Funny Food Teaches Parents to Get Creative With Breakfast

Funny Food, Bill and Claire Wurtzel

A pair of New York educators think they have the answer to the question of how to get kids to eat healthy breakfasts and snacks. Forget for a moment that nobody has quite figured out what "healthy" means, and that the definition of "healthy" changes daily.

Two decades ago, eating a piece of whole-wheat toast smeared with margarine was probably considered healthy. Fifteen years ago, you were supposed to stop eating fat, and a decade ago, you were supposed to stop eating carbs. Now you're supposed to forgo wheat products and try to cram as many omega-3 fatty acids down your piehole as possible.

Funny Food, Bill and Claire Wurtzel

But I'm willing to admit that the breakfasts concocted by Bill and Claire Wurtzel in their new book, Funny Food, look healthy to me. Their idea is to use fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy products to make lively plate-sculptures of animals, faces, and choo-choo trains, inducing kids to eat what we want them to.

Funny Food, Bill and Claire Wurtzel

For me, the stuff is just great art. And if I were a kid, I'd be reluctant to eat something so beautiful that my parents had spent maybe an hour preparing (and not in advance, either). The portraits of historical characters are the most beguiling for me, including Will Shakespeare, the Mona Lisa, and -- you can't make this kind of thing up -- Sigmund Freud! He would have titled this book How to Give Your Kids a Complex About Food.

Anyway, I'd advise you to buy this book, and then don't show it to your kids. Or at least don't promise to make anything for them quite as beautiful as the pictures in the book. And hey, that fruit doesn't look organic to me.

FUNNY FOOD: 365 HEALTHY, SILLY, CREATIVE BREAKFASTS
Bill & Claire Wurtzel

160 pages, 7.5 x 7.5
Hardcover, $19.95 ($19.95 CAN)
365 full color photographs
ISBN 978-1-59962-111-1
On Sale: April 2012

Funny Food, Bill and Claire Wurtzel

Funny Food, Bill and Claire Wurtzel

Funny Food, Bill and Claire Wurtzel

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