NY Times has an article on the prevalence of menus designed exclusively for kids. The writer, David Kamp, himself a father of two, laments the tight grip that ubiquitous chicken fingers have on his (and others') children. This article reminded me of a few questions I've always had ever since I noticed the über-greasy stuff that kids always seem to be eating in this country (even at restaurants that offer nutritionally and culinarily better choices for adults). Is it common for kids to eat differently from their parents, even after they're physically able to eat the same thing as their parents? Is this a traditional thing, or is this somehting new? If it's a new trend, how did this came to be?

According to the above article, the answer to the question #1 is Yes. For #2, it's a new thing. And for #3, Kamp offers an explanation: the advent of Happy Meal and McNuggets at McDonalds' fundamentaly changed the American idea about what kids should eat. Just like Kamp, who remembers his childhood meals as the same as his parents', I remember eating pretty much what my parents ate. When my parents ate broiled fish and miso soup, I ate those. When they ate curry and rice, I ate those, too. My mom probably altered the "adult" menu to suit my kiddy taste (i.e., more spaghetti with meat sauce, more potato croquettes, etc.), but the idea was for everyone in my family to eat the same thing.

Kamp's question about letting kids eat "kid cuisine" revolves (mainly) around the poor nutrition that "kid cuisine" tends to offer and around the arrested development of kids' sense of taste. When I think about the issue, though, there's another important component missing from his article. As Michael Pollan pointed out in his excellent Omnivore's Dilemma, eating is not just about nutritional intake. The act of eating is (or--has been, was, should be, could be, whatever you like) relational, in that by sitting around a table and eating the same food, you experience a certain kind of affirming relationship with the fellow diners, be it your family or your friends. The key here may be "the same food." Sure, we might have lively conversation over four different dishes at a restaurant, but as far as I'm concerned, the sense of communality is much stronger when we pass around our foods so everyone can try a bit of everything. When eating at home, sharing the same food that came out of the same pan can be a symbolic statement of the intimacy. (In Japanese, there's a phrase "buddies who ate rice out of the same pot," that refers to a profound and powerful friendship after a period of intense closeness, as on a ship or in a battlefield.)

On a more practical level, eating the same food can give us the opportunity to talk about the food we're eating. It may become a compliment to the chef, or it may wander off to a conversation about a specific ingredient, or a cooking method, which could evolve into a whole discussion of history and culture. Wherever the dinner table conversation flies off to, it starts at the sharing of the same food. As a kid, I had a lot of conversation, especially with my mom, about the food she cooked and we shared. My mom appreciated my feedback on her food, and I learned how to cook certain dishes I especially liked. (We also "traded" ingredients we disliked--my mom would transfer her tofu bits to my soup bowl, while I would scoop out all the green peas from my plate and move them to hers. This was an opportunity for my mom to "educate" me about the evils of picky eating...) If she'd had "adult cuisine" while I'd had chicken fingers, this sort of conversation may never have happened. (This sounds a lot like the familiar conservative nostalgia surrounding the perfect family, but it is more about sharing and talking about the same food than eating it with blood relatives.)

This leads me to suspect that some of the breakdown of cultural inhibition about food and eating (something Pollan argues in Omnivore's Dilemma) has to do with the separate eating during childhood. This is not to say, though, I oppose all the kids' menus. As Kamp points out, it's quite handy to have smaller portions for smaller wallet damage for kids when we eat out. (And I do take advantage of "kids' scoop" when I'm at ice cream shops!) It's just that flavorless, highly-processed, grease-packed "kids' menu" completely different from "parents' cuisine" seems detrimental to one of the fundamental relationships we develop between parents and kids: one over eating.