Volume Discount. Or, Stop Playing With Your Food!

We’ve been mislead about how to have a healthy relationship with food. For some reason, we’ve been taught to think that “good” or “healthy” eating and nutrition is about getting the largest volume of food into our stomachs with the least amount of calories. I am not sure where this trend started, but it’s definitely perpetuated in our food marketing, media, and a lot of nutrition advice.  Our society’s idea of nutrition has become about how much sheer volume we can pack into ourselves without “exceeding calories.”

This is not a healthy way to eat. It’s not a healthy relationship for our nation to have with food. If it were, we wouldn’t have the skyrocketing obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other lifestyle-related disease rates we do today. The answer is simple, but it goes against the unfortunate American value that “bigger is better,” and the more you have the more you’re worth. Ergo, the more you can eat and stay “skinny,” the better you are, the healthier you must be.

There are many reasons that most people who lose weight put it back on, but one of the biggest is this: they have not changed their relationship with food and food culture. We’ve gotten used to feeling “full” all the time, and believing that it is necessary and good to feel this way. That we should be able to eat large amounts of food without gaining weight. That we all “deserve” to be able to eat whatever we want, whenever we want, and that it’s nutritionally reasonable to poke, pull, and tweak foods to fit into what we want them to be instead of what they are.  That we should be able to eat the way we want to eat, instead of the way we need to eat, without consequences. All of this despite demonstrable evidence that it’s a failing formula.

The fix for this is simple, and the more research that is done, the more it’s holding up: eat quality, whole, nutrient-dense foods, and eat them in an appropriate quantity.

A skin-on, bone-in chicken breast has only 50 or so more calories than it does skin off, and only about 2.5g saturated fats.* If you’re watching your weight, the answer isn’t to skin your chicken to save 50 calories, it’s to eat less chicken or do more exercise. In my last series about nutrition rules, you’ll note I said eat more veggies, and stop eating whole cuts of meat as frequently. Why? Because it makes far more sense to eat more vegetables and get the fiber and nutrients, while eating less meat and dairy but still getting the complete and natural fats, than it does to find “work-arounds.”

But what about those FDA “portion” sizes? It’s important to remember those are generalizations (and, frankly, bad ones). For a smaller/shorter person, a reasonable portion is much less. For a taller/larger person, much more.   Yes, as a small person I’ll be able to eat less skin-on chicken or whole milk than my partner, who is extremely tall, will be able to eat. And, that’s okay. It’s okay to eat less food, or less than than an “FDA” portion of a certain food. It’s okay to stock up on green veggies and take a smaller portion of the whole higher-calorie whole food, of which more and more studies are showing that removing nutrients (including fat) has detrimental effects (or, at the very least, removes potential beneficial effects and essential nutrients). Saturated fats are now being shown to help balance HDL and LDL cholesterol, for example. Which doesn’t mean an overabundance of saturated fats are good for you, either. Again, the answer is simply to eat it, just eat less of it.

This isn’t a new or even radical viewpoint on my part. Pretty much this same thing has been said in countless works on the subject, including the best-selling “French Women Don’t Get Fat.”  French cuisine isn’t exactly known for it’s use of skim milk, margarine, or skinned chicken. Yet, despite it being a best-seller and making the talk-show rounds, eating habits in the US have not changed. We still demand larger and larger portions, and try to find ways to make those portions contain less and less calories.

And yet, as a nation we continue to wonder why we’re getting fatter and sicker.

(Author’s note: Any inflammatoy/name-calling/trolling posts or off-topic vegan/paleo/locavore/whatever proselytizing comments will be deleted.)

* Info from Julie Upton, dietician writing in “Eating Light” magazine. I don’t have this online, so you’ll need to find the issue for yourself.

Back to Basics: Nutrition Rule #8

Plan your meals.

This is something to start small with, but it’s a very necessary step for most people who want to eat a healthful diet based on whole foods.

WHY

-Eating spontaneously leads to poor food choices. When we’re hungry, we don’t usually want to fuss with making something that might take a bit of preparation, we just want to eat.

-Meal planning means have all your ingredients to-hand, while eating on the go means more shopping trips, which make it easier to overspend on groceries and make less ideal food choices.

-It gives you a road map for food preparation, so you can plan time to eat healthfully and meet your nutritional goals.

