The Shock

The Shock

Tue 14 Feb 2012

Story by Chris Wood
 

After watching Jamie Oliver's series "Jamie's School Dinners" and who can ever forget the part on how to make chicken nuggets, I started to pay more attention to the ingredients listed on packaged foods. The other day I was looking at the side of my can of Coke and read that there was 42 grams of sugar in the 350 ml can. Now I don't know about you but I haven't the foggiest idea how much sugar this is, or at least I didn't. At home we have sugar cubes, so I pulled out my scales and started to measure out 42 grams of sugar. I was shocked, I still am, and it has been over a week. There are twelve cubes of sugar in one can of coke. Twelve!

The Goal



Watching Jamie’s perseverance and passion to change the eating habits of Schools in England and ultimately his success was inspiring. It seems all things start with a simple idea and grow into something bigger. I watched Jamie’s acceptance speech for the TED Prize wish award of 2010. In Jamie’s speech he said:

My wish is for you to help a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, to inspire families to cook again, and to empower people everywhere to fight obesity.

My wife and I took up this challenge and set two goals:

1. To start cooking real food.
2. Teach our children how to cook.

The Plan



To be successful we felt the plan had to be simple.

To start cooking real food we plan a weekly menu. No last minute figuring out what to make for supper. Being hungry and coming up with what to eat is a bad combination, at least for me. Making a menu ensures that we are eating more variety and staying away from prepared frozen foods. Making a plan ahead of time ensures that we are making healthy choices and not hungry choices.

To teach my three daughters to cook we involve them in preparing the meal, assigning them different tasks. For example, last night my 11 year old daughter, Emma, made a white sauce seasoned with fresh dill for the grilled Salmon.

The Outcome



What I have noticed is that we eat much tastier food. Supper is less stressful as the meal has been planned. The kids are starting to help with making supper. We are throwing out less food and purchasing less food as we only purchase what we require.

Understanding the amount of sugar a can of Coke was like taking the red pill in the movie "The Matrix", I am now aware of the reality of what I was eating. It's not always easy, I still like to drink Coke, I just try to do it less often.

About the author: Chris is a father of three girls (11, 13 and 15) who works at Scotiabank in Canada where he manages IT projects. An avid photographer, Chris just completed a 365 Project, where he took a picture a day for 365 days.

Image edited together by Chris Wood