Buddy Fruits: The Case of the Missing Fruit

From the files of It Is Sold as Fruit, But It Will Teach Your Kids to Crave Candy...

I came across these in the grocery store, and I couldn't stop myself from buying them. They're little soft, fruity chews sold in the babyfood aisle.  

To me, they seem just like...

Buddy Fruits Pure Fruit Bites don't look like fruit. They don't taste like fruit. They don't smell like fruit. They don't feel like fruit. And they certainly don't chew like fruit.

But they do look, taste, smell, feel and chew like candy.

"I'm tasty and healthy" the package says.

Of course, one pouch has as much sugar as 2 Oreo cookies. Bad example, I know: Oreos have nothing else going for them. 

• One pouch of Orange Buddy Fruits Pure Fruit Bites has about the same amount of sugar as an orange. That makes sense: the package says each pouch is made from 8 orange slices and 7 apple slices.   

• One orange has about 3 grams of fiber. How many in the Buddy Fruits Pure Fruit Bites? 0.5g.

• One orange has vitamin C, Calcium, Potassium... The Buddy Fruits? You guessed it: None. (I'm not really sure how this qualifies as one serving of fruit.)

I'm not a sugar freak. I just believe in truth in eating.

Want your kids to eat candy? I'm fine with that. Give them candy.  (Read Candy with Breakfast?)

• Don't give you kids candy and tell them that it's healthy. Or that it's fruit.
• Don't give your kids "healthy" candy more often than you would give them, well, candy candy.

These fruit bites are made from fruit concentrate, a euphemism for added sugar.  According to the USDA:

You may also see other names used for added sugars, but these are not recognized by the FDA as an ingredient name. These include cane juice, evaporated corn sweetener, fruit juice concentrate...

I also believe in truth in advertising. The pouch says, Only fruit and nothing else*

The asterix is a dead giveaway.  *All our ingredients come from fruits. That includes the coconut oil you weren't expecting and carnauba wax.

Ironically, it's easier to teach your kids to eat right when you let them eat indulgent treats. 

If you want to convince your kids to eat actual fruit, they have to be able to distinguish between the real deal and an impostor. Read Cookies and the Cycle of Guilty Eating to find out why.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

Coping With Party Favor Candy for Kids

Party favors: You either love them or you hate them. 

Most mothers I know hate them.  They’re usually filled with clutter and crap, otherwise known as toys and candy.

True, a lot of parents get creative and dole out coloring books, paint sets or Lego kits.  And some parents go overboard: Can you say American Girl Dolls? Read this New York Times article to see how some parents indulge their decadent side, but be prepared to be appalled. 

Still, most goody bags boil down to the basics—toys and candy.

You might be surprised to hear this, but it's this kind of party favor bag—the kind filled with candy— which can really do you a favor.  Use them to teach your kids to manage candy.  It's a skill they'll need for a lifetime of healthy eating.

The key to coping with the goods in the goody bag is to break that baby apart. Obliterate it. Destroy its identity. Send it to the moon.

As long as the party bag remains intact, your kids believe they’re entitled to eat the candy contents entirely, and on the day of delivery.  No matter the amount, your kids want to eat the whole kit and caboodle.

• If there are 6 pieces of candy in the bag, kids think they should eat all 6.
• If there are 8 pieces in the bag, they'll want all 8.
• And if there are 28 pieces...you get my point.

Boy, are you in for a battle.  Or a senseless afternoon of sensory overload.

• Do you fight the fight, engaging in a daily debate over how many delights you should dole out? 
• Or, do you let your kids consume all the crap as quickly as possible so you don’t have to deal with the dope forever?

The answer: Neither. You don't have to be at the mercy of the mother who foised the favor.

Neutralize the power of the party favor. Disassemble the bag the second you get home.

I mean it. Take that sucker apart. Not by dumping the candy into the trash, but by emptying the candy into the candy drawer you keep at home. 

You do keep a candy drawer at home, don’t you? If not, please consider it.  The candy drawer will: 

• Empower your kids to regulate their own candy consumption.
• Take the power of the lollypop down a peg or two.

I’m not suggesting a free-for-all.  You've got to give your kids some guidelines. Read Lollypops Whenever They Want? 

If you let the candy sit around the house in the bag it came home in it will constantly call your kid’s name.

Eat me. Eat me. Eat me.

Most parents solve this problem by getting the goods out of the house as soon as they can.  This solution perpetuates the problem.  Your kids never learn how to cope with candy, and so the next party favor bag is just as big of a bomb.

If, instead, you break up the contents, the candy collection will no longer seem like a set. Your kids will no longer be able to identify what came into the house when. They'll no longer feel entitled to eat it all.  

AND THEN... the regular rules for candy consumption will take over: One per day? Only after lunch?

The party loses its punch.  Your house rules, well, rule.

You can’t teach children to manage candy by managing it for them.