-It relieves a lot of the stress around meals. Once you get used to doing this, meal times become much more fun and easygoing than having to come home from work, figure out what you’re going to make, run to the store, and then try to cook everything in 15 minutes so you’re not eating at 9PM.

HOW

-Start small. Make a list of 10-14 dinners (depending on how your weekends usually go) that you (and your family) will eat. This is your starting point. Some people, such as ourselves, like to decide which meals will go on which nights. We tend to have kind of erratic schedules, so it helps us to plan who is cooking on what night, what meals will best fit our available preparation time, etc. But, some people do just find with having weekly dinners set up and the groceries purchased, and deciding between those meals each night. Find what works for you.

-Once you have this laid out, you can start adding or switching dinners to your lists each week. Use your meal lists to make your grocery lists.

-Each week, look at your list and assess how healthful the dinners are. If they could use some tweaking, try to do one or two meals a week with simple things, like adding a vegetable or switching from white to brown rice. This makes the transitions a bit easier than trying to do it all at once.

-Allow children who are old enough to help with the plan. They’re more likely to eat healthful foods if they help plan and prepare them!

-Once you’ve got the hang of making a dinner plan, try either breakfasts or lunches, whichever makes more sense for you. We plan most of our dinners to give us leftovers for lunches, which works well for us, but it may not work as well for others.

This will take some getting used to. Most of us are used to eating on the fly, and eating “what we’re in the mood for.” Unfortunately, that’s one of the ways we’ve gotten to be such an unhealthy nation, and it needs to change. Make a solid family commitment to meal plan for at least one month of dinners, and by the end of it, you may find yourself thinking “how did I do this any other way?”

Related articles

• Back to Basics, Nutrition Rule 4 (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)
• Back to Basics: Nutrition Rule 2 (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)
• Stop Complicating Things. Eating Well Isn’t Magic. (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)
• Back to Basics: Nutrition Rule #6 (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)
• Regular Family Meals Promote Kids’ Nutrition (livescience.com)

Back to Basics: Nutrition Rule 2

Rule 2, eat whole foods, is pretty directly related to Rule 1.  Whole foods are unprocessed and unrefined foods, things that come as-is from mother nature, such as whole fruits, vegetables, legumes, dairy, eggs, and meat, or that are minimally processed, like oats and brown rice.

Ideally, no ingredient labels should be necessary, because a green pepper should have nothing it but green pepper. But, some things, like sour cream, will have more than just “sour cream,” (I really wish that wasn’t the case, but it is). Look for foods with no more than 5 ingredients, none of which you cannot pronounce, and none of which you couldn’t get at home. No High Fructose Corn Syrup, MSG (monosodium glutamate), etc.

Why is this Rule #2?

-Whole foods almost always have fewer calories than processed foods.

-They also almost always have far more nutrients,  including immune boosters, to keep you healthy.

-Whole fruits and vegetables contain a lot of fiber. This not only helps keep you full and regulate blood sugar, it also makes sure things pass through your body in a timely manner, lowering your risk of certain cancers (or, the less polite way to put it: it keeps you regular, and if you’re not emptying your bowels at least once a day, you really need to up your fiber intake).

-They don’t contain additives that are going to make you fatter, hungrier, or more likely to develop cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension, or all the other crappy-food related illnesses that are skyrocketing today.

-They trigger a “satiety” feeling that processed foods usually do not, so you’ll eat less and fell fuller, longer.

-You prepare them at home, so you can control what goes into your food. This means you can cut excess calories, preservatives, and chemicals.

Eating whole foods does require some forethought and preparation, but eating shouldn’t be automatic and easy. What goes into your body profoundly affects your health, and deserves a lot more consideration than Americans tend to give it (hence, the booming rate of obesity and related issues).

Related Articles

• Back to Basics Series: Rule 1 (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)
• Stop Complicating Things. Eating Well Isn’t Magic. (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)

The School Lunch Nanny State Rant

Image via Wikipedia

Let’s just say it like it is, and stop pussyfooting around, shall we?

