I spent Thanksgiving in Washington with my family visiting some Spanish/Peruvian friends. On Thanksgiving Day we went to visit the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Since I have heard about the exhibition of Julia Child we went directly to the Food Exhibition to see it.

 

Since reading Julia Child’s biography last year, she has been an inspiration to keep building my dream to bring people an educational program to help manage their weight for life.

 

Julia Child worked very hard for many years to bring French cuisine to American society, fighting with a very chauvinist French society. The director of the Cordon Blue School where Julia trained to be a professional chef didn’t even let her take the exam, for being an American Woman. But Julia was strong and totally convinced of her objective and she finally got her purpose. Not only after many fights she was able to take the exam and become a Cordon Bleu Chef, but she finally succeed in bringing French Cuisine to American society. To the point that today we can see her kitchen and an exhibition about her in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History!

 

So, being Thanksgiving Day, I wondered how Julia Child would have cooked her turkey and what would she have included in her meal. Nowadays, when even my friends are posting in Facebook about the calorie count of an average Thanksgiving meal, I wonder: Would she have ever wondered about the calorie count of any of her meals? Did she ever think about weight management?

 

I doubt it….

 

Think about French cuisine now and imagine more than 50 years ago, when the cooking ingredients were still fresh and natural. When fast food and pre packed and precooked meals weren’t an option and sugars were just another ingredient for desserts. They ate for nourishment and fine pleasure and not to stuff themselves and to cover other deficiencies in their lives. Although during the Second World War butter rationing created a demand for margarine made from Trans Fats, which were created in 1901 by a German chemist, and are slowly entering into our diets, Julia was always a fervent defendant of using butter, LOTS of butter…

 

No, definitely she didn’t think about weight management…

 

I kept going through the Exhibition called “Food: Transforming the American Table 1950-2000” which explores some of the major changes in food during that period. And I visually saw, how some of those changes, specially fast food, have been responsible for the major overweight epidemic America is suffering now.

 

If you ever have the opportunity to see the Food exhibition in the museum do so, and if not, take a look at the web page:  

http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/food

 

And remember to take a look at Julia Child’s home kitchen:

 

 http://amhistory.si.edu/juliachild/flash_home.asp

 

Bon Appetite!