What Is In Your Lunch Box?

I'm experiencing a love/hate reaction to Parenting.com's new Healthy Lunch Maker.  Have you seen this calculator?  

You drag a sandwich, snack and a drink into a lunch box, press calculate and the program spits out the nutrition profile of whatever is in the box.

"All the nutrition facts you need to pack tasty, healthy lunches for your child. Count calories, fat, sodium and more."

Test out Parenting.com’s Healthy Lunch Maker

I love the calculator because it's so much fun. 

No matter how much I think nutrition information leads parents astray—Read Why Nobody Needs Nutrition Labels— I can't resist nutrition gadgets.  I describe my problem, and how much fun I had shopping this summer with the Fooducate App, in Why I Feed My Daugther Inferior Food.

Plug a PB&J sandwich on wheat, an apple and a small carton of low-fat milk into the Healthy Lunch Maker, push calculate:

• Total calories = 466
• Fat=12g
• Sodium=450 mg
• Protein=19g

Fantastic! I spent an hour one day trying out different lunchtime combos.  That is the love part. Now to the hate part...

I hate the calculator because it's impossible to know what the information means. 

Is 466 calories a lot or a little? What about 12 grams of fat? 

And even if you look at the % daily value based on your child's age, which the program conveniently lets you punch in, the information that 12 grams of fat is 22% of your 3 year old's daily fat needs will only take you so far.  

Unless you're going to calculate every meal and every snack (something I don't think anybody would ever do) knowing that lunch is going to deliver 45% of your toddler's sodium intake is meaningless.  Sure, 45% seems high, but what if the rest of the day turns out to be basically sodium-free? That puts 45% into a healthier perspective.

Now, let's imagine that you could put together a magic meal, one that made the grade on all the key ingredients.

What would you do?

• Would you serve this perfect meal to your child over and over? That would narrow, rather than expand, your toddler's palate.
• Would you shy away from foods that don't make the grade? Or feel guilty when your tot eats anything short of the gold standard? That would make the "bad" but desirable foods even more desirable?

So again, I ask, what would you do?

As far as I can tell, the only useful thing you can do with any nutrition calculator is bust some myths.

• A PB&J sandwich, apple and carton of low-fat milk delivers 19 grams of protein or 172% of your 3 year old's daily protein needs. 
• The PB&J alone delivers 11 grams of protein or 100% of your 3 year old's protein needs.

Who knew?

What I take away from this is that most people worry more than they need to about protein intake. Indeed, if your 3 year old pounds down one small carton of milk, he'll take in 8 grams of protein, 72% of his daily needs.

There are other problems with using this, or any other, calculator. 

• It sticks to traditional lunch items (for obvious reasons) but doesn't let you put soup or salad into the box!
• You don't know how much of any one ingredient is calculated in the sandwhich. You might be heavier on the peanut butter or lighter on the jelly and then your numbers would all be off.
• You'll need another calculator to estimate what your toddler actually takes in: Do three bites constitute half a sandwich, a quarter, less?
• The % daily values are estimates based on a range of needs (with a point picked for mathematical reasons). On any given day your child might need more or less food based on activity level and growth patterns.

Instead of thinking primarily about nutrition, start focusing on your child's eating habits instead.

Read 10 Habits MORE Important Than Vegetable Eating.  Then, teach your tot to:

• Eat different foods on different days. Read House Building 101.
• Accept a wide range of tastes and texture. Read Training Tiny Taste Buds.
• Consume fresh, natural foods more often that processed and packaged one. Have Your Cake and Eat it Too!
• Use food for hunger and not for emotional reasons. Read Using Sweets to Soothe the Soul.

The nutrition part of the picture will fall into place—perfectly. I promise.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

Why I'm Not So Unhappy about the New Happy Meal

By now you’ve probably heard that McDonald’s is getting ready to roll out its new Happy Meal.  Nutritionists are not impressed.

Marion Nestle says, “If McDonald’s were serious, it could offer a truly healthier Happy Meal as the default and back it up with marketing dollars.”  Read Nestle’s complete statement.

