My favorite companion to this, which I still use:
Drink your beer. There are sober children in China.
I’m grateful my parents never did that. I was never good at eating past the point I was full, and my parents never were, “Just one more bite” types. They just believed in eating when you were hungry, not because you had to.
Dunno. Maybe. The impression I get from the commercial is that kids will always hate what parents cook for them at home. Probably because parents cook vegetables, and those are yucky.
Boston Pizza, on the other hand, makes vegetables fun! Look, they’re on a pizza! Dad likes the pretty young lady who brings their orders, and Mom likes the fact that the Kids don’t argue if the green peppers, mushrooms, and onions that they won’t eat at home are on a Boston Pizza. Kids get to color, and high-five the waitress. Everybody wins!
You may have a point, Cat, but with all due respect, I believe that Boston Pizza isn’t concerned about child-rearing methods. Boston Pizza is out to attract people to their restaurants. This ad does just that–parents, your kids will eat if you bring them to Boston Pizza. We can supply healthy vegetables, grains, and meats. We don’t really care how you raise them, as long as you contribute to our bottom line. Hey, you want bolognese sauce with that garlic bread? Kids like it!
Boston Pizza must be a godsend to people whose kids refuse to eat broccoli, spinach, onions, and/or peppers at home. Put them on a pizza or in an appetizer, and the kids dive right in.
Hijack –
Who the fuck would name their chain “Boston Pizza”? Pizza around Boston is almost universally vile. Soggy, greasy, and flavorless. There’s exactly one decent local place that I’ve found, and that’s only if you eat it in the restaurant because it turns into an inedible soggy mess in ten minutes flat. That’s not even enough time to pickup pizza and get it home, let alone get it delivered…
Serving other people can be a recipe for disaster. I generally underestimate how much the sprog will eat because he can always ask for more if he wants it. On the other hand, his grandmother will dump adult-sized portions onto his plate and expect him to eat all of it before she will give him dessert. And there always has to be dessert. :rolleyes:
Obviously, the chain appeals to folks who live far, far away from Boston. 
It is a mostly Canadian chain, and to Canadians, “Boston” sounds appropriately American - associated with authentic tasty pizza.
I can’t imagine what sort of food would be associated with Toronto in the minds of those who live far away from here. Montreal is easy - bagels and smoked meats.
I never said I thought this commercial was what they should be doing. I said I understood why they do it, which is not the same thing.
Heh. But… why not name it after New York, or Chicago? They’re both more justifiably famous for good pizza. Pizza in Boston is a bad imitation of New York style pizza.
And poutine. Also Tim Horton’s… and that’s pretty much the limit of my knowledge of Canadian cuisine. Though Windsor has some pretty rockin’ Chinese food.
Not in my experience. Most kids I know only like their one type of pizza, usually cheese. They’ll actively take all the veggies off their pizza.
The good folks who live in Butthurt, Alberta don’t have a clue that pizza really purchaced in the city of Boston actually sucks. “Boston” just means “An American city, reputed to have folks who talk with a funny but apparently upscale accent”. A place called “Boston Pizza” thus combines two general impressions - American-ness (and Americans are supposed to make awesome pizza) and a hint of tony-ness, too. The message is intended to be that this is a place where you can get pizza that is also a trifle upscale, clean and friendly; if you called in “Chicago Pizza” it would have a more gritty, authentic feel. Think of the difference between a Kennedy sitting down to a slice, and Al Capone.
There is great food in Toronto, but not specificly Toronto food. Toronto has great food that comes from everywhere else - Chinese, Greek, Vietnamese, you name it.
IMO, you weren’t *just *understanding–you were condoning. I *“understand” *why Hitler set up Jews as a scapegoat to pull his country out of a major economic depression, but I’m not going to make excuses for him or try to pretend that it was a good thing, just because there was a reason behind it.
Godwinize’d!!!
Encouraging kids to eat at a pizza place = shattering their legs/Hitler-esque? Between this and the “Hey FATTIES” thread, I have to ask, Shot From Guns. Are you Meme Roth?
I said nothing about whether what they were doing was good or bad.
I did say that taking parenting advice from someone who benefits from your poor parenting is probably not a good idea.
My problem isn’t the pizza place *qua *the pizza place; it’s about encouraging children to be whiny fucking brats.
SFG I just like you more and more! Keep it up!
Ah yes, the problem of kids and vegetables. There are a few factors at work there, judging from my own personal experiences both as a kid and as a professional cook/chef.
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Adults/parents usually fail to understand that the sense of taste diminishes as the years go by, especially if a person drinks and/or smokes. Taste buds simply become less sensitive, and adults forget that a child’s brand new taste buds are much, much more sensitive than their own. As a result, many foods that taste perfectly fine to an adult can be completely overpowering and unpleasant to a child. Some vegetables, particularly dark greens like broccoli and spinach, actually have a predominant bitter component that is going to be more evident to a child than to an adult. Yes, Mom, that bitterness is why I would so often throw up when you forced me to eat those things. Also, the psychological remnants of being forced to eat things that made me throw up mean that, 30+ years later, I still can’t stomach (heh) the thought of eating those kinds of vegetables, ultimately to my detriment, as those dark green vegetables are a good source of vitamin A and other important nutrients.
