Posts tagged as:
nutrition
 According to a market research report from the NPD Group, the top five items Americans tend to check for are whole grains, dietary fiber, calcium, vitamin C, and protein. Overall, it’s not a bad list, but generally, protein isn’t lacking in diets. And the big omission? Iron, one of the country’s most common deficiencies.
Still, I think that the results are fairly encouraging. Sure, unless you’re vegan or have severe dietary restrictions, your diet is more likely that not already protein heavy, but Americans are generally aware of the right things.
And what are U.S. shoppers looking to avoid on nutrition labels? In descending order: fat, sugars, cholesterol, sodium, and trans fatty acids. Again, the right things to be looking for. Finally, some encouraging news for America’s nutrition.
What do you look for on nutrition labels?
From the LA Times.
 In an interview with Ladies Home Journal, Michelle Obama said that she avoids talking about weight with her daughters, Sasha and Malia. Why? Because being healthy isn’t about the number on a bathroom scale, but about pursuing a healthy lifestyle.
“I never talk about weight with my girls. I try not to even talk about my weight… We have conversations around health, food, and activity,” Michelle Obama said. “I tell them sports are something I want them to engage in because it’s good for them. It’s good to practice teamwork, to understand what it means to suffer a loss, to win with grace. It has nothing to do with weight, it has everything to do with being a well-rounded person.”
I really like this attitude. Encouraging healthy living and becoming a “well-rounded person” is a much better attitude than setting goals to shave a few pounds.
Do you talk about weight with your kids?
From Ladies Home Journal.
 Salt. We’ve been talking a lot about it (and I don’t mean that Angelina Jolie flick that nobody has seen). With the FDA pressuring the food industry to cut back on the amount of salt in their products, some food scientists are trying to create synthetic salt alternatives. There’s fake sugar, so why not fake salt?
A roundup in the journal Nature Medicine has a few ideas that scientists are playing with:
Wrapping salt particles in a special coating so that they release their flavor over time instead of all at once, like extended-release painkillers. By releasing their flavor payload slowly, scientists hope that a smaller amount of salt can go a longer way.
Finding a way to boost the saltiness of sodium so that less is needed. Coolants— which are currently used in sodas and chewing gum to make the mucous membranes feel cold— can make foods taste just as salty with 20% to 30% less salt.
Looking for proteins that boost the sensitivity of taste receptors on the tongue that recognize salty flavors. One biotech company says it has found 250 such proteins so far.
Searching for naturally salty-tasting substances that contain less sodium. One promising compound comes from seaweed, though in some recipes it produces a fishy taste. Salt substitutes made with potassium chloride do a fair job of mimicking sodium chloride, but they can taste metallic or bitter.
How are you cutting back on sodium?
From the LA Times.
 Yogurt is a healthy snack for kids. It’s a great serving of protein and calcium, and it tastes good at any time of day. So Go-Gurt, that yogurt that comes in a squeeze tube, that should be healthy too, right? Not according to Paula at Strollerderby.
While the number one ingredient is low fat milk, it’s followed by sugar and high fructose corn syrup. And for daily nutrition, it has vitamin A, D3, and calcium, but less than 10% of the daily recommended dose of each.
“Why do we allow ourselves to pretend that faux healthy foods like fruit snacks and Go-gurt are better than candy?” Paula writes. “I know better and I still play that game. Is food marketing that convincing? Apparently so.”
Paula isn’t arguing that Go-Gurt is bad for your kids, just that it’s not particularly healthy. Treat it like candy, not yogurt.
Do your kids love Go-Gurt?
From Strollerderby. Photo by Kid_SBTG.
 There’s a great article from Heather at Babble about the controversy over milk. Is it healthy? Should we let our kids drink it? There’s research supporting both sides of the argument.
There’s a big difference between human breast milk and the kind we purchase from the grocery store. Heather explains: “Human breast milk changes in nutritional composition as a child grows — changing the amount of fat, for example, depending on the stage of development. Cow’s milk doesn’t do that. It’s a perfect fit for a baby calf, but not necessarily for a human being.”
That being said, scientists still haven’t landed on a firm conclusion about the healthiness of milk. Heather ends the article quoting Michael Pollan of Omnivore’s Dilemma fame, saying that a varied diet is healthy, and that dairy might be a part of that. We just don’t know how much yet.
One interesting fact is that humans weren’t built to drink milk, but sometime in the past 5,000 years, a genetic mutation allowed humans to tolerate milk. While most people in the U.S. and Europe have the enzyme to digest diary today, about 75% of the rest of the world still can’t tolerate it.
