Christopher Kimball, sit down

Food, politics, populism, and other links for your Sunday

In 2018, I was on a panel for a local book festival. In order to even show up to that panel, for which I was not being paid, I had to hire a babysitter for my kids. Rushing out the door, I only had the time and money to feed them chicken nuggets and baby carrots.

I was the only woman on the panel, the only mother, but not the only parent.

The panel was about issues facing Iowans. And as the panel began, one of the men on the panel went off on a tangent about how parents needed to stop feeding their kids junk. He mentioned chicken nuggets and talked about how baby carrots had “too much sugar in them.” Another panelist, a well-respected columnist, joined in. He talked about how he and his wife rarely fed their kids fast-food and lamented the fact that parents had gotten lazy and forgotten how to cook.

I raised my hand.