Yogurt on the Brain!

"My child would never eat plain yogurt!"

A lot of parents won’t give their children plain yogurt.  They think it won’t appeal to their kids’ taste buds.

If you had to guess, which taste bud – sweet, sour, bitter, salty or savory (umami) – would you say plays the most important role in determining whether or not your kids will eat plain yogurt?

You probably think sweet is the most important bud; it certainly gets the most use.  But the question is really a trick, because your children’s most important taste bud is the brain.

The brain controls the game. Try this exercise out.

1) Tell you child you’ve got a yummy new treat for her and plunk down a bowl of plain yogurt.

2) Give your child a bowl of plain yogurt and a bowl of brown sugar, honey, or maple syrup. Tell your kid to go wild.

Which strategy is most likely to succeed?

You don’t have to eat plain yogurt plain to reap the benefits.

Now you’re probably thinking that a kid will like anything she can cover in sugar.  But that’s the point.  You aren’t the only one who knows your child likes things coated with sugar.  Your child knows it too. 

(The food manufacturers also know how much kids love sugar which is why they load their yogurts up with the stuff.  Read Yogurt vs. Coke.)

Your child knows she likes sugar.  She also knows she likes the idea of putting as much as she wants in her yogurt.  Put these two facts together and, presto, your kid will eat plain yogurt!

“But what about the sugar?” I hear you asking. “How can this concoction be a step above the sweet stuff they sell in the market? 

Well, believe it or not, your child probably won’t put in as much sugar as you think.  But even if she does, there’s no need to panic: you can always reduce the sugar in time – after your child accepts the idea that she likes plain yogurt.

There are other advantages to doctoring up plain yogurt.

1) It teaches your child what yogurt really is.

2) It gives your child control (which is all she is probably after anyway).

3) Each time your child prepares her brew, it will be different (even if only slightly) and that provides variety. It is variety which opens the door to new foods. (Read How Brands Bite You in the Butt.)

4) Once your child will readily eat the yogurt – no matter the condition – you can start altering the add-ins and your child will still eat it because she knows she likes it.

Here’s how to move your child away from ultra sweet to more healthy:

• Give your child a smaller spoon to shovel the sugar.

• Put the sugar in a smaller bowl.  The psychology of portion size will kick in and your child will automatically spoon up a smaller scoop.

• Give your child a few small bowls of add-ins. Put sugar in one of the bowls and other stuff like fruit, sprinkles, jelly in the others.

• Put the yogurt on top of fruit instead of putting the fruit into the yogurt. This will make the yogurt flavor more dominant.

Read When the Less Nutritious Choice is Right.

Our kids’ brains set the stage for their taste experiences -- that’s how they can declare they don’t like a dish before they’ve even sampled it.  Use this to your advantage.

By now you’ve probably figured out, this isn’t just about yogurt.

It applies to plain oatmeal (think of letting your kid adding brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins), broccoli (how about some parmesan cheese for sprinkling?) or any of the other real foods you’re sure your kids will reject.

Convince your kids’ brains that they’re going to like something, and chances are they will. 

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

When The Less Nutritious Choice Is Right

Sometimes giving your kids less nutritious food makes sense -- from a habits perspective.

For instance, it makes more sense to give your kids Birds Eye Carrots and Cranberries, which the folks at NuVal give a score of 22 (out of 100 for top nutrition), than it does to feed your kids Kashi TLC Tasty Little Chewy Oatmeal Cookies, which scores a 40.

Why? The mediocre vegetables get your kids used to vegetables.  The cookies, which in this case, are healthier?  They teach your kids to eat… well, cookies. 

If you want to get your kids to eat vegetables, even mediocre ones trumps those pretty good grains. 

Hoping to expand your kids’ palates beyond the old staples? Or introduce them to a wider variety of vegetables? Some of the foods you find in the market (or the local diner) are ridiculously bad nutritionally but they’re fantastic vehicles for teaching your kids to eat right.

• Your kids will probably eat the Birds Eye Carrots and Cranberries because it’s made with 3 kinds of sugar, butter and oil: the processed food flavors your kids are used to.

 Get adventurous. Here are some other "losers" worth trying:

• Aunt Nellie’s Ruby Red Sweet & Sour Harvard Beets (canned) only scores an 8 (because it’s loaded with high fructose corn syrup) but if it introduces your kids to beets, who cares?

• The creamed spinach at Boston Market has more calories, more fat, and more sodium than the corn.  It even has more calories and more fat than the macaroni and cheese, but give the spinach to your kids and you’ll be getting them used to the idea that spinach is tasty – something they already know about the corn and the pasta.

Don't fear the inferior stuff.  You can always move your kids to healthier versions later.

See Boston Market nutrition information.

Think of your kids as little creatures of habit.  They want to eat the tastes, textures, aromas and appearances they are used to.  And they want to eat them over and over.

The more you expose your kids to the kinds of foods you want them to eat – even if you start with inferior versions of those foods – the better they'll eat in the long run.

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

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Sources: www.nuval.com accessed 2/4/2010; www.bostonmarket.com accessed 2/4/2010

The Ingredients Game

See if you can you match up the ingredient lists with the following foods.

• Thomas’ Hearty Grains Double Fiber English Muffins
• Entenmann’s Softees Mini Donuts
• Nabisco Barnum’s Animal Crackers

It’s pretty hard to do.  Right?

That’s because we’re used to identifying foods from their labels – when we’re at the mercy of the manufacturers’ marketing professionals -- not their ingredients.

If you turn things around, the products  all look basically the same because they’re made from essentially the same ingredients: refined flour, oil and sugar.

And, as Jane E. Brody points out in today’s New York Times article Rules Worth Following, For Everyone’s Sake, once refined flour gets into your body, it’s essentially the same as sugar.  That means all three products are really just sugar -- with some oil and sugar.

Here’s the answer to the game:

1. Entenmann’s Softees Mini Donuts
2. Thomas’ Hearty Grains Double Fiber English Muffins
3. Nabisco Barnum’s Animal Crackers

Here’s another test.  Match up these ingredients with their foods.

Enough said!

Instead of wasting your time reading ingredient lists or nutrition labels, think proportion.

1) Group processed foods together and then make sure these “gems” don’t dominate your kids’ diets.  Instead…

2) Feed your kids real foods most of the time.  Because…

When it comes to teaching kids to eat right, what matters most is the ratio of fresh, natural foods to processed foods that your kids consume.

Although there are some nutritional differences between processed products, what they have in common is way more important for shaping how your kids eat. 

• Processed foods all have essentially the same taste, texture, aroma and appearance and none of them are at all like broccoli, asparagus, mushrooms, melon, apples, or pears.

It’s what your kids get used to that dictates what other foods they’ll accept.  It’s all about their habits.

Read Why Nobody Needs Nutrition Labels.

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

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Note: I wish I could say I thought this game up, but I pilfered (and modified) it from the folks at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.   If you aren’t familiar with this group, and you are interested in nutrition, the politics of the food industry and the truth, you should check them out. You can find them at www.cpsi.org.  I subscribe to their wonderful, bimonthly newsletter NutritionAction.

Sources: Product Labels; Center for Science in the Public Interest. "Name that Food." Nutrition Action Healthletter. January/February, 2010. pp. 10-11; Brody, Jane E. "Rules Worth Following, For Everyone's Sake." New York Times.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/health/02brod.html?ref=science accessed 2/2/2010.