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.~ 

Spirituality & Health: Health Halo Foods Can Ruin Your Habits

I am thrilled to appear in this month's edition of Spirituality & Health.

My article, Why Some Health Foods Aren't So Healthy After All, makes two points:

• The nutrition on many popular items isn't all it's cracked up to be.
• You have to consider habits before slurping up too many smoothies, or nose-diving into a bowl of kale chips.

Perhaps you've heard me say these things before?

Did you know: One-half cup of Breyers Natural Vanilla Ice cream has 14 grams of sugar?

Measuring by volume, a comparable serving of Dannon All Natural Vanilla Yogurt has around 17 grams of sugar. 

Did you know: One 12-ounce Odwalla Mango Tango Fruit Smoothie has more sugar than a 12-ounce serving of Coca-Cola (44 g versus 39 g), and as much sugar as nine Oreo cookies.

Here’s a radical thought: it’s not whether you choose the smoothie or the Oreos that matters. What matters is how you fit smoothies (and the Oreos if you like) into your overall diet.  What’s more, the presence (or absence) of a single nutrient shouldn’t sway your decision, because it’s the total food experience that shapes your habits.

You know I believe there's a place in your kids' diets for everything.

And maybe you're surprised that I would advocate Oreos over Odwalla. Read the rest of the article and tell me what you think.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~ 

Dean Ornish on Dieting: Lessons for Parents

Calories are not all the same.  Being thin doesn't mean you're healthy. And, it matters what you eat.

Those were the messages at the heart of Dean Ornish's op-ed piece, published in The New York Times last weekend. 

The New York Times

Ornish was writing in response to a study, published earlier this year that showed that following a low-carb Atkins-type diet might be a fast way to lose weight.  

Ornish made the following points: 

• "Being thin and being healthy are not the same thing. Some diets may help you lose weight but they won't keep you healthy."
• "A low-carb diet increases metabolic rates because it's stressful to the body.  Just because something increases your metabolic rate doesn't mean it's good for you.  Amphetamines will also increase your metabolism and burn calories faster, which is why they are used to help people lose weight, at least temporarily. But they stress your body and may mortgage your health in the progress."
• "What you eat is important as what you exclude—your diet needs to be high in healthful carbs like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes..." The list (and you know what it is) goes on.

So what's this got to do with feeding kids? I think Ornish has tapped into an important point.  

The nutrition mindset has led us to believe, not just that a calorie is a calorie, but that nutrients are nutrients and that it doesn't really matter how we get them.

Giving kids apple juice because it's been fortified with Vitamin C is a good example of this mentality. There are other reasons to give kids juice, i.e. it's a tasty treat.  But because it's been fortified with Vitamin C?

It doesn't make sense from a nutrition perspective. It also doesn't make sense from a habits perspective. 

Read Coke Beats Juice and Water vs. Punch and Soda.

Our cultural obsession with nutrition makes parents susceptible to feeding practices that send their kids' habits in the wrong direction.

That's how parents end up feeding their kids Veggie Pirate's Booty for the spinach, or chocolate milk for the calcium.  Both send kids' habits soaring away from real fruits and vegetables and healthy dairy products and towards junk.

Chocolate milk often has more sugar than a chocolate bar.  Read Chocolate Milk vs. Chocolate Bars.

But it's also the nutrition mindset that propels parents to dumb-down snacks.

They save "nutrition" for mealtimes.  Read Do No Harm Snacking

According to Ornish:

"About 75% of the $2.8 trillion in annual healthcare costs in the United States is from chronic diseases that can often be reversed or prevented altogether by a healthy lifestyle. If we put money and effort into helping people make better food and exercise choices, we could improve our health and reduce the cost of healthcare."

But let's not wait until people need help dieting. Let's help people get it right from the get-go.  Ironically, that means paying more attention to habits than to nutrition.  After all, it's habits (not nutrition) that dictate what people—even little people— choose to eat.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~