Recipe for Foie Gras - Part 1

In this series of posts, I will be compiling a few recipes for making pediatric foie gras. Like any good dish, there are bound to be regional variations (each with their own take), but I think that a few ingredients will stand out as being important.

In today's post, I will share a very special recipe that was developed in Springfield, Il.

I came across this case study published in Clinical Pediatrics a while ago, and thought that it was quite interesting. The title alone, Non-alcoholic Liver Disease in a Toddler, has a certain 'je ne sais quoi'.

Take 1 white female toddler (27 months old), and add potato chips, cereal with milk (2%), fried eggs and toast with butter and jelly. Allow to sit for several hours. Fold in bacon, chili, hot dogs, cheese, potato chips, macaroni and cheese, canned ravioli (and similar foods) in batches throughout the day. Food should be fried with added butter of grease for maximal effectiveness. Stir in 2 liters of tea sweetened with sugar (~1.5 cups of sugar), 2.5 cups of Kool-Aid, and 3 cups of milk (2%) until smooth. Feel free to add potato chips, candy, pie, cookies and other dessert items periodically as needed until caloric intake is ~3000-4000 calories per day.

Most pediatric foie gras dishes made in the US use Hispanic males ~13 years of age, so this does stand out as an exception, rather than as a defining recipe, but it does provide an idea of how to make foie gras in a hurry if you don't want to wait 13 years.

I joke, but this is hardly a laughing matter. The fact that a toddler is suffering from a chronic illness related to poor diet is an appalling indication of the world we live in. I think many of us would be tempted to defer responsibility for this atrocity onto the parents, but their food choices include many of the most popular items on the supermarket shelves. At some point, we need to accept our share of the blame for allowing the food system and food itself get away from us.

Fishbein M, & Cox S. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in a toddler. Clin Pediatr 2004; 43: 483-485.