This whole “Oh, no, the government setting up better nutrition standards for my kid’s lunches is a Nanny State!”  is complete crap. You want to know what a Nanny State is? It’s one where our schools provide any food to kids. Actually, it’s having public schools at all. Our schools spend 8 hours a day being nannies to our nation’s children: they teach them, they discipline them, they socialize them, and yes, they feed them. That is pretty much the definition of “nanny,” folks. (If you want to argue everyone should therefore home school, get your own blog and do it there.) Our country agreed to a “Nanny State” in this regard a long time ago, for the social good of having an educated populace. Our society also agreed that the schools would provide food to the children they were educating, for the same reason.

You can argue that our schools shouldn’t be providing food for kids at all. There’s an argument to be made for that (not one I necessarily agree with, but one that can at least can be logically made–just don’t make it here, that’s a whole different issue).  But, if you believe that it’s a public school’s job to provide children with food during the school day, you therefore cannot be against them “controlling” what your child can eat. Why not? Follow me here, because it can’t be any clearer:

THEY ALREADY DO THAT!

And they have to do that. There’s literally no way to not do it.  How do those people screaming that their rights as parents are being taken away because their kid no longer gets chocolate milk in the lunch line suppose food gets into those cafeterias? Someone, somewhere, in some form of public, governmental office, decides what company gets the food contracts and what the menus for schools will be. Ergo, that person or persons (or policies set by them) are controlling what’s in the cafeteria, and therefore what children are eating. This isn’t rocket science. Food has to be purchased, and someone has to decide what gets purchased. Anything not purchased is, by definition, excluded. Someone not the child’s parent is making that decision already.

So, following through, the government already controls what your kid is getting at school and “violating parent’s rights.” Somehow, offering chocolate milk and pizza makes this less of a violation? Does it really make sense that this control should be used to teach kids bad eating habits, to feed them food that is provably unhealthy and that puts them at risk for poorer learning and future disease? Really? A parent could just as easily yell and berate the system as a “Nanny State” that is violating their rights because the school doesn’t provide organic, dye-free, free-range scrambled eggs. Or not offering gluten-free or vegan meals.

As a society, we’ve also agreed that we have a responsibility to protect and nurture children, even if their parents do not, or cannot, do so. Again, there’s an argument to be made against this, but unless you’re also arguing against Social Services, police intervention in child abuse, etc., you’re cherry picking (and if you are arguing against all those things, it’s way outside the scope of this blog, so move along).  Doesn’t it follow that, since we believe (and have legislated as such) that the government does have a role in protecting and nurturing children, that it has the responsibility to make decisions about those children with their best interest in mind? It’s hard to find a reasonable argument that chocolate milk, processed,  and sugar-laden foods are in anyone’s best interest, especially children’s.

Let’s recap, just for those who haven’t gotten it yet:

1. School lunches are already government controlled.

2. Schools, meaning government, decides what food goes into those cafeterias for kids to eat simply be deciding what food will be purchased and what food will not.

3. There IS NO CHOICE for the government to provide food without proving control.Your choices are for schools to provide healthier options with higher nutrition value, lower sugar, and less processing, or unhealthy options low in nutrients and high in known problem substances like sugar.

Here’s the truth: either you fight against school lunches being provided at all because you believe governmental interference is violating parent’s rights by dictating what food is available to children, or you fight for better quality food. Fighting for the government to limit your child’s food options to junk is just irresponsible.

 

Side note: I read a comment recently that said “vote with your dollars! If you stop buying school lunches, then they’ll have to change them.” People are so very out of touch with reality.  Children who receive free or discounted lunches can’t exactly stop buying lunches and pack their own. They’re poor, which is why they’re getting the free or discounted lunches. They don’t have the money, and often don’t have the parental involvement, to pack their own lunches. A 7-year-old can’t go to the store with his mom’s food stamps and get healthy options to pack in his lunch, even if he understand what those might be. So, effectively, this commenter believes that wealthier kids should have good food available for the government, but if you’re too poor to protest financially, you’re screwed. Nice.

Related Articles

• Berkeley School Lunch Program: How to Improve School Lunches (ecochildsplay.com)

If You Want to Change the World, Get OFF Your High Horse.

Your diet is the best diet. It’s the healthiest, most environmentally responsible, animal-loving, morally upstanding, heart-friendly, age-defying, or whatever. Fine.  We’ll start with that assumption and go from there.

Here’s the deal: whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, locavore, paleo, Raw, CR, or some other niche eating habit, there’s science to prove your way is the right way. And, there’s science to prove your way is the wrong way. Welcome to reality, where things are 1) not that black and white, 2) most nutrition studies are woefully crappy science, and 3) the woefully crappy science is funded by special interests that want the science to say something specific. But most importantly, welcome to the world where 99% of the US population simply doesn’t give a damn.

