons.”
Oh the shame as mine trot off with tiny teddies, apples and jam sandwiches (wholemeal of course!). Not a cornichon to be found.
(Small pickled gherkins, thanks Google.)
Views on kids’ birthday parties aside he is one amazing chef. Check out Gary Megihan and George Calombaris cook English doughnuts with lavender sugar & clotted cream custard. Yum. (Post continues after video)
What I want to do, in response to his comments, is espouse that old value of everything in moderation. What I want to do is justify my own choices by making of mockery of his.
But I have come to the conclusion that there probably isn’t much point.
What there is, in cases like this, are two separate worlds.
The world of the real kids, and the world of those who eat activated almonds.
In the real world, kids eat shit at birthday parties and enjoy it.
In the almond land, kids take stainless steel green smoothie flasks to drink and teeny Hessian pouches stuffed with cacao treats.
In the real world, kids are allowed the occasional burger or bag of hot chips. In almond land, kids BYO cauliflower burgers and organic carrot chips.
In the real world, kids leave a party with their heads filled with songs, their faces painted with pale blue and silver icicles and their fists clutching a plastic bag stuffed with wonders like caramel buds and popping gum.
In almond land, kids stare longingly at the other children’s bounty and vow to stuff themselves slily the minute their dad’s back is turned with the Smarties they have secretly stashed in their pockets.
I know where I would rather my children live.
What do you think of George Calombaris’ birthday party ban? Too extreme or okay?
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Top Comments
Surely a party is the perfect time to have 'sometimes' food?
Maybe it's because I don't give my kids a lot of sweet things, they hardly ever seem to go overboard at parties. I'm yet to see one of them finish a piece of birthday cake. I tell them they can have a little but not to eat too many sweets and only 1 soft drink/juice. That way they have a treat so they don't feel like they are missing out and are less likely to binge or try and sneak sweet food.
In general, it's balanced by a healthy breakfast in the morning, and a healthy dinner (or no dinner), with water the only drink. If they feel sick after the party, we talk about what they ate and I point out that's why we can't eat a lot of that food, because of how we feel after.
People are having fits here about the obesity epidemic and diabetes etc., but the occasional party is not going to do that to an active child who eats well most of the time.
You know when I started to put on weight? When my mother started obsessing about my weight and what I ate, and decided I could only eat 1 apple and 1 slice of cheese between breakfast and dinner at certain times of the day on certain days only and other random calorie restriction ideas. I would follow her plan, but as soon as I was with my dad I would binge on all the sweet and salty foods I wasn't normally allowed for the short period when she couldn't monitor what I was eating.
It was a shitty pattern that's been hard to overcome.
George serves decadent sugary treats in his restuarant. Maybe arrive in his nosh house with a brown paper bag of " healthy " food, and wait for the reaction.