The (Chocolate) Milk Mistake

If you give your kids chocolate milk to get them to drink milk you would be better off giving them a glass of plain milk and a Dunkin' Donuts Chocolate Frosted Donut.

The total sugar intake would be slightly lower (although a few grams more or less hardly makes a difference).

• One cup of lowfat chocolate milk has around 28g of sugar (depending upon the brand).
• One glass of plain, lowfat milk has 12g of sugar.  Add a Dunkin Donuts Chocolate Frosted Donut (13g) for a total of 25g. 

 More importantly, the milk and donut option will teach your kids 2 important lessons:

1. What real milk tastes like.
2. That the sweet part -- the donut -- is a treat.

In contrast, chocolate milk teaches kids that: 

1. Plain stuff isn't tasty, but chocolate certainly is.
2. Somehow, mixing milk with chocolate negates the chocolate, rendering the whole drink healthy. 

Chocolate milk should be an occasional treat, not a daily (or even weekly) staple.

I know what you’re saying: Some of the sugar in chocolate milk comes from the milk itself.

But that just drives home the point that milk is already sweet.  Why sweeten it even more?

And: You're worried about your children’s calcium intake.

There’s really no need to worry.   Kids 1-3 only need about 500mg of calcium per day.  That can be fulfilled in lots of ways:

• 2 cups of milk
• a cup of milk and some cheddar cheese
• 1 cup of milk and 1 container of YoBaby Organic Whole Milk Yogurt.  (Want to sweeten the yogurt up? Read The Magic of Yogurt for ideas.)

There is also calcium in spinach, tofu, salmon, pudding, ice cream and a myriad of fortified cereals and juices. Read the National Institute of Health’s Calcium Fact Sheet.

Ironically, giving your kids chocolate milk on a regular basis because you're worried about their calcium intake will ultimately reduce their calcium intake. Training tiny taste buds to prefer sweet foods reduces the range of foods your kids will eat, thereby reducing the sources of calcium (other than chocolate milk) that they consume.

Just how sweet is chocolate milk?  Compared to the 28g of sugar in one cup of chocolate milk…

• One Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar = 24g of sugar.
• One serving of Cocoa Krispies has 12g of sugar.
• 2 Entenmann’s Softees Powdered Donuts = 26g of sugar.
• One Dairy Queen Child’s Chocolate Cone = 17g of sugar.
• One Dairy Queen Child’s Chocolate Cone with Rainbow Sprinkles = 22g of sugar.
• One Dairy Queen Child’s Chocolate Cone with Oreo Pieces = 28g of sugar.
• An apple fritter at Starbucks = 27g of sugar.
• One 12-ounce can of 7UP = 25g of sugar. 
• 6 Oreo Cookies = 28g of sugar.
• 1 large Pepperidge Farm Soft Baked Chocolate Chunk Dark Chocolate Brownie = 13g of sugar. 

Of course, if you give your children the 16-ounce bottle of Nesquik chocolate milk (58g of sugar) -- which your tot will probably drain since research shows that the container size determines consumption-- you might as well give your kids a McDonald's Hot Caramel Sundae: it has only 44g of sugar.

The fallacy of using the nutrition model to feed kids is that it encourages something I call Selective Attention and the Feel Better Approach: we focus on the dimension of food that makes us feel better (in this case the calcium) and overlook the dimension we would rather ignore (the sugar).

Unfortunately, good eating habits can't be shaped that way because it's the desirable, not the nutritious, aspect of food which shapes how our kids really eat.

Chocolate begets more chocolate; it never leads to carrots. Or spinach. Or tofu -- unless it's Tofutti Chocolate Supreme (with 8g of sugar per 1/2 cup).

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

For more on chocolate milk read Chocolate Milk vs. Chocolate Bars: The 10 Most "Dangerous" Foods.

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All websites accessed 7/27/10 

The 10 Most "Dangerous" Foods

I want to be clear: the items on this list aren't dangerous in the sense that they are poisonous.

But they are dangerous in the sense that they poison your children's eating habits.

Danger #1: Regularly eating any of these items will constrict rather than expand the range of foods your children will accept.

Nothing on the list looks, smells, tastes or feels like any of the new foods you're always coaxing your kids to eat. This matters because kids eat foods with sensory properties they're used to.  Instead of introducing new tastes and textures, the foods on this list reinforce the ones your kids already enjoy.  They're all...

• Bland or Sweet
• Liquid/non-chewable goo or Chewy/Crunchy

Danger #2: These foods all point your children's taste buds in the direction of the junk you're trying to control.

When "healthy" foods mimic junk they encourage your children to eat more junk. For instance...

• Chocolate milk has more sugar than some chocolate bars and drinking it regularly teaches kids to like chocolate, not milk.
• Oatmeal breakfast bars taste more like cookies than oatmeal (and are usually less nutritious than oatmeal cookies). 