As a kid, I drank three to four glasses of milk a day. Around college, I stopped drinking milk regularly, and today, I can’t drink a full glass of milk without having a stomach ache. Yes, I’ve become lactose intolerant. (Luckily, I can pretty much eat any amount of dairy with a digestive supplement!)
Do you let your kids drink milk?
From Babble. Photo by elana’s pantry.
 Michelle Obama’s campaign against America’s obesity problem is starting with school lunches, but perhaps there’s an aspect of the obesity problem that no one’s focusing on: the socioeconomic element.
In a seminar covered by Lylah Alphonse at the Children’s Museum in Boston, two researchers — Dr. Elizabeth Goodman and Dr. Beth DeFrino — explained how social and biological factors affect the health of children, of which there are many. Mrs. Obama might be on the right track by improving school lunches, but it might be more difficult than it sounds. How is an already budget-crunched school system supposed to improve its cafeteria meals?
“With cash-strapped schools cutting recess and sports programs in order to make ends meet, children are spending more sedentary time at their desks and less time being physically active — if they’re at school at all,” Lylah writes.
She also cites a few startling statistics. Overweight/obese children are 59% more likely to miss more than two weeks of school, and since schools with low test scores due to No Child Left Behind, they are at even higher risk of obesity.
“Having to work to put food on the table trumps the hallowed family dinner hour, and if the only stores you have access to don’t carry fresh produce — or if it’s prohibitively expensive — you can’t tout ‘eat leafy greens’ as the solution.”
From In The Parenthood.
 The Daily Beast gathered the top 25 least healthy (or most unhealthy, if you’re a pessimist?) kids meals available at franchise restaurants across the country. Number one? The Mac and Cheese Quesadilla Meal at Friendly’s, which features a whopping 2,270 calories (TWO THOUSAND AND SEVENTY CALORIES, if you’re a pessimist?). That is bananas. Never let your kids eat that.
And let’s not forget to give credit where credit is due. Chevy’s is responsible for four items in the top 10.
- Friendly’s Mac and Cheese Quesadilla Meal (2,270 calories)
- Houlihan’s Chicken Fingers Meal (1,293)
- Chevy’s Flour Flautas (1,240)
- Outback Steakhouse’s Kookaburra Chicken Fingers Meal (1,030)
- Applebee’s Grilled Cheese Meal (1,020)
- Chevy’s Quesadilla Meal (1020)
- Chevy’s Bean and Cheese Burrito Meal (1020)
- Culver’s Hot Dog Meal (991)
- A&W’s Cheeseburger Meal (990)
- Chevy’s Kiddie Cheeseburger Meal (1060)
Are you surprised by the calorie counts in these meals?
More at The Daily Beast.
 Sales of Vidalia onions have seen a huge spike thanks to… Shrek? The green ogre from the eponymous Dreamworks films have been adorning the packages of onions since the release of Shrek Forever After. Which just goes to show that cartoon characters on packaging are effective on anything, not just cereal boxes.
“He never, ever eats vegetables, but when we got home, he wanted me to cook them,” said Elizabeth Harvill, mother of a three-year-old who threw a tantrum at the grocery store until she tossed the bag of onions into the shopping cart.
It’s an interesting marketing story because it’s assumed that cartoon characters can only sell junk food. But maybe by branding fruit and veggies with Buzz and Woody, we could trick kids into eating healthier?
From the Wall Street Journal.
 Every so often a study about children generates a strong buzz in the news that, to moms like me, seem the biggest waste of time. Recently one such study was done by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University and published in the journal Pediatrics. The findings? Food with favorite cartoon characters on the box is more appealing to children than food with no cartoon characters on them.
Who knew?
Well, any mom who’s ever fed a child a snack. But now we have the scientific proof to back up what many of us have known all along: our kids are suckers.
Read More
 The Department of Agriculture issued new guidelines to help the nation’s diet, recommending cutbacks on sugar and saturated fats. It’s nothing we don’t really know, as health-conscious readers of Life360 Now. But the most interesting part is that these guidelines don’t veer far from recommendations that came from the USDA thirty years ago. THIRTY YEARS AGO! We’ve known that sugar levels were an issue for THIRTY YEARS and only now government agencies are really taking a stand against it.
“The basic advice is the same. The new twist is that they’re recognizing the fact that it’s very hard for people to follow that advice,” said Margo Wootan, nutrition policy director of the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest.
What do you think — can Americans ever cut back on their sugar and saturated fat consumption? Should the government regulate our intake, or is it up to us to decide for ourselves how healthy we want to live?*
* Feels like I’m baiting Timbo for an answer…
From the Los Angeles Times. Photo by cackhanded.
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