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Strollerderby
A delicious bite of contraband.
Kids of St. Paul, Minn., load up on the cookies now. Because if you’re a student in a public school there, you’re going to have to go without sweets during those many long hours you’re on school grounds.
All public schools in the St. Paul school district will be, by the school year’s end, sweet-free zones. That means no more cookies, cinnamon rolls or cakes for dessert with school lunches. Little Debbie’s snack cakes will be confiscated from home lunches. And concessions for school fundraisers can’t include hot chocolate or brownies.
No birthday cupcakes. Continue reading »
But will the baby like fruit?
So, here’s yet another study to drive pregnant women crazy. Researchers at the University of Colorado said a mother’s food choice during pregnancy “sensitizes” the fetus to the taste and smell of those foods and “even shapes their brain development.”
The experiments were done on mice by Professor Josephine Todrank, now of the University of Haifa. As reported in the Daily Mail, the professor claims that there’s “no reason” to think that the food preferences shown by mice based on their mother’s prenatal diet would produce different results in humans. She goes on to say: “It is not yet clear how long these changes and preferences last, but we are currently investigating that question.”
Um, yes. We don’t know how long the preferences last, and while a healthy prenatal diet is important, can we please lay off the brain changing claims? Pretty Please?
Pregnancy is many things: a blessing, a romance, an hourglass. It’s also a time when a woman is essentially alone with the responsibility of nurturing a life. So what do we as a culture decide to do? Drive her crazy! Don’t eat goat cheese. Don’t eat deli turkey. Eat fish. Wait! Don’t! Eat! That! Fish!
I wrote a pregnancy book with a doctor named Joel Evans. Joel’s advice about diet remains incredibly sensible and boils down to this: Eat a reasonable diet. If you make healthy choices like eating whole grains, lots of fruits and vegetables, healthy proteins and fats, it’ll be better for you and make it easier for you to lose weight postpartum. It’s also better for the baby, sure. But don’t be fooled. Fetuses get the nutrients they need no matter what. So if you the pregnant mom aren’t eating enough calcium the baby will just take it from your bones. For more specific information on the influence of prenatal diet, check out Annie Murphy Paul’s book Origins.
Healthier school lunches? Of course!
After being held up yesterday by House Republicans who objected to increasing the amount spent on school lunches by SIX CENTS, the first legislation expanding school lunch programs in thirty years was voted into law yesterday. President Obama is expected to sign it quickly.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the new law would make 115,000 more children eligible for free or subsidized school lunches. It also provides an additional 29 million meals a year at after-school programs. In addition to increasing the budget for lunches, requiring more fruits and vegetable and whole grains, the bill eliminates junk food sold “a la carte or in vending machines,” and encourages schools to buy local food and plant school gardens. The bill was part of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign to fight childhood obesity and she called its passage an “overwhelming” victory. Of course, Sarah Palin will probably start a food fight over it.
Some, and not just the big mama grizzly, fault the bill as being too restrictive because it eliminates not only junk food sold regularly in school, but also limits school fundraisers. According to ABC, Alexa Marrero, spokeswoman for House Education and Labor committee Republicans is quoted as saying, the new rules “wouldn’t just apply to school meals but things like bake sales that are also used as fundraisers, or concessions sold at sporting events.”
Happy Meals Last Forever
McDonald’s Happy Meals have no shortage of critics — In April, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors in Silicon Valley voted in favor of effectively banning Happy Meals.
Then, in June the Center for Science in the Public Interest threatened McDonald’s with a lawsuit unless it stopped using toys to promote Happy Meals .
Meanwhile, San Francisco’s city board of supervisors is preparing to vote on an ordinance that would ban toys from McDonald’s Happy Meals.
On the upside, ongoing experiments show that Happy Meals seem to be indestructible. Continue reading »
No, that's not soft serve!
Need a reason to quit feeding your kid chicken nuggets? Or maybe something that will convince your child to stop ordering them. How about this picture? That pretty pink paste? Well, that’s your chicken nugget in the making.
Just in case you’re not afraid of something that looks like pink toothpaste, here’s a little background info, from Gizmodo: Continue reading »
Whether you breast or formula feed your baby, at some point you are going to have to introduce solid foods. There is no magic age at which this should happen, but the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends waiting at least until your baby can sit independently and grab for things to put in her mouth. This usually occurs between the ages of four and seven months.
In addition, the AAP suggests starting baby off with simple and healthy foods like rice cereal and oatmeal. Once that has been established, it is recommended that you add vegetables and then fruits to the menu.
Of course, we all do things a little bit differently and there’s no reason to judge a parent who introduces solids at a slightly earlier or later age or serves fruits before vegetables.
But what about parents who skip the healthy stuff altogether and start their infants off on cookies, juice and chips? According to recent Australian research, many parents are doing just that. Continue reading »
Do you really want to know what’s in a Twinkie?
There are some recognizable ingredients such as flour, sugar, water, eggs, whey and salt, but there are also others that are not only unrecognizable, but also nearly impossible to pronounce. So what are they exactly? Continue reading »
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