How Brands Bite You in the Butt!

Kraft Macaroni ‘n Cheese.  Annie’s Bunnies.  Stonyfield Yogurt.  We love our brands.

Brands are a godsend.  They make shopping and cooking a snap, especially after you’ve found products your kids will happily eat.

But for parents trying to teach their kids about new foods, the miracle of manufacturing -- that food producers always turn out the exact same product (same taste, same texture, same look, same smell) -- is also a curse.   

When brand names become an eating habit, kids won’t accept even small variations in the foods they eat.

Giving kids who are reluctant to try new foods a Skippy Peanut Butter sandwich every day – because that’s the brand they demand -- is akin to parental suicide; it’s like begging your kids never to try anything new again.

The more your children expect blueberry yogurt to taste exactly like – and only like – the way Stonyfield makes their blueberry yogurt, the less open they are to foods that are different.

Does it matter if that’s how your kids relate to yogurt?  Not so much (although it might if they’re starving some afternoon and you find the local grocer is out of that kind of yogurt). But if you have children who only eat Tyson chicken nuggets, Polly-O cheese, and Eggo waffles, then the pattern of sameness is working against you.

See The Variety Masquerade for more on this.

If you hope that someday your children will try asparagus, salmon, or even a new kind of juice, you have to start by breaking the bonds your kids have to their beloved brands.

Work on getting your kids to eat orange and yellow cheese, to move beyond Skippy to Jif, and to embrace Keebler in addition to Nabisco.

If your children are attached to one brand of yogurt…

• Buy different flavors of the same brand.
• Buy different brands but stick to the same flavor.
• Transfer the yogurt to an unmarked container (tell your kids the container broke) and then gradually change the flavor over time by adding more and more of a different brand of yogurt.
• Make your own flavored yogurt by adding jam to plain yogurt.

And if your children are attached to a particular chicken nugget…

• Cut the nugget into different shapes so it starts to look different. (Let your children see you do this so they believe you that it’s the same kind of chicken.)
• Buy different shapes of the same chicken nugget brand.
• Mix-in pieces of a different brand of chicken nugget.

How readily your kids accept new foods is a reflection of the foods they’re exposed to on a regular and repeated basis – or their habits.  So mix it up for maximum success.

 ~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~  

Nutrition By Numbers

How well do you know your nutrition?

If you want to have some fun play the Nutrition by Numbers game that NuVal recently posted on their website.  (Click on Play Game at the bottom of the NuVal home page.)

Don’t be surprised, however, when it turns out that putting 3 products in order from most to least nutritious turns out to be trickier than you thought. I was wrong almost as often as I was right – at first.  (Would YOU know that chocolate soy milk beats out creamed spinach by 30 points?)

Then I remembered, there are only 3 things you need to know about a food to know about its nutritional value: 

• how processed it is
• how much fat it contains
• whether or not it’s loaded up with added sugars

I went back to play another round of Nutrition by Numbers using these criteria and my score improved a lot.

(See It Doesn’t Matter WHAT Your Kids Eat, and It’s Too Simple for more on this topic.)

Here’s a quick cheat-sheet for playing Nutrition By Numbers.

• Fresh fruits and vegetables always score higher than any processed food.
• Frozen and canned fruits and vegetables almost always score higher than processed foods.
• Fruits and veggies trump chicken, meat and fish.
• Fish trumps chicken and meat.
• Meat and fish usually trump processed foods.
• Guessing between 3 processed foods is basically a crapshoot.

Are there exceptions to these rules?  Of course.

• Old-Fashioned Kettle-Cooked Cape Cod Potato Chips 40% Reduced score 32 (out of 100 for top nutrition) and Birds Eye Carrots and Cranberries only scores 22.

• Snyders of Hanover Original Tortilla Chips score amazingly well: 31.

• Del Monte Quality Sweet Bavarian Style Sauerkraut is a nutritional wasteland: 2.

In general, though, fruits and vegetables are your winners.  Even iceberg lettuce (82) beats a pork tenderloin (35). 

Nutrition by Numbers is only necessary when you are considering processed foods. If you stick primarily to fruits, vegetables and low-fat proteins, you can easily go-it-alone.

If you are wondering whether Cap’n Crunch Sweetened Corn & Oat Cereal is a better bet than Wonder Cinnamon Raisin Bread – it is – or whether you should give your kids Annie’s Whole Wheat Bunnies or Nabisco Mini Teddy Grahams (it’s basically a push), then you need Nutrition by Numbers.  There’s no other way to make sense of things.

