Pressure Cooker
Feeding a family is among the most basic of human responsibilities. So why do we so often feel like we’re failing at it? On Pressure Cooker, veteran journalists Jane Black and Liz Dunn dish out empathy and common-sense strategies for busy parents navigating manipulative marketing messages, impossible cultural expectations, and little people with big personalities as they try to set their children on a healthy path for life. Sales and Distribution by Lemonada Media https://lemonadamedia.com/
Episodes
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 understand how the problem has explode...
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 trait among children – and what yo...
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, Christina is also a mom of two. In this e...
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 hates sandwiches? And more…
See ...
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.
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 their favorite Brooding essays, hitt...
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 Research: Dr. Gupta’s center with lin...
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
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 with adolescents suffering from e...
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:
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:
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 sugar benders, and what you can do ...
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 stressful than it should be.
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 truly great recipes to try this year. ...
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 distribution by Lemonada Media
See omnystudi...
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 through the ages, and to Dr. Krupa...
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 Lemonada Media
Artificial intelligence can write term papers and computer code. It helped someone win the lottery. But could it succeed at the ultimate task: Meal planning for demanding children? Pressure Cooker takes on the challenge with the help of a special guest.
Want to try this at home? We have a cheat sheet for how to create customized, easy dinners with ChatGPT. Plus, a Pressure Cooker-tested ChatGPT written recipe that your kids will l...
Welcome new listeners. We’re highlighting one or our favorite episodes: The Great American Food System makes chicken nuggets that look like hearts, dinosaurs even Baby Yoda. And why not? Last year, American families spent more than $200 million on frozen nuggets in novelty shapes. In this episode, Jane and Liz talk to Scott Friedman, whose family invented the dinosaur chicken nugget, and explore why dino nuggets—and all sorts of fu...
Listen in on a live podcasting event on the future of motherhood, coproduced by Future of Women. This week, Jane is joined by the Better Life Lab’s Brigid Schulte, journalists Helena Dyer Andrews, Julianna Goldman and Daniella Senior of the Colada Shop to discuss what’s not working for moms in America today and how we can work together to make change.
If you’re fired up after the conversation, here are a few organizations to foll...
Popular Podcasts
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.
A straightforward look at the day's top news in 20 minutes. Powered by ABC News. Hosted by Brad Mielke.