And there, my friends, is your untapped market.

Start there. Seriously, you’re not going to convert a paleo to veganism by quoting “The China Study” at them, nor are you going to convert a hardcore vegan to paleo using Weston Price. They’ve seen it, they’ve heard it, they’ve chosen another path. Accept it and move on, because all you’re doing is making people tired, annoyed, and uninterested in actually starting *any* kind of better eating because there’s so much confusion and negativity.

However, there is one thing that pretty much any and all of the respected (such as it is) science says, regardless of whether you’re vegan, paleo, or somewhere in between: We should be eating real food, not processed crap. And that is where your personal food agenda can stop blowing smoke up your own self-righteous behind and actually make some kind of difference to…well, to anyone but you.

So, how do you change the world? By trolling blogs and belittling the person on “the other side” of the food spectrum, who in all likelihood has not only heard and seen it all before, but has probably been hearing it and seeing it for years? Does this actually sound like the best tack for recruitment to your personal foodie cause? Because it’s not. I defy anyone to give me one verifiable example where viciously haranguing someone on the opposite end of the eating spectrum with snarky, trolling blog comments and yelled epithets has resulted in a complete 180 in the harangued person’s eating habits. People who honestly want to change the world, not just have something to feel superior about, don’t do that.

Here’s how you change the world:  Come back into reality, where the vast majority of the pe0ple in the US are not waffling on whether or not “The China Study” is valid science, or if that bone stock from “Nourishing Traditions” will widen their kid’s palette.  The vast, overwhelming majority of people in the US aren’t even close to that kind of nutrition evaluation yet, and won’t be until a whole lot of other things change.  Most people are not making the choice between a veggie burger or homemade chicken stock from pastured birds, they’re choosing between Hungry Man dinners or a frozen pizza.

And here’s where we all fail. To the people who haven’t yet drunk our cool-aid, all this irate proselytizing and side-choosing just makes those of us who are eating a healthier diet (whatever it may be) look like over-reactive  nutcases who take ourselves way too seriously. It’s too confusing, it’s too much work, and we all look like a bunch of lunatics with a superiority complex. Not exactly a recipe for a popular food movement. How about we stop playing holier-than-thou and criticizing everyone who doesn’t eat the same way we do as uneducated, immoral, or stupid; and, instead, start working together to create an environment where people can learn to eat well and have encouragement and impetus to do so?

Start from the place that all the science agrees on: junk food is bad for you. Stop eating it, and start eating real food. This is something almost every “niche”  food lifestyle choice has in common, and it’s a powerful starting point for a movement that could actually make a difference in the US.

We’re not going to get the entire country to switch to whatever lifestyle you believe is best overnight (or frankly, in the next 5-10 years). That is reality, and while you may not like it, you need to learn to live with it.  You can’t save every cow or carrot, but you can make a difference in the overall direction of the food lifestyle winds. Whether you believe paleo or veganism is ” The Way,” hopefully you can admit that someone grabbing either a quinoa-bean casserole or a bowl of pastured chicken soup is a HUGE step up from a bag of Doritos and a can of Coke.  Can we all just take a step back from our I’m-so-brilliant rhetoric and agree that someone cooking a dinner from scratch, whether it’s tofu stir-fry or meatloaf, is almost certainly better than taking the family to Taco Bell?

How about we focus on  teaching people how to read labels and use fresh, whole ingredients to make real foods? How about we push to stop feeding our kids a third-cup of sugar for in-school breakfasts? How about we educate our population about the dangers of various preservatives and simple carbohydrates? How about we’re honest about obesity and the risks obese individuals face? How about we support ways to make whole foods more readily available to our population that fast and junk foods?

Once our population has the tools to even comprehend what the hell we’re saying, or to care, when we talk about GMO foods, carbon footprints, sprouting grains, pastured animals, complete vegetarian proteins, or who Mr. Price and Mr. Campbell are–then we cab resume the argument over which micro-managed food lifestyle is “the best.”

Eat what you choose to eat, eat what you choose to love, and help others learn about nutrition through respect, education, and outreach. We’ll all get a lot farther in our road to a better food reality a lot faster if we work together from a civil, rational common ground.

