Kill the Kids’ Menu

The visitors from England were utterly charming except when the kids sat down to eat. The guests were a Sikh family, a couple and their three sons aged 16, 12 and 6. The parents, of course, preferred the savoury food of their ancestral Punjab: roti, dal, subgees, rounded off by pakoras and samosas. So their meals were spicy and sumptuous. The boys—who were otherwise bright eyed, inquisitive and eager to explore the sights and sounds of Canada—had a much more restricted diet. For breakfast they wanted nothing but Weetabix, for lunch grilled cheese sandwiches (and it had to be white bread and Kraft slices, definitely not any other species of fromage) and for dinner plain no-cheese pizza.

How did this family go in one generation from having one of the tastiest cuisines in the world to meals that are utterly bland and lacking in nutrition? Jeannie Marshall’s new book, Outside...