Danger #3: These foods trick YOU into teaching your kids these foods are healthy.

These items seem to pass nutritional muster -- if barely -- and because you've got your eyes on monitoring vegetables and junk, these items slip right by.  

Even worse, because these foods (and I use the term loosely) seem "good enough" (even though they're really not) they fill in for healthier fare, and that's what we teach our kids. Who hasn't made their kids finish their mac & cheese, their pizza, or their bagel (because it's the "good" stuff) before moving on to dessert?

"Dangerous" Foods can be used safely, they just have to be used sparingly.

• Be Unpredictable: Make sure there's a gap of at least one day between "uses" so your kids don't expect these items as daily fare.
• Be Selective: Don't use more than 1 or 2 items from the list on any one day.
• Be Choosy: Consider these items as stand-ins for junk (even if they're healthier) and then let your kids choose between these foods and the junk they clamor for. Make it sweet yogurt or ice cream, chocolate milk or cookies...

10 Most "Dangerous" Foods (in no particular order):

1) Cheese Read What's the Problem with Cheese?

2) Sweet Yogurt Read Yogurt vs. Coke

3) "Healthy" crunchy snacks like veggie chips, pretzels or Goldfish crackers. Read Goldfish vs. Bunnies and Potato Chips Win Again!

4) Bagel and Cream Cheese Read The Snacking Minefield and Manna from Heaven.

5) Granola or Breakfast Bars Read Cookies for Breakfast?!

6) Chocolate Milk Read Chocolate Milk vs. Chocolate Bars and Chocolate-Flavored Formula Rocks!

7) Juice Read Training Tiny Taste Buds

8) Sports Drinks Read Soccer Moms, BEWARE!

9) Pizza Read Pizza and Peas: The Untold Story.

10) Macaroni & Cheese Read Mac & Cheese Scores Again!

You may have a slightly different group of dangerous foods, but if you're having trouble getting your kids to eat something exotic (like tuna, tomatoes or turnips) evaluate the foods you feed them on a regular basis.

And then start mixing it up. Read House Building 101.

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

The Dregs of All the Drinks

Eat This, Not That! just came out with their list of the 20 Worst Drinks in America 2010. It's going to blow your mind.

You should read the list. But be warned: You’re not going to be happy.  (Do you really need to know that the worst drink in America has over 2000 calories and 153 grams of sugar?)

The 20 Worst Drinks in America 2010 is fascinating to read for a couple of reasons.  It highlights:

• How big the servings are. More than half the beverages that made the list are sold in containers bigger than 20 ounces.  Only 1 drink on the list comes in 12 ounces (and it’s a beer).

• How much sugar the drinks contain.  The seven 20-ounce beverages on the list have an average of 75 grams of sugar each. (To put that in perspective, 1/2 cup of Aunt Jemima syrup has only 64 grams of sugar.)

• How no drink category remains unscathed from the effects of added sugar.  Even water is sometimes tainted.

You won’t believe how much sugar your kids are consuming with these beverages. 

Get this:  According to Eat This, Not That! your kids would have to eat 7 bowls of Froot Loops to take in the 81 grams of sugar they get from drinking one 23-ounce can of Arizona Kiwi Strawberry (#12 Worst Juice Imposter).   

And each 20-ounce bottle of Tropicana Tropical Fruit Fury Twister  (#14 Worst Kids’ Drink) contains as much sugar – 60 grams – as two 7-ounce canisters of Reddi-wip.

If you have small children they’re probably not drinking 23 ounces of anything.  But it doesn’t matter how much your kids consume because every sip tastes just as sweet.

And it’s the taste that matters.

Every time you give your kids a sugary beverage you are training their tastebuds.  The sweeter the beverage, the sweeter your kids expect everything to be. 

Good luck getting your kids to eat broccoli after they’ve sucked down even a small glass of SoBe Green Tea (#19 Worst Bottled Tea).  Just 5 ounces (smaller than a medium-sized juice box) has the sugar equivalent of — and tastes as sweet as — one slice of Sara Lee Cherry Pie.  (Drinking the whole bottle is equivalent to eating 4 slices, or 1/2 a pie.)

Think regular juice boxes -- apple, grape, punch -- are a better deal?

Ounce for ounce they tend to have more sugar than Coke.  Sure, they've been fortified with Vitamin C, and in 4-6 ounce boxes they're a more reasonable size, but it's the sweetness that shapes your kids' habits.  So pay attention to how often you give your children sweet flavors and make sure they don't dominate their drinking (or eating) diet.

Read Juice: Apple, Grape, Punch and Coke Beats Juice.

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

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Source: http://eatthis.menshealth.com/slideshow/20-worst-drinks-america-2010#title accessed 5/24/10; http://www.auntjemima.com/aj_products/syrups/orginal.cfm accessed 5/24/10.