The Dinner Diaries: Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World by Betsy Block; Algonquin; 261 pages; $14.95.

Betsy Block, mother of Zack, a 10-year-old, and Maya, a kindergartener, recounts her struggles to uphold the highest parenting standards by providing healthful meals and the goal-shattering reality of coping with fickle eaters and daily cravings. She is aware that millions of American children are obese, too many more are hungry and, thanks to the prevalence and relative low cost of junk food, children can suffer obesity and malnutrition at the same time. Can she make sure her two kids do not fit that dire category? Can she succeed as a limit-setting naysayer and still be relatively sane after laying down nutritional, ethical and sustainable rules?

This work is as much about parenting as it is about food: "The two are inextricably entwined," she writes. In her light-hearted, wryly humorous memoir, Block embarks on a 10-step challenge to change the way her family eats. Readers follow her as she juggles vegetarianism, locavorism, organic food, sustainable food, fair-trade goods and farmed vs. fresh fish while contending with her eaters' pickiness and challenges such as finding local, organic produce during a bare New England winter – no easy tasks.

When the Block's first child arrived, the family started trying to make better food choices. But they felt overwhelmed by the barrage of information coming from experts; the counsel varied, and often simply was unrealistic.

Betsy confesses: "Being preached at, bullied, reprimanded, frightened or overwhelmed with data doesn't motivate me; it makes me want to cover my ears and start singing loudly. We parents are besieged enough as it is; we don't need more people telling us in vaguely threatening terms what our ideal dinner should look like. What I craved was a friendly guidebook on how to implement change out here in the real world without losing either my mind or sense of humor."

She couldn't find one, so she wrote her own – and a valuable tool it should be for parents or those with health on their minds. The book teems with helpful hints:

There are a number of highlighted sidebars with bits of information such as a list of Internet sites to consult for places in the area with locally grown foods and the place to go to find information about farmers' markets.

Snack options. ("Not all junk foods are created equal.")

How to keep successfully a food diary.

The intricacies involved in decoding U.S. Department of Agriculture meat labels.

Even a reminder: "When fighting the good nutrition fight, keep the faith, maintain a sense of humor and hide the hot fudge as needed. Remember, it's not lying: it's having adult time."

Anecdotes as amusing as they are useful add to the fount of practical wisdom. These include how to deal with Halloween and other candy-filled holidays and how to minimize the temptation to use food to bribe children. Paragraph after wry paragraph dealing with such experiences are sprinkled throughout.

Block revels in the fact that by standing firm and working together for the kids' health, she and her husband, Andy, have managed not only to improve their diet but also to have all the family eat most of its meals together. The kids may get away with trading part of their lunches for chips or cookies while away from home. However, the parents still continue to engage them in talk about healthy eating at home and hope good habits – and lack of junk foods in the pantry – may one day prevail despite the billions of dollars companies spend to tempt kids to eat poorly.

The book includes tips, charts, recipes, food lists and places to visit and an index.

Born in Washington, D.C., Betsy Block worked in catering companies and restaurants throughout high school and college and graduated with honors from Brown University. She has written food features and restaurant reviews for The Boston Globe, for NPR's "Kitchen Window" and for epicurious.com. She lives near Boston.

AN EXCERPT

"The kids will think this is cool, right?" I ask Andy excitedly. Funny, he seems to think that making them miss Saturday morning cartoons to buy local root vegetables that will go into dishes they'll hate is not such a good idea. He strongly suggests we leave them at home.

I stubbornly ask Zack anyway. "Don't you think it would be great?" He smiles and silently shakes his head. No. Which is how Andy and I find ourselves using precious babysitting time to go food shopping. It's not the first time this has happened, but it seems like an especially bitter pill today. After all, this was supposed to be a whole family endeavor. Don't our kids know fun when they see it?

Our first stop is Wilson Farms in Lexington, Massachusetts. We corner an employee and explain our plan; he escorts us to every local item they have on hand. We're happily surprised by what we find – apples, honey, cider, two kinds of cheese, smoked salmon, eggs, milk, and butter. The kids will eat every single thing we find, as long as the cellared apples are perfectly blemish-free, that is, and as long as we don't attempt to get Maya to eat smoked fish, or Zack to try the cheese.

But we still don't have root vegetables yet, and what's local in a New England winter without a few tubers? So next stop: Arena Farms in Concord. We pick up the one tired spaghetti squash left, along with a handful of turnips. Feeling better now that we have a few roots in our satchel, we head out to our last stop, Verrill Farm, also in Concord, where we come upon fat yellow and orange carrots, those multi-colored beets the woman on the phone had told me about and, as a bonus, knobby celery root. That's what we're talking about.

I feel kind of high by the time we leave Verrill Farm – we found so much more than we expected! – although that slightly "wow" feeling could also be due to a drop in blood sugar because it'd been a while since I'd eaten. Regardless, by the time we finished gathering our midwinter local provisions, the euphoria is decidedly wearing off.

I'm remembering the final week of last winter's CSA, when the kids threw themselves on the living-room floor and refused to get up. Then, when I'd finally dragged them to the farm and back (using a combo stick/carrot approach), they wouldn't eat most of what we'd gotten, anyway. Is this pursuit in vain? And even if it isn't, who has time for all this?