Crackers & Juice, Chips & Soda

Want your kids to eat vegetables? Serve fewer salty snacks.

Here's the logic. Research shows that:

• Kids eat fewer vegetables when they drink sweetened beverages.
• Kids drink more sweetened beverages when they eat salty snacks.

Therefore, if you serve fewer salty snacks, your kids will drink fewer sugary beverages and, presto, they'll start eating more vegetables.

OK. It might not work that smoothly, but it's something to consider the next time you hand your toddler a bag of Goldfish crackers and an apple juice. 

• Goldfish have more sodium than some chips—Read Salt: The New Fat
• In terms of sugar, apple juice is up there with Coke—Read Coke Beats Juice.

I've written about the relationship between vegetable-eating and drinking sweetened beverages before.

Here's a refresher: Even after consuming only a small amount of the sweetened drink, the children were relatively disinterested in eating vegetables. 

Read about this study in Water vs. Punch and Soda.

Now, an Australian team has found that kids are more likely to seek out sugary drinks when they eat salty foods. 

Two findings, one obvious and one not so obvious:

• The more dietary salt a child has, the higher their fluid intake. (That's the no-brainer.)
• The more salt a child consumes, the greater their consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages.

Click here to read the article that recently appeared in Pediatrics.

Explanation 1

• Eating salty food makes people thirsty. 
• Thirsty people drink more. 
• Thirsty people who are used to sugary beverages drink more sugary beverages.

Explanation 2 

• People who drink sugar sweetened beverages often eat other unhealthy foods. Think hamburger, fries and a soda. It's a clustering effect. 

Explanation 3

• Kids who eat foods high in sugar, salt and fat—the basic “Child-friendly”  diet—end up seeking out these kinds foods in order to achieve a “flavor-hit.”  They’re going for the high!

I wrote about this in the post Toddler Used to Eat Vegetables.

Other things you should know about salt and sugary beverages from this study: 

• Salt intake increases with age.
• Intake of sugar-sweetened beverages increases with age.
• 62% of Australian children consume sugar-sweetened beverages; 80% of American children do.
• Children who consume more than one sugar-sweetened beverage per day are 26% more likely to be overweight or obese (but only if the kids also aren't exercising).

One more thing...the effects reported here are small, but... 

• Tthe researchers were only looking at the relationship between salty foods and sugary drinks. If they had looked at the whole diet, I believe they would have found the full effect of salty foods on eating habits.
• Kids graduate from crackers to chips, and from juice to soda.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~ 

Salt: The New Fat

It used to be that every time you opened a newspaper or magazine, turned on the television or the radio, you heard about the dangers of eating too much fat.  Well, now it’s sodium.

According to a recent New York Times article, researchers have concluded that if everyone consumed ½ a teaspoon less salt per day, there would be between 54,000 and 99,000 fewer heart attacks each year and between 44,000 and 92,000 fewer deaths.

So what’s that got to do with kids?  The taste for salt (or I should say, the salty habit) starts in childhood.

Sodium is everywhere and it’s wreaking havoc with your kids’ taste buds.

Most nutritionists recommend that 1-3 year olds limit their daily sodium to 1000 – 1200 mg, though the USDA more generously says to keep kids' sodium intake below 1500 mg.

Most people think of potato chips as the standard for salt, and chips certainly are salty.

• One bag of Lay’s Classic Potato Chips (1 7/8 oz) contains 330 mg of sodium.

But do you know how salty your kids' food really is?

• 1 small, milk-carton size box Cheddar Goldfish crackers (2 oz) = 500 mg.
• 1 slice of a 12 inch cheese pizza from Pizza Hut = 520 mg.
• 1 Oscar Mayer hot dog = 540 mg.
• 1 serving of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese = 610 mg.
• 1 Bruegger’s bagel with cream cheese = 660 mg (bagel=560 mg, cheese=100mg).

You would be better off giving your kids a daily dose of Nacho Cheese Doritos. 

• 1 bag = 180 mg

Or Pepperidge Farm Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. 

• One cookie = 90 mg.

Of course, you would never do that because you wouldn’t want your kids form those kinds of habits.  And that’s the point.

You don’t have to read nutrition labels to reduce your kids’ intake of sodium.

You simply have to ...

• Feed your kids real food most of the time.

• Limit processed foods to once or twice per day.  (Let your kids choose which ones they eat and when they have them to reduce control struggles.)

Not only will this strategy reduce your kids’ intake of sodium, but it will make them more willing to eat fruits and vegetables.  That's because when you reduce the salt threshold your kids are accustomed to, they’ll be more open to different flavors, including items that are less salty -- like apples.  It’s all about their habits. 

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

Goldfish vs. Bunnies

Did you know that Campbell spends around $16 million per year to promote Pepperidge Farm Goldfish?  Maybe that’s why there was such a big response to my recent post on snacking (Think Snack TIME not Snack FOOD). 

• We LOVE Goldfish!!!
• We’re all disappointed that Cheddar Goldfish only get a NuVal score of 24. 

Remember, NuVal scores out of 100 for top nutrition.

Some people, of course, wondered how Annie’s Organic Cheddar Bunnies compare.  Sadly…

• Annie’s Organic Cheddar Bunnies get a NuVal score of 6.

Click to read more ...