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Parents of young children are, more often than not, young themselves, and frequently have no idea what they’re doing in the kitchen. This is simply a combination of ignorance and inexperience. And so young mothers cook what they like to eat and what they know how to cook, and (unreasonably, IMO) expect that their children should like those things too. In my case, it also didn’t help that my parents are early Baby Boomers whose parents grew up during the Great Depression. My mother’s not-unreasonable idea of a proper dinner was meat, vegetable, and starch. Okay, sure, that makes for a nice basic starting point, and is in fact the template for most of the “fancy” plates I put together now as a banquet chef at the city convention center. But my mom, being young and inexperienced, served almost everything in the most basic way possible. Meat seasoned with nothing but a little salt, plain potatoes or rice with nothing but margarine to put on them, and boiled vegetables. My mom was also utterly incapable of making gravy. I was in my 30s before I discovered beef stew could be very tasty, because my mom’s idea of beef stew was beef, potatoes, carrots, and celery all boiled (in water) together in a pot, with a little salt for seasoning. So nearly every dinner I got as a kid was comprised to two mostly flavorless components and one completely unpalatable (to me) component.
As a footnote to that, I used to blame my mother’s bland cooking on her mother, because on the rare occasions we ate at Grandma’s house we got the same bland fare. Much later, as an adult, I learned it was actually my grandfather’s fault. He was a cranky, chain-smoking alcoholic who pretty much wouldn’t eat anything but meat and potatoes, and Grandma, being the dutiful wife, cooked that kind of thing for him. When he finally died (dude stuck around until he was 83) and Grandma could eat what she wanted, my sisters and I were utterly astonished to discover that Grandma absolutely loved hot and spicy Mexican and Italian food, and onions, and peppers, and all sorts of things like that, which she unfortunately was never able to pass along to my mom.
- Many mothers, I think, fail to take the time to discover vegetables that their kids will eat, and continue to try to force them to eat the unpalatable stuff on the basis of “it’s good for you!” When I was a young kid, I’d happily eat peas, carrots, green beans, corn, radishes … but Mom would continue making a huge issue out of my unwillingness/inability to get down things like broccoli and beets, the two biggies that I just couldn’t stomach. And, believe it or not, kids do pick up on the hypocrisy of a mother who expects them to eat what they don’t like, but who also never serves anything she doesn’t like. Hey, guess what, Mom? Peppers and onions and mushrooms are good for you too!
My point isn’t that Boston Pizza is doing anything wrong (I totally agree that they’re in the food-selling business, not the raising your children properly business), but that people will see commercials like this and consciously or subconsciously think that if other people are doing it, it must be okay.
I’ve never really associated Boston Pizza with pizza from Boston. I do know one thing, though; the pizza is probably the worst thing on the menu there. Maybe they got the name right.
Also that their children are not small copies of themselves, or blank slates. Kids come pre-programmed with likes and dislikes, which may or may not match those of their parents. Your kids aren’t going to like everything you like. This is true whether you’re talking about tastes in food, music, hobbies, sports, clothing, hairstyles, classes in school, careers, significant others/marriage partners, or lots of other things.
Lots of people don’t know how to cook, or how to pick out groceries. The latter is important- if you buy low-quality produce or meat, even the best chef in the world is going to have a hard time getting them to taste good.
If there are foods your kid will eat in a restaurant but not at home, that’s a big hint that they might not dislike that food, but dislike the way you cook it. Find a good cookbook (Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything is good for this) and find out how it’s supposed to be cooked. Find some other ways to cook it.
ETA: Yes, this is harder than just cooking things the way you already know how to cook them. If anybody told you parenting was supposed to be easy, they were lying or deluded.
And don’t take it personally when somebody doesn’t like the way you cook something. Everybody has different tastes in food. Not liking something you cook is not a rejection of you as a person. It really isn’t.
Kids can see that kind of hypocrisy from a mile off.
Heh:
“Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.” – Robert Fulghum
Do you really think that people are going to start reinforcing undesirable behavior from their children because of a television commercial that they saw? Are you worried that people are going to start tackling old ladies because they saw it on a Snickers commercial, or throw people out of windows if they suggest doing away with buying beer for meetings, or racing through traffic so that they can bring their child a happy meal? Do you realize how many commercials over the past several decades have humorously featured behavior that would not be good to emulate in order to sell a product?
Also, is this the first time you’ve ever seen a commercial which suggests that if your family is unhappy with your food regimen, you ought to make them happy with a particular product? Either you’re extremely young, new to television watching, or Canada is really a wonderland of goodness and light.