National Post

So. Very. Hungry.

nparts:

Deconstructed Dish: A donair affair
Perhaps the most exciting addition to the Toronto food landscape, for transplanted Haligonians at least, is the donair. The shaved meat wrap’s origins stem from some combination of Turkish, Lebanese and Greek cuisine (the preparation is much like a gyro), but the precise history is shrouded in mystery.

The health epidemic unleashed on children by packaged foods
An excerpt from Outside The Box, by Jeannie Marshall:

“The dreaded children’s menu. It offered pasta for a first course, and breaded chicken served with french fries for the second. Another choice was pizza slices served with french fries and a soft drink. There were also hamburgers and hot dogs on the menu….

There are 42 million children under age five who are overweight or obese in the world. It used to take years to put on that much weight and it was rare to see an obese child. Now it’s an ever-growing problem for nursery school children. If something doesn’t change, these children will live difficult, unhealthy lives, and many of them will die an early death.” (Illustration by Andrew Barr)

Part One: The pervasiveness of junk food advertising to children

Jeannie Marshall: The pervasiveness of junk food advertising to children
In an excerpt from Outside The Box, Jeannie Marshall describes her efforts to shield her son from the lure of ‘packaged cakes, chocolate bars, cookies, yogurt-like products and ice cream’:

We have to be on guard to protect our children against so many potentially destructive intrusions into their lives, yet food marketing that goes directly to children often slips in at their level, where we don’t even see it. Even when we do see it, it’s astonishing how little we can do about it. If a well-dressed man in the park persistently offered sweets to your child, ignoring your requests for him to stop, I’m sure you would scoop up your child and leave the park. I’m fairly certain everyone in the park would run the man out. Yet there are men and women offering candy and food products to our children all day long. We let them into our houses through the television, radio, Internet and DVDs we let our children watch instead of commercial TV. They beckon our children to follow them, they offer them sweet and savoury delights and they promise never to say no the way that grouchy old parents do. (Illustration by Andrew Barr)

Zombie cheeseburger? McDonald’s patty, bun, cheese unchanged after one year sitting on kitchen counter
Whenever Melanie Hesketh’s kids get a hankering for junk food, all she has to do is point to the kitchen counter.

That’s where she keeps an unwrapped cheeseburger that turns one on Thursday, and it looks pretty much the same as the day it came off a McDonald’s grill.

Mould, maggots, fungi, bacteria — all have avoided the tempting meal that sits in plain view.

“Obviously it makes me wonder why we choose to eat food like this when even bacteria won’t eat it,” said Ms. Hesketh.

The meat patty has shrunk a bit, but it still looks edible and, with a faint but lingering greasy, leathery odour, she said it “still smells slightly like a burger … it hasn’t changed much.” (Photo: Tyler Brownbridge/The Windsor Star)

Hot dogs and poutine stage comeback after Quebec rink’s fans revolt
Since the town of Lac-Etchemin, Que., banned junk food from its arena four years ago, there have been battles at the snack bar as well as in the rink’s corners. Now, in an admission that paninis are outmatched against poutine, the town council has lifted the ban and French fries will return before the end of the month.

“This health-food restaurant was imposed; there was no free choice for the customers,” Daniel Fortin, a director with the local minor hockey association, said this week.

“People are not against the idea of healthy food, but they would like to have a choice. If the child wants to eat a poutine after the match and the parent wants to eat a salad, that should be OK.” (Photo: John Mahoney/Postmedia News)