babble » blogs » Strollerderby
Strollerderby
What's going to go in this bag?
Am I the only one who regularly digs through her crisper only to find a fuzzy green pepper that started out red snuggled into a pile of brown parsley? Every once and a while we manage to eat all the fresh food I buy in a week, and when we do, it’s like I’ve climbed the Mt. Everest of home economics. But, given the food news this week, it’s time to buckle down and get serious about meal planning.
Why? Because this year’s drought in Russia and the growing demand for beef in China and India, which translates into a growing demand for grain, mean the cost of food is going up. And yet, on the whole, Americans don’t use 25 to 50 percent of the food we buy. What’s going on in our refrigerators?
Photo from the Pop-Tarts website. It's rife with images like this, and games for kids, teens and moms.
Get ready. This one’s a whopper. Yes, I’m looking at you cheeseburger and malted milk balls.
The Huffington Post reported this morning that new guidelines for marketing food to children have been proposed by an interagency working group including the FTC, FDA, CDC and USDA. The new marketing protocol would disallow foods that are, in a nutshell, not real food, to be pitched to kids. Awesome. So what’s the problem? Everyone has signed on except the USDA, which is most likely being lobbied by the food industry.
These healthy food standards were agreed upon at an interagency meeting held in December 2009 and were supposed to have been put into effect by February or March, though it’s unknown how long a time-frame the food industry would have been given to comply with the new regulations.
The interagency guidelines as to what constitutes real food and therefore would be unquestionably allowed to be marketed to kids are simple: 100% fruit, 100% vegetables, 100% non- and low-fat milk. But the description of foods that fall into a sort of pseudo-acceptable grey area are quite convoluted. Here are some descriptions of items – not specific items, just an ingredient list of sorts, that based on a passable percentage-level of actual food content, would be allowed to be marketed to minors. Sound confusing? It is.
Option A:
Food must contain at least 50% by weight of one or more of the following: fruit; vegetable; whole grain; fat-free or low-fat milk or yogurt; fish; extra lean meat or poultry; eggs; nuts and seeds; or beans.Option B:
Food must contain one or more of the following per RACC:
0.5 cups fruit or fruit juice
0.6 cups vegetables or vegetable juice
0.75 oz. equivalent of 100% whole grain
0.75 cups milk or yogurt; 1 oz. natural cheese; 1.5 oz. processed cheese
1.4 oz. meat equivalent of fish or extra lean meat or poultry
0.3 cups cooked dry beans
0.7 oz. nuts or seeds
1 egg or egg equivalent
So you’re telling me, as long as a processed food item contains one egg – or “egg equivalent” – or 1.5 ounces of processed cheese, it’s okay to market it to kids? Well, go hog wild advertising industry! Continue reading »
You wouldn’t send your child to school with a box full of paint to drink during lunch, but you may be inadvertently offering them lead on a daily basis. NPR News reports that ”A California environmental group has found amounts of lead in bottled juice, juice boxes and packaged fruit that exceed federal limits for young children.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics says there is no safe level of exposure to lead. There is no word on how the lead has entered the products.
Individual servings of “apple juice, grape juice, packaged peaches and pears and fruit cocktail” were tested by the Environmental Law Foundation and found to contain lead “above the daily limit for young kids.” That’s in a single serving – many children drink juice and eat packaged fruit throughout the day. Really makes you want to buy a juicer, no? My mother’s burning desire for a yogurt machine seems less ridiculous by the day.
Many popular major and private label brands were tested – including organics - and the offending companies might surprise you. Continue reading »
Caroline Campion, contributor to Babble’s The Family Kitchen, posted a piece today about discovering that a kindergartner in her elementary school was being sent with lunch consisting entirely of low-calorie, packaged, processed foods. In it she says that “the little girl was able to describe the calorie-counts of each item.”
She offers some valuable insight “as a long-time editor at several woman’s magazines,” discussing stories where ”eating disorders start with the writer describing a mother who was obsessed with fad diets—from grapefruit to South Beach—or put them on a diet at an early age.” I remember reading a similar story in Oprah magazine about Robin Marantz Henig and her daughter Jess Zimmerman. Robin spent Jessica’s childhood feeling ashamed that her daughter was fat. She says she “packed abstemious school lunches—half a sandwich, a fruit, no junk.” Experts say it’s best not to talk to your kids about dieting, and even though Henig was trying to keep her daughter’s weight in control (Zimmerman maintains that she is naturally fat), a piece of fruit is a much healthier choice than a 100-calorie cupcake. Continue reading »
Dear Michael Pollan,
One of my grandmother’s favorite foods is a marshmallow Peep, left out for a day so that it gets nice and crunchy. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what you had in mind when you suggested I never eat anything my grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food in your six simple tricks to feed your family right.
A small nutritional study out of Cornell University found that working parents often resort to time-saving coping strategies when it comes to feeding themselves and their families.
Can I get a “well, duh?”
With the exception of the foodies, most of the parents I know look into their fridge and dinner and think to themselves, “Okay, what’s the shortest path to a semi-nutritious meal?” It’s hard to think about preparing a major meal at the end of a long work day, with homework, bath, and bedtime still ahead.
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
The Walt Disney Company supports Babble as a platform dedicated to honest, engaged, informed, intelligent and open conversation about parenting. However, the opinions expressed on this site are those of individual parents/writers and do not reflect the views of Disney. In addition, content provided on this site is for entertainment or informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or safety advice.
7