Instead, the Happy Meal hoopla boils down to a meal that now will include:

• 3 or 4 slices of apple
• one ounce less of French Fries
• Less sodium

From a nutrition perspective, these changes don’t amount to a hill of beans.  But from a habits perspective, they’re worth considering.

It’s easy to scoff at the addition of 3 or 4 apple slices to the Happy Meal, but who else can so easily convince kids to eat apples?

I’m not saying that I wouldn’t like to see bigger changes.  Of course I would.  But I’m looking forward to seeing what happens when McDonald’s puts its branding might behind apples.

I’m sure you think most kids will eat the fries and dump the apples; don’t be so sure.  Branding shapes taste preferences.  (I guess that’s what a $10 billion advertising campaign can buy you!)

Check this out:

Researchers in California asked a group of preschoolers to taste two sets of carrots.  One set was placed on top of a McDonald’s French fries bag.  The other set was placed on a plain white bag.  What do you think happened?

The kids preferred the McDonald’s carrots.  Identical food.  Different packaging.

The researchers took McDonald’s French fries.  They placed some in a McDonald’s bag and some in a plain bag.  The preschoolers said the McDonald’s French fries tasted better—even though the plain bag fries were also McDonald’s fries.  Identical foods. Different packaging.

The same thing happened when the researchers presented the children with Chicken McNuggets and with milk: the kids thought the branded food tasted better.  (See, kids don’t really know what they like. They know what they think they like!  Read Mind over Matter.)

If McDonald’s can do this for apples…  

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

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Robinson, T. N., D. L. G. Borzekowski, D. M. Matheson, and H. C. Kraemer. 2011. “Effects of Fast Food Branding on Young Children's Taste Preferences.” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 161(8): 792-97.

Slackers Rule.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the time, the interest or the skills to track the nutrients my daughter consumes.  But even if I did, I’m much too lazy.  Quite frankly, just getting food into her multiple times each day is about all I can muster.  I’m a slacker.

That’s why all the nutrition advice out there is useless to me: Not only can’t I keep track of how many servings of vegetables my daughter is supposed to eat, I don’t even know how many vegetables are in a serving.  Do you?

And I have only one child.  I can’t imagine how someone with a brood keeps track of all the data:

• All those different ages translate into different calorie needs. 
• Different calorie needs translate into different serving sizes.
• On top of this, the nutrition approach also asks us to remember how much juice everyone drinks, how much spinach is in their slice of lasagna…

Maybe this is why we are all slackers.

Food manufacturers take advantage of slackers by selling us foods that appear to meet our children’s nutrition needs, but which ruin their habits instead.  Read How Brands Bite You in the Butt.

You can rule as a slacker.  All you have to do is change your approach.

There’s an easier – and more effective -- way than nutrition to feed kids: Just get the ratios right.

But it’s not the ratio of protein to carbs, of fats to fibers, or of processed to refined grains that you need to track. (That’s too taxing.)

You only have to consider one thing: Do your kids eat real food more often than they eat:

• Processed food-like substances (to borrow a phrase from Michael Pollan)
• Junk

Tweak the basic Healthy Food/Junk Food model most of us use when we’re making decisions on the fly.

Of course you know more about nutrition, but when pressed, most of us boil everything down to one thing: is it healthy or is it junky? So take what you're already doing and modify it like this:

Then, instead of thinking of Fun Foods as alternatives to Growing Foods, think of them as sharing time with the Treat Foods.

Most parents feed their children more Fun Food than anything else because it's easy.

From a nutrition perspective Fun Foods might not be so bad. (Although the more you know, the harder it is to believe that.)  Read: Are Chicken Nuggets Really Chicken?, Mac & Cheese Scores Again! and Is "Yogurt-Covered" Really Yogurt?

But from a habits perspective relying on Fun Foods is a disaster. These foods all point kids in the direction of junk. That's why they have to share time with the treats.  Read Cookies for Breakfast?

Contrary to popular advise, it's the habits, not the nutrition, that shape how your kids eat.

So be a slacker and forget about nutrition.  You'll be doing your kids a world of good.

For more on this read Why Nobody Needs Nutrition Labels and Nutrition by Numbers.

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~