Uncomfortable Truths

There are things people just need to be told, and that get danced around too often. Some of these are uncomfortable, some “gross,” some thing you just don’t talk about in polite society. Unfortunately, these silent issues are hurting our national health, our individual health, and most especially our kid’s health.

This is going to be unpopular. I’m going to do the disclaimers now:

See your doctor before beginning any diet or exercise program. Nothing below should be taken as medical advice, and is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical condition. Medical conditions may require different approaches, and the ideas presented below may not apply or may be detrimental to some medical conditions.

Now, onto our show:

1. You should have at least one bowel movement a day. If you don’t, you’re not eating enough fiber,and you’re increasing your risk of colon and other cancers. A friend recently told me that doctor’s don’t even take it seriously unless it’s been at least 3 days since your last bowel movement. This is just wrong. If you’re eating enough fiber, more than one day should be alarmging. As an addition, if it takes you more than a few minutes to complete this task, you’re still not getting enough fiber. We all like the escape of some alone time with a good read on the porcelain throne, but if you’re doing it because you have to, then you need a big diet change.

2. Soda increases your risk of diabetes, regardless of your weight. Thin people can be diabetic.  HFCS, which is in most US soda, increases your risk of diabetes. Anyone drinking several cans a day is highly likely to become a diabetic, even if they aren’t obese.

3. Fruit juice isn’t much better than soda. It’s full of sugar, without the balancing fiber in whole fruit. It isn’t good for growing teeth. Drink water if you’re thirsty.

4. You did not “bulk up muscle” from moving light weights around every other week for 15 minutes. You might have eaten more because you went to the gym and so “deserved it,” or whatever, but you didn’t stop fitting into your pants or shirt over the course of one or two months doing this.  This means that if the scale shows you’re up 3 lbs one week, you didn’t build your biceps, trust me. Muscle gain is a slow and steady process, and no one builds it doing 5 reps with a light weight (or, actually, a heavy weight) on such an irregular basis. You may have gained water weight (women can gain up to 5lbs a month in water during their cycle, for example), you may have gained fat, but you didn’t suddenly become a hardbody overnight, at least not without serious chemistry.

5. If your urine is orange or deep yellow and you’ve not recently taken a vitamin tablet, something is wrong. You’re either consuming way too much dyed food, or you’re really dehydrated. Either way, it needs to be addressed. Your body can’t work well in either situation for very long.

6. Fat children are a problem. In many cases, it is indeed the parent’s fault. There’s no reason for a middle class child to be fat (again, excluding medical conditions, which are honestly very rare). Poor families are a whole different ball game, since there are food deserts and often a general lack of affordable staples; but, two thirds of our nation’s children are fat.  Two thirds of  families are not poor. The choice to feed your child bad food when healthy food is available and can be afforded is the choice to increase their long-term risks for cancer, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and a host of other things.  It is the choice to let your child control the situation despite the health risks, something most parents would never do in other cases (would they let their kids play with a gun? Cross the street without looking? Get into a car with strangers? Play with matches in the house?).

7. If you’re skin is dry all the time, you’re probably not getting enough good fats in your diet. I am not going to argue whether saturated fats are good or not here–this isn’t about which diet is better. But, we all know that at least some fats are good fats, so start tossing some olive, almond, or coconut oil into your diet.

8. Your kids very likely aren’t ADD. Current figures suggest that somewhere between40-70% of children diagnosed as ADD/ADHD actually have other problems, usually related to diet and lifestyle, that are misdiagnosed. Why are they misdiagnosed? Well, pills are easier, for one thing. And, a doctor telling a parent they need to make changes in their parenting is grounds for a lawsuit, regardless of how true it is. So, I’m saying it: Cut the sugar, cut the preservatives, turn off the TV and video games, make the exercise, and enforce 8 hours of sleep at night before your put them on drugs. Yes, there are legitimate cases of ADD/ADHD, but far fewer than are diagnosed. Sleep deprivation, often caused by a diet high in simple carbs and sugars, mimics these almost identically, for example. Most children do not get nearly enough quality sleep, and definitely not enough exercise.