But if you make processed foods a minimal part of your kids' eating habits, you can disregard the nutrition numbers.

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

Collect Clues & Eliminate the New-Food-Blues

Have you ever thought about teaching your kids how to try new foods?  Probably not.  Most of us just plunk down some new delicacy and ask our kids to try it.

But putting something into your mouth when you have absolutely no idea what to expect takes a lot of guts, or a lot of blind faith, or both.

Take the fear out of new foods by teaching your tot to become a detective. 

Collecting clues about new foods -- what they look like, smell like, feel like -- will eliminate the New-Food-Blues by teaching your children how to predict what something will taste like.

See Look Into My Crystal Ball  and It's Gross and You Can't Make Me Eat It! for more on this topic.

Collecting Food Clues Step 1:  Have your children look at a new food and then ask them the following questions (no touching, tasting, or smelling yet!):

• What does this food look like?  Look for answers that include its color, other foods that are similar as well as answers such as “a worm,” “a brain,” “gross.”

• Do you think the food makes any sounds or is it completely quiet? Some foods crackle, others sizzle, others only make noise when you eat them.  What do you think about this food and why?

• What do you think this food will feel like? Will it be gooey, sticky, soft or hard?

• What do you think the food smell like?  Do you think it will have a strong or weak smell? Will it smell like any other food you have ever eaten? Will it smell like a flower or dirty socks?

• What does the food remind you of?  Answers can include other foods as well as places and experiences (parties, school, last year’s vacation).

• What do you think it will taste like?  Will it be good or bad? Why?

Collecting Food Clues Step 2: Let your children touch, taste and closely smell the food.  Ask them the following questions:

• Now that you’ve touched the food, what does it feel like?

• What does it smell like?

• What does it feel like?

• Did you guess correctly about this food or were you surprised?

Practice prediction with your children as often as you can.  It will reduce their anxiety about new foods and get them sampling lots of different stuff.

You may not increase how much your kids actually eat at first, but you'll get them used to trying new foods -- and that's more than half the battle. Don't worry about finding the perfect food.  The more your children are exposed to new tastes and textures, the wider variety of foods they'll eventually eat.  Guaranteed.

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

It's Gross and You Can’t Make Me Eat It! Overcoming Resistance of New Foods

Is there a more difficult challenge than getting kids to try new foods?  Some kids willingly tuck right into the unfamiliar, but most of our tykes are at least a little reluctant, especially if they’re between 1 and 3.  Don’t tear your hair out, and don’t give up.

The key to getting kids to try new foods is to help them develop the right mindset.  It’s not about the food – after all, how could it be if they haven’t tried it yet?

When kids say, “I don’t like it,” about foods they haven’t tried, you need to hear, “I don’t want to eat it right now.”  Your job is to figure out why. See What “I Don’t Like It” Really Means.

Here are some possible reasons why kids won’t try new foods.  Figure out which one (or ones) applies to your situation and start turning your tot's new-food-eating around.

• Fear the food will taste bad. Kids who are worried that the food will taste bad, need to have more information about the food. Unlike adults who have a large collection of eating experiences to draw from, kids have no basis for knowing what something new tastes like.  That makes tucking-in (or even tentatively tasting) an extraordinarily dangerous activity.  Reduce the risk by teaching these kids to be detectives. The more clues they collect – does the food look crunchy, soft, or like another food they like – the more adventurous they’ll be.  See Look into My Crystal Ball for more. 

• Fear of new experiences in general.   Some children are more cautious in general, and food is just another area where they tread timidly.  These kids really benefit from incorporating more variety into their diets using their tried-and-true favorites. The more these kids get in the habit of eating different tastes and textures, the more willing they will be to try other, different, tastes and textures. See The Variety Masquerade and Variety? But My Kids Won’t Eat It! for more on this topic.

• Immature taste buds.  Kids are born with a preference for sweet, bland foods and they need to mature into enjoying a wider range of flavors. One way to help them do this is to link favorite foods with new foods by using a familiar flavor such as ketchup, teriyaki, or cheese.  But don’t stop there.  You can “use” other components of favorites to “wean” your kids.  Do they love chicken nuggets? Serve other nugget-type foods such as fish sticks, or falafel.  Or serve the chicken in different forms. See For Extreme Fruit and Vegetable Avoiders. 

