Pressure Cooker

After the cheesy gut bombs of the Reagan era, we’ve arrived at the “hopey changey” era of school lunch. Michelle Obama put school lunch on the front page and ushered in upgraded nutrition standards. But the battles didn’t end there. In this episode, Jane and Liz unwrap the future of school food with concrete tips on how parents can make a difference. And, as promised, If you'd like to follow along...

For those unfamiliar with the inner workings of the school lunch program, it is puzzling, even maddening: Why is it so hard to offer tasty, nutritious food at school? In this episode, Jane and Liz dig into the history of the school lunch program to unveil how we got to where we are today. It’s a surprisingly twisted tale involving desperate farmers, skittish military generals, shortsighted bean co...

In this final installment of Pressure Cooker (at least, for now!) Jane and Liz reflect on lessons learned over the course of more than fifty episodes. From political activism to picture-perfect bento lunches, our hosts break down which habits listeners should consider leaning into – and which ones you should let go of.   Although we’re hitting ‘pause’ on the podcast for now, we’ve got lots of idea...

We're resurfacing this Pressure Cooker "classic" that attempts to answer the perennial parental question: Why isn’t my kid eating green beans or zucchini or, for that matter, any food that isn’t beige? One theory holds that, with the help of the right bribe, you can teach kids to like anything. And so Jane dragoons her 10-year-old daughter Lucy into an experiment to see if she can learn to accept...

If you’ve had a child in America anytime in the past, oh, 80 years, there’s one message about what to feed them that has been impossible to ignore: MILK! Kids need lots of milk to grow big and strong.  Or do they?  On this week’s episode of Pressure Cooker, Jane and Liz journey back through history to uncover when and why milk came to be seen as an essential part of a healthy child’s diet. Then, o...

Headlines about the dangers of “ultra-processed” foods – a category that includes Doritos and Twinkies but also protein bars, plant-based milks, and maybe your favorite yogurt or sandwich bread – are suddenly everywhere. But what makes a food ultra-processed, and what’s driving the concern about their role in the diets of both children and adults? On this episode of Pressure Cooker, Jane and Liz b...

It's Mother's Day. And like a lot of other moms, we're rebelling against the ideals of the "good mother." So we're bringing back a Pressure Cooker classic. In this episode, Jane and Liz challenge the idea that society’s ills can be solved by each of us spending more time in the kitchen, sing the praises of convenience food, and talk to the authors of the 2019 book Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking...

Digital food marketing is ubiquitous. But what do teens and tweens see on their devices. And are the kids alright? In Part 2 of our deep-dive into food marketing, a Pressure Cooker investigation takes listeners deep inside some of the most closely guarded spaces in American life today– teenagers phones – and proposes strategies to stop the scroll.  Further Resources:  Food Marketing Literacy 1 (fr...

A generation ago, food marketing to kids was found mostly in two places: Saturday morning cartoons and the cereal aisle. No more. Children are now targeted throughout the grocery store, on billboards, product placements and, most dangerously, on digital media. Jane and Liz talk to Jennifer Harris of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health and Charlene Elliott of the University of Calgary to und...

Half of all parents of young children say they have at least one picky eater in their household: a state of affairs that strikes many moms and dads stuck serving up the same half dozen foods on repeat as highly unnatural. With the help of Jennifer Traig, the author of Act Natural: A Cultural History of Misadventures in Parenting, Jane and Liz explore when, and why, picky eating emerged as a common...

Christina Tosi is the chef and creative force behind Milk Bar: a dessert brand that she launched in 2008 in Manhattan’s East Village, and has grown to include almost a dozen shops, a brisk mail order business, and a line of cookies, ice creams, and other treats for sale at grocery stores nationwide. In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, and the host of the Netflix show Bake Squad, Christ...

We spend a lot of time thinking about the stress of feeding kids. But what keeps YOU, our listeners, up at night? This week, Jane and Liz answer questions from the Pressure Cooker mailbag: Does 10 minutes at the table “count” as family dinner? Is Costco really cheaper? (Here’s a really useful article we discuss on the show which compares Costco vs Stop & Shop.) What on earth do you feed a kid who...

Dan Pashman is host of the insanely popular podcast, The Sporkful, inventor of a primo pasta shape, cascatelli, and author of a new cookbook, Anything’s Pastable, a book that makes a persuasive case for eating pasta for dinner every night of the week. And as if that isn’t enough to tune in, Dan’s also a dad of two who has successfully found ways to weave the pleasures of food into family life.  In...

