Cheez is Healthy.

I've never had a guest post before, but my 9 year old daughter, knowing that I was stressed about some upcoming deadlines, wrote the following blog.  I love it (and her for wanting to help me).  Here's a little heads up: check out my note after the post to find out what is behind my daughter's comment about bugs.

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Cheese is healthy but cheez isn't.  Motzarella, cheddar, montery jack, and swiss are all cheese but what is that stuff called cheez?  Cheez is what you find in cheeze whiz, processed chemicals with a perfume for smell and chemicals for flavor, even the color doesn't strike true.

At least the color in cheez whiz isn't made of bugs.  Some red or purple food deyes are made with ground up bugs! All the words on the outside aren't anything close to what's on the inside. Of course the ingredients tell all.  If a list of ingredients is long in any product it is probably unhealthy, but if the list is short, for instance, there is one ingredient in banana and that is bananas, it is definitely healthy.

Nothing is better than a fruit or a vegetable.  Your daughter is home from school and she want's a snack.  You want to leave soon so you put some cheez on a cracker and say to yourself, she is getting some grains and some dairy. Instead,  you could grab an apple and say to yourself it's an apple it's healthy.

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My daughter makes her momma proud!

What's the takeaway?  Eat real foods, don't con yourself into thinking something is healthy by parsing the nutrients, stay away from food made from bugs. (I couldn't have said it better myself!)

I want to say one other thing: My daughter hears a lot about food and eating in our house (in fact, it's impossible for her to avoid it), and sometimes I worry that it's too much.  But then the other day I walked into the kitchen and she was reading my copy of Chew on This by Eric Schlosser & Charles Wilson.  I hadn't even cracked the cover yet!

The bugs in the food dye that she is referring to comes from pages 121-122:

One of the most widely used color additives comes from an unexpected source. Cochineal extract (also known as carmine or carminic acid)) is made from the dead bodies of small bugs harvested mainly in Peru and the Canary Islands. The female Dactylopius coccus costa likes to feed on cactus pads, and color from the cactus gathers in her body and her eggs. The little bugs are collected, dried, and ground into a coloring additive. It takes about 70,000 of the insects to make a pound of carmine, which is used to make processed foods look pink, red, or purple. Dannon strawberry yogurt gets its color from carmine, as do many candies, frozen fruit bars, fruit fillings, and Ocean Spray pink grapefruit juice drink.

By the way, Boysenberry, Cherry, Raspberry and Strawberry Cheesecake Dannon yogurts also get their coloring courtesy of bugs!  Yum!!

To see my take on processed foods read The Ingredients Game and The 10 Most "Dangerous" Foods.

~Changing the conversation from adults to kids. ~ 

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 Magic of Yogurt

Want a magic pill to get your kids to try new foods?

Here it is… YOGURT! Yes, you can teach your children to eat new foods using only yogurt.

I’ve written about yogurt before, about how great plain yogurt is (and how bad sweetened yogurt is) for teaching kids to eat right -- Read Yogurt vs. Coke, But Plain Yogurt is Gross, Yogurt on the Brain.  

Even still, I never realized before how many things you can do with plain yogurt, and as a result, what a boon it is for parents: you can use the same old food your children already love and eat to expand their repertoire, just by switching things up.

Cindy at Fix Me a Snack is on a mission to develop 101 recipes for yogurt.  She’s up to 80 and all I can say is you’ve got to check this out!  Read the list.

Last night I made a version of the Rhubarb Mango Yogurt (#51), only I used frozen blueberries instead of the mango.  Everyone loved it.

But the recipe I can't wait to try is the Banana Coconut Pie Yogurt (#65).

Look at it.  Doesn't it look yummy?  It's made with mashed banana, coconut extract, shredded coconut and plain yogurt. Brilliant!

The imagination, the creativity and the variety on this list are amazing.  Reading through the recipes, it hit me: You could teach your kids to eat new foods using only yogurt.

Here's how it would work:

1) Start with the recipe that you’re sure will be a winner.  

Look over the list with your child and pick the recipe that looks the best.  Not the healthiest. Not the most creative.  The best. 

Consider the Banana Toffee Yogurt (#61). Or the Smore Yogurt (#79) pictured here. It's made with graham crackers, chocolate sauce, marshmallows and plain yogurt.

2) Next, move onto a yogurt that might be a little more challenging, but stay in the Love Domain.

Consider the Cinnamon Toast Yogurt (#73), the Jamtacular Yogurt (#77) or the Banana Nut Butter Honey Yogurt (#12).

By now, your child will probably be thinking that this new food thing is alright!

3) Then, as people of my generation used to say, “Keep on Truckin'."

• Nutty Yogurt (#69)

• Yogurt Salad (#46), made with cucumbers. (Pictured here.)

• Garbanzo Bean Yogurt (#49)

• Avocado Yogurt with Fresh Mango (#39)

One day you might even find yourself trying out #50! (If you do, let me know how it goes.)

Why this strategy will work:

1) It will get two ideas into your child’s head. The first is that plain yogurt is a good food.  The second is that new foods aren’t always bad, boring and healthy.  Training the brain is just as important as training the taste buds.  Read Mind Over Matter.

2) The familiarity of keeping one dimension of the dish constant – the yogurt – helps reluctant children feel comfortable trying new foods because it helps them know what to expect.  Read Look Into My Crystal Ball.

3) Alternating what goes into the yogurt doesn’t just alter the taste, it alters the texture, the aroma, the appearance and even the temperature.  Mixing up these sensual properties is a huge part of learning to eat new foods.  Read For Extreme Fruit and Vegetable Avoiders....

Half the battle of getting kids to eat new foods is teaching them that "new" can be fun, exciting, and, yes, tasty. 

I’ve contributed some recipes to the list, but that’s not why I’m so enthusiastic about Cindy’s project.  I love it because it offers 101 ways to accomplish one of the most important components of learning to eat right... trying new foods.

But you don't have to stick with just the yogurt. Here's another way to introduce new: try some of Cindy's interesting presentation methods: The fish bowl (#30), the parfait glass (#61), and the bear bowl (#68).  Read Make "New" Work for You.

Get your kids in the new groove and before you know it, they'll start complaining when you go back to the old standards. Now that's a problem to behold.

 ~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~