• Engaged in a control struggle. These kids need to have their grab for control redirected. Distraction is the name-of-the game for lots of parenting challenges.  It works here too.  Give these kids control over all the little choices: which plate, which seat, which of 2 foods and the control struggles will subside.  Better yet, turn them into food critics. Give them rating stickers, create a chart, or in some other way record their reviews.  But don’t drop poorly received ratings from the menu; simply reintroduce – and rate – them again and again. See Turning Your Kids Taste Buds Around.

• Too much pressure.  Some children who are especially sensitive to the pressure their parents place on them to try new foods respond by eating less, not more.  The key to getting these kids to try new foods is to make the task seem less daunting.  Do this by giving these children extremely small tasting portions. It will make them feel like they can succeed.  Think in terms of raisins, sunflower seeds, and single peas for appropriate portion sizes.  Use the less-is-more strategy when it comes to eating, not just tasting, too. See When Less is More.

In addition, all kids will accept new foods more readily if the new food isn’t always broccoli, spinach, meatloaf or fish.  Of course, most kids eat a new flavor of ice cream without even noticing it, but if you point out that it is new that will change their idea of new. Mix up the new-food-experience with yummy finds and your kids will become less resistant over time. 

Whatever you do, don’t give up.  Research shows that it can take around a dozen exposures before some children will even try something new. Most kids will give it a go before then, but there’s no substitute for perseverance. Remember, you’re not just expanding your children’s palates, you’re creating a new culture too.

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

How Big is that Bag? Eating the Age of Portion Distortion

If you’ve been eating for the past 20 years, you’ve been a victim of Portion Distortion.  Most foods are 2 - 5 times larger than they were years ago.

• In 1960, muffins weighed 2-3 ounces.  Today, muffins typically weigh-in at more than 6 ounces.

• The original burger at Burger King weighed 3.9 ounces, including the bun.  Today the Whopper Junior is 6 ounces, and the Double Whopper is 12.6 ounces.

• Potato chips used to come in 1-ounce servings.  Now, the average bag contains 2-4 ounces.

(Want to test your portion distortion knowledge?  Take these fascinating quizzes.)

Research shows that packaging influences how much we eat.  Bigger bags = bigger bellies.  It's all about habits.

• One study shows that people eat more from half-filled large packages than they do from completely full, medium-sized bags – even when the bags contain the same amount of food.  The larger bag encourages people to eat more.

• Most people eat as if their mission is to finish the food – whatever size the serving.  One scholar calls this Mindless Eating.

Portion problems don’t apply to kids, right?

Unfortunately, kids join the “clean your plate” club at a young age.  Some studies show that 3 year olds tend to eat until they’re full, but 5 year olds eat until the food is gone.  Other studies show that portion distortion happens even younger.

See Size Matters for more on this.

It’s ironic that we spend our kids’ early years encouraging them to eat more, and their teen years worrying that they are eating too much.  Studies show:

• It’s what we get used to, not how hungry we are, that determines what we eat.

• People try to eat the same visual amount of food from meal to meal.

• Larger portions suggest larger consumption norms.  They teach us what is the “normal” or “appropriate” amount to consume.

What can you do?  Get your children in the habit of eating smaller portions.

• Serve your children small servings at meals.  Figure out how much they’ll probably eat and then serve them a little bit less. It will help your kids figure out how much they want to eat and keep you from dancing the 2-More-Bites-Tango.

• Don’t let your children help themselves from large bags of chips, pretzels, Booty, etc.  Instead, repackage these mammoths into smaller containers.

• Share (or halve) restaurant meals, even if you are ordering from the children's menu.

• Remind your children to be mindful eaters by paying attention to what's in their tummies, not what's on the table. 

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

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Sources:

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Portion Distortion Quiz (http://hp2010.nhlbihin.net/portion) accessed on November 10, 2009.

Young, L. R., 2005. The Portion Teller Plan: the No-Diet Reality Guide to Eating, Cheating, and Losing Weight Permanently. New York: Morgan Road Books a division of Doubleday Broadway, Random House, Inc.

Wansink, B. 2004. “Environmental Factors That Increase the Food Intake and Consumption Volume of Unknowing Consumers.” Annual Review of Nutrition 24: 455-79.

------, 2006. Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. New York: Bantam Books.