9. Our kids haven’t gotten worse, our system has. Stuffing kids full of sugar, then cutting recess and gym has consequences. For some reason, many people haven’t seen the connection to these things and the rising number of behavioral problems in our schools and at home. This isn’t rocket science: sugar is instant energy. That is simply science. Chock a kid full of it them stuff them in a chair for 8 hours?  Then, of course, blame the child for being a “bad” kid, or put them on drugs because they’re too hyper? Yeah, that’s brilliant.

10. While some dental issues are genetic, many are caused by lifestyle. Our toothpastes are full of sugars and glycerins, one of which rots your teeth and the other which stops recalcification.  Stop using your crest, and switch to either a natural toothpaste like Tom’s, or to a powdered tooth cleanser. Pretty much everyone I know who’s done this no longer gets cavities, including Thadd.

11. 10 toe touches and 5 jumping jacks does not constitute exercise unless you’re injured, sick, or elderly.  Whether it’s pilates or kickboxing, you need to do something that is in some way vigorous, and you need to do it for at least 20 minutes a day, preferably more.

Related Articles

• How Fiber Helps Control High Blood Sugar (everydayhealth.com)
• Majority Of Americans Will Have Diabetes Or Pre-Diabetes By 2020 – With Huge Financial Costs (medicalnewstoday.com)

On the Menu

So, what’ on for this week? Let’s have a look-see:

Dinners

Sunday: Udon. This is a Japanese soup with a fish-stock base called “dashi.” This is leftover from Thadd’s birthday party on Saturday, and is one of the things I crave (along with miso soup) when I am sick. Fortunately, I am not sick.

Monday: Tofu stirfry over brown basmati rice. Twin Oaks makes non GMO, certified organic tofu that is fabulous. I won’t eat most other tofu, but this stuff is great.

Tuesday: Chicken pot pie. We’ve got some chicken and veggie to use up. This was supposed to happen last week, but I ended up freezing the chicken and veggies because we got to busy to cook it. Thadd’ll whip this up tomorrow night.

Wednesday: Vegetarian Lasagna. This is another of my top-requested recipes. I’ve made it really healthy with lots of veggies, whole wheat noodles, and no ricotta cheese. No one, and I mean literally no one, has ever noticed the lack of ricotta, and pretty much everyone who has it asks for the recipe. Even meat eaters!

Thursday: Indian Chicken over mixed rice. This is a slow cooker meal adapted from A Year of Slow Cooking (I use a lot more spice). It’s become a favorite here because it’s spicy and makes a ton of leftovers.

Friday: Fish with whole wheat couscous and vegetables. We try to eat seafood once a week, and ideally do so in a sustainable way from a local market. Hence, the generic “fish.” It depends what they have in at a price we can afford.

The lunches are leftover as usual, and breakfasts will be steel-cut and fermented rolled oats, eggs, homemade wheat bread toast, fruit, and Greek yogurt.

What are you eating this week?

 

The Kids Are Home, Hide the Veggies!

Image via Wikipedia

Time for a mid-week rant.

NPR did a story about what a great idea it is to get kids to eat vegetables at school by adding vegetable puree to the school lunch cheese sauce at lunch time.  There’s a whole movement, including cookbooks, on how to get your child to eat vegetables by hiding them in brownies, cakes, cheese sauces, etc.  I can’t even begin to express how much I loathe this entire idea. It’s faulty from it’s toes to it’s nose, it’s destructive, and it’s just stupid.

What, exactly, does this teach children about healthy eating? Nothing. They don’t learn to make appropriate food choices, they don’t learn to like healthy food. In fact, they don’t even learn what “healthy food” actually is, because as far as they’re concerned, they’re not eating it. It does teach them, however, that they don’t have to ever eat anything green. It teaches them that yes, “healthy” foods must taste crappy or why would we have to hide them? It also teaches them that they are correct when they assume they should get everything they want, that they should be catered to.

Here’s a radical thought: don’t hide children’s vegetables. Instead, let’s serve them well-cooked, healthy vegetables and then, like adults, make sure they eat them.

This is going to get really controversial, and it’s not going to be sugar coated. I am tired of all the namby-pamby advice about how to get kids to eat well. It’s not that complicated.