Kathryn Jezer-Morton is a pHd sociologist and the brains behind The Cut’s popular parenting newsletter, Brooding: Deep Thoughts on Modern Family Life. Brooding is not an advice column; it’s a collection of smart, funny, topical essays that interrogate what it means to be a parent today, and how we got this way. In this episode of Pressure Cooker, Jane and Liz chat with Jezer-Morton about some of t...

Peanut butter sandwiches were once the go-to brown bag lunch. But since the 1990s, food allergies in children have tripled. Jane and Liz plunge into the research that explains (finally) why this is happening and talk to Dr. Ruchi Gupta of Northwestern University about new recommendations for how to help prevent allergies in our kids. Additional resources The Center for Food Allergy and Asthma Rese...

What can any one person do to fight climate change? Paul Greenberg, author of The Climate Diet: 50 Simple Ways To Trim Your Carbon Footprint, joins Liz and Jane to home in on achievable ways that you can make a difference in your kitchen.   Further Reading: Rowan Jacobsen’s great piece on the fantasy of plastic recycling Liz’s Wall Street Journal GREAT piece on reducing food waste  Jane’s Washingt...

Intuitive eating, the popular new anti-diet philosophy, recommends serving candy with dinner and letting kids eat whenever and whatever they want. Is this hands-off approach the best way to escape toxic diet culture? Or … is intuitive eating just another food fad?  Guests:  Dr. Janet Lydecker, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. She’s a researcher but also works directly...

If you don’t know Melissa Clark, have we got a treat for you. She’s a food columnist for the New York Times and the author of 48 (!!) cookbooks, including one made for this show: “Kid in the Kitchen.” On this episode, Melissa joins Jane and Liz to talk about respecting kids’ tastes, when to give up control, and the secret to her viral lentil soup recipe. Books featured in this episode:  Kid In The...

Kids can be cruel, the old saying goes. And there is no time that is more true than when they dismiss or all out reject your carefully chosen holiday gift. And so … here’s Pressure Cooker to the rescue with a winning collection of stories and food-themed holiday gifts for kids of all ages. Links to our favorites below: For Reading:  Who Ate What: A Historical Guessing Game for Food Lovers  What Ha...

Candy, cookies, cake galore…welcome to the holidays! If you find yourself struggling with where to draw the line on sweets during the festive season, you are not alone. To help out, we’re reupping an old episode we love: an interview all about kids and sugar with Dr. David Katz, a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine. Listen in to find out whether you really need to worry about holiday...

Just in time for the holiday season, we’re resurfacing one of our favorite episodes about all the conflicts that bubble up when other people get involved in feeding our kids. Jane and Liz enlist the help of Carolyn Hax, the Washington Post’s legendary advice columnist, to help solve listeners’ issues with interfering, overbearing, and lackadaisical relatives who make feeding our kids more stressfu...

Caroline Chambers is a guru to parents trying to get dinner on the table. And now, Caroline joins Pressure Cooker to troubleshoot the ultimate (and most exhausting) meal of the year: Thanksgiving.  On this episode, she offers essential “dos” like “edit the meal to no more than five dishes” and a lot of sanity-saving “don’ts” to keep you in the holiday spirit.   Plus, Caro gave us her recs for trul...

Turns out the secret of cooking has nothing to do with hacks and recipes. It is, according to British author Bee Wilson, about overcoming all the parts of daily life that get in the way of making it pleasurable. Bee joins Jane and Liz to discuss her new book, The Secret of Cooking, and her pioneering research on how to successfully convince children to try and like new foods.   Sales and distribut...

When it comes to feeding infants their first foods, American parents are divided into two camps: those who favor spoon feed their infants purées and those who adhere to “baby led weaning,” which encourages babies to feed themselves.  If this doesn’t seem all that complicated or controversial…think again. Who’s right? Liz and Jane talk to Amy Bentley, a professor at NYU about how we have fed babies...

Influencer dietitians are all over social media – and their advice about feeding kids isn't always as impartial as you might think. On this week’s episode, Liz and Jane talk to Ananad O’Connor, the lead reporter on a newly released investigation by the Washington Post into the surprising financial ties between Big Food and registered dietitians on Instagram and TikTok. Sales and distribution by Le...