Keeping a stash of candy in the house might terrify you.  You probably worry that if you keep a candy drawer in your home your kids will clamor – constantly – for candy.  In reality, though, it actually works the other way around.  Candy drawers neutralize the power of candy.  

Think of this as simple economics: scarcity drives prices up; surplus drives them down. You want to drive the price of candy down, way down.

Read The How-to-Control-Your Kids’-Candy-Consumption Con and Candy with Breakfast?.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

But What Are You Going to Do With All That Halloween Candy?

Halloween is over!  Phew. Now ask yourself this question:  Next Halloween, will you have to engage in the same old candy-control struggle with your kids?

Or, will you and your kids have evolved so that you are off the hook and they moderate more of the mess themselves?

I know you want to know what you should do with all the candy and I’ll get to that in a minute.  First, though, it’s important to consider how you want next year’s Halloween to go.

In my last post I talked about the unintended lessons parents often teach their kids by becoming the Sugar Police. This week I want to make the point that if you dump your kids’ Halloween delights, even after a few days of full-on gorging, you will have opted for a short-term solution to a long-term problem.  True, you will have controlled the situation—the candy will be gone—but your children won’t have learned a thing about how to handle this holiday eating mess. 

And next year, you’ll have to recycle the same set of strategies, and gear up for the same set of struggles, to get you and your kids safely through the celebration. Yet again. 

On the other hand, if you get out of the candy-containment mindset, you can use your children’s mega-candy Halloween haul to teach them a thing or two about healthy eating habits.  Including how to:

• Eat without over-indulging.
• Experiment with new foods and flavors.
• Fit inferior “foods” into their diet in a healthy way.

Strategy One: Think of Halloween as a Big Buffet.

Buffets are challenging eating environments where many people over-indulge.  So many choices.  So much food! (Sounds like Halloween to me!)

Researchers at Cornell University  recently discovered something about how people serve themselves from buffets that is useful to Halloween parents.  Some people browse buffets before serving themselves; others begin loading up at once and don't stop until they reach the end.  

You probably won't be surprised to learn that the browsers tended to be thinner than the loaders. Because this was a strictly observational study, the researchers never asked the eaters why they choose one serving method over the other but I think it's safe to say that the browsers scanned the buffet as a way to make sure they filled their plates with their favorite foods before their plates were filled to capacity (or beyond).

Teach your kids to be browsers not loaders. Encourage them to scan their stash—perhaps sorting by category first—so they choose to save (and eat) what they like best. Read A Better Buy-Back.

Strategy Two: Encourage Your Kids to Taste Test.

Imagine the world from your children's perspective: Halloween is a time when they get to taste an entire range of goodies—at once.  What could be more exciting?  Especially for younger kids who haven't explored all the different kinds of candy...yet.  All those packets of candy look so pretty, so shiny, so inviting.

Even veteran haunters, those kids who have been around the block a time or two, are often tempted by the sheer volume of treats that they haven't tasted before.

Every year I'm surprised to hear parents telling their children, "You won't like that candy. Choose this one." This mindset—be cautious about trying new foods, even if those new foods are candies—ends up biting parents in the butt. Instead of teaching kids to be adventurous when it comes to eating, these parents are inadvertently teaching their kids to be cautious.

Encourage your children to take a taste test.  Have them sample one bite from any (and every) candy that looks intersting and compare how different candies look, taste, smell and how they feel in their hands, in their mouths and in their tummies. Your kids' mission? To find the candy (or candies) they like best.

Yes, I know that in the process of sampling your kids will consume a lot of candy. However your kids will:

• Eat fewer candies in a sampling session than they would by grazing.
• Cull the collection as each partially eaten candy hits the trash.

Strategy Three: Teach Your Kids to Think BIG.

Proportion—eating foods in relation to their healthy benefits—is, hands down, the most important thing you can teach your kids about eating.  Especially in today's environment where sweets and treats (read crap) are everywhere.  Rather than getting caught up in the control struggle, teach your kids to think BIG. Talk to them about proportion and how to integrate inferior foods into their diets in a way that works.  It's only by talking about sweets in context of the overall diet that kids can learn to manage their eating.  Read Have Your Cake and Eat It Too!

Still want to lighten the Halloween Load?

You could conduct a series of science experiments! 

• Which floats better: Skittles or M&Ms? 
• What happens when you dissolve Nerds in water and then add baking soda to the brew?

Check out Candy Experiments for more ideas.

Or use leftover candy to decorate Ginger Bread Houses.  This Mamapedia article is loaded with ideas.

There are a lot of over-the-top eating events during the course of the year. Halloween is just one of them.

The myth about Halloween is that this once-a-year candy-fest is a unique event in the scheme of things.   But Halloween isn’t the only time during the year when your kids are going to be bombarded with lots of free bonbons.  In a few weeks there will be Thanksgiving. Then Christmas and Hanukah.  New Year’s Eve. And then birthday parties, sporting events, school picnics, family reunions. And the list goes on…

These events are all eating orgies too. Teach your kids to cope or they might just explode.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~