-Be a parent. We need to stop pandering to children. Parents get to control your child’s diet, the child does not.  Do parents let kids control the finances simply because they want to? Do parents let kids skip school because “they don’t like it?” So why in the world do they let their children control their food. Look, kids are NOT going to starve themselves to death because they’re not fed their three favorite foods every night. They CAN go to bed without dinner and not wake up emaciated and ready to die, no matter how big a fit they throw to the contrary. No one should starve their child, obviously, but unless a child has an emotional or intellectual disability, they aren’t going to starve to death because they are only presented with healthy options for dinner every night.

-Children are smart, and will manipulate you if you let them. Most of the kids who are “picky eaters” have learned that if they say “I don’t like this food,” someone will get up and make them a favorite food instead.  They have adults trained. This is a great racket, right?  This has got to stop. It’s not appropriate parenting, and it’s not doing the child any favors in the long run.

-There is a difference in “don’t like” and “not favorite.” Everyone has things they don’t like. Most people have 3-5 general things they don’t like. A child who *only* likes 3-5 thing and “doesn’t like” everything else knows how to get what they want.  Most of the time, when a child says they don’t like something, what they actually mean is they prefer something else. Time for a valuable life lesson: Too Darn Bad. We Don’t Always Get What We Want In Life.

-Kids learn to like what they’re fed. As I’ve said a thousand times, children in India are not born liking curry, children in Japan do not come from the womb craving udon,  and kids from Louisiana aren’t genetically predisposed to loving jambalaya. Children like their ethnic/cultural cuisine because it’s what they’re fed when young (and, if a child of one ethnicity/culture is adopted as a baby someone from another culture, that child does not grow up craving it’s birth-parents home cooking). A child isn’t going to learn to like legumes if they never eat them.

-Kids eat what their parents eat. Simple as that.  Just like smoking or drinking, parents need to look at what they’re eating in front of their children.

There are other things, such as it’s been proven that children who help grow and cook vegetables are far more likely to choose to eat them. Or, that children who are taught to cook tend to eat a wider variety of healthy foods. But, the main point is this: Children are children. They do not get to make the decision on whether or not they eat their vegetables. That is what parents are for. Hiding healthy food in “unhealthy” food teaches children bad eating habits, poor decision making skills, and that they don’t have to do anything they’d rather not do.

2/3 of the children in the US are obese. Most of these children will grow up to be obese adults, with all the health issues and concerns that go along with that.  This problem will not be solved by hiding vegetables in cheese sauce.

Related Articles

• 5 ways to get your kids to eat their veggies (sfgate.com)
• Kerry Trueman: Let’s Ask Marion Nestle: Is Stealth The Way To Healthy Eating for Kids? (huffingtonpost.com)
• 5 Simple Ways to Get Your Kids to Eat Vegetables (thehappyhousewife.com)
• Children’s Veggie Intake Doubles with Education, Role-Modelling and Popeye (diet-blog.com)

Monday Healthy Eating, October 11, 2010

No one wants to hear this, and no one wants to do it. So, I’m going to give you two options, but you have to pick one of them to eat healthfully.

Option 1: Read labels.

Option 2: Cook everything from scratch.

I, personally, mostly do Option 2, with a little of Option 1. I don’t make my own mustard, but I do read the label. It’s up to you which you chose, or how you combine them, but there’s no easy way out of this one. The good news is that reading labels gets much less onerous as time goes on, because you begin to know which brands have the ingredients you prefer (or don’t have the ones you’re trying to cut out), so you don’t have to read those as often.  But, you do still have to read them occasionally, because formulations change.

Why read labels? Largely because if you’ve never done it you’re going to be appalled at what you’ve been eating. Once, of course, you know what “that” its. If you’re eating most store-purchased ice cream, for example, you’re eating guar gum. Do you even know what that is? I didn’t. It’s a thickener, used to keep ice cream thick but soft at deep-freeze temperatures. As weird things in your food goes, it’s not particularly offensive, but it’s also not necessary if you’re eating…well, real ice cream. If you’re buying most canned or jarred tomatoes sauces, you’re eating high fructose corn syrup, same thing with BBQ sauces and even hot dogs. In many of these, it’s the first or second ingredient (including in several hot dog brands–why do you need sugar in hot dogs!?).

Once you see what’s in the food, then you’ve got to come home and look it up, because honestly I still don’t know what 90% of that stuff is and I do this for a living. Which is why I take option #2 most of the time. It’s easier.

Some of these things, like HFCS and MSG, have pretty well-known side effects and long-reaching nastiness like links to cancer and obesity, some add extra calories, some haven’t actually been studied. Essentially, it comes down to this: you can’t eat healthy without the information to make appropriate decisions, and the only way you can get that information from a box, bag, or a can you didn’t prepare yourself is to read the label and see what’s in it, how many calories it has, and how those fit into your eating goals.

Related Articles

• EatingWell: Beware: Misleading Ingredient Names Explained (huffingtonpost.com)

Monday Healthy Eating–Under the Wire!

Technically, it’s still Monday, so this counts. Thank you  all for your patience as I work through some family medical issues.

Today’s healthy eating is a small step to a larger goal. The ultimate goal is to learn to cook flavorful, healthful meals that you and your family will eat. Seriously, almost anything you cook from scratch will be better for you than something form a fast food place or a box, even if it uses nothing but butter, cream, and lard. Ever looked at the back of one of those fast-food boxes with the nutrition panel? I have, and I am still stumped. I have actually tried to pack that many calories into a hamburger, and failed. To this day I haven’t figured out how they even get the calorie-to-ounces ratio they achieve. It’s like the literally inject straight calories into their buns or something. Anyway, the point here is that it’s hard to do worse than processed food, so cooking from scratch is your biggest help in eating right.

That, however, is a pretty big goal, and it’s easy to get discouraged. So, just learn to cook one new, healthful meal each month. That’s not so bad, right? At the end of the year, you’ll have 12 new, healthy meals. That’s almost 2 whole weeks of dinners, or 1 week of dinners and lunches!

Where to start? The easiest place to start is with an old favorite.  Take a dish you and your family already eat, and see what can be improved upon. Use the internet (Google is your recipe friend) to search for healthy recipes, or even just for a healthy alternative.  Just changing an ingredient or two, or switching from canned vegetables to fresh or frozen, can make a huge difference in calories.

Some examples:

Your favorite: Mom’s meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

The switch: Lean ground beef instead of fatty (grass fed if you can), rolled oats to add some bulk, dice in some green peppers and onions, and tomato paste instead of ketchup on top. Whip up sweet potatoes with some cream of tartar, and if you need some moisture use a bit of chicken stock or skimmed milk. You’ve saved a boatload of calories, and added a lot of vitamins and fiber!

Your favorite: Spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread.

The switch: Whole wheat noodles instead of white. Or, if you’re really adventurous, baked spaghetti squash (cleaned from it’s shell, it’s like noodles!) A can of diced tomatoes tossed into the blender with some herbs (fresh or dried garlic, oregano, basil, and maybe a splash of red wine) and blended to whatever consistency you like.  Whole wheat bread sprayed with olive oil, sprinkled with garlic powder and a freshly ground sea salt, then under the broiler just until brown.  Serve with a green salad if it’s the right season, or toss some kale, chard, or frozen green beans into the spaghetti.

You get the idea. Switch Greek yogurt for sour cream or cream, blended cottage cheese for ricotta in stuffed shells or lasagna, add a few veggies here or there…this doesn’t have to be complicated.

What if you don’t cook? That’s a different story. That means there’s no “old standby” favorites to start from, and you’ll have to learn from scratch. Don’t worry–in some ways, that’s actually easier, because it means no bad habits to unlearn, right?

So, how do you get started if you don’t already cook? Start simple. Possibly whole wheat pasta tossed with rosemary olive oil and vegetables, or maybe a quick stir fry over brown rice. It can even be something like chicken salad over greens, or you could do a breakfast (I like fermented oats, which I know sound awful, but are dreamy). Don’t go crazy until you’ve got one or two simple, easy, go-to recipes down. Once you feel like you can maybe do more, then absolutely do more!

Related Articles

• Meatless Monday: Here’s How You Can Do It (biggreenpurse.com)
• Menu Plan Monday 9/27 (frugalupstate.com)
• Telling people to eat more vegetables has been a miserable failure (futurepundit.com)
• The October edition of the This Mama Cooks! healthy food and diet posts carnival (thismamacooks.com)
• 5 Recipes, 1 Ingredient: Whole-Wheat Pasta (healthnews.ediets.com)
• Weekend Menu Planning: Try Something New with Eggplant (blogher.com)
• Meg Wolff: A Plant-Based Meal Inspired By Bill Clinton (huffingtonpost.com)
• Creativity in the Kitchen (groupon.co.uk)