My Picky Eater E-book

I recently became involved in an interesting online conversation about the word “picky eater”  with some mommy bloggers.  Christina Le Beau who has a blog,  SpoonFed. wrote a recent post that makes the argument that labeling kids becomes a crutch for parents and sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy. Plus it minimizes the very real food issues that some kids do have (allergies, sensory issues, etc.).

I’ve always felt that language is really important. I’ve written loads about how the food industry runs the show by controlling the language. I believe strongly that labels are for jars, not people.

It’s probably not a good idea to label a child as a picky eater. I’ve had more than my share of both personal and professional experience with kids of all ages who are not adventurous when it comes to food. I’ve written a great little E-Book called Winning the Picky Eater War……maybe I need to look at changing that title.

Let’s talk personal here. I’m the mom of three amazing and beautiful daughters, ages 20, 18 and 13. The two older gals could almost be considered Foodies. They love to eat, they love to cook.  But my 13 year old continues to give me a run for the money. While I’ve declared victory from time to time and she does eat way more veggies than she used to, I would still classify her on the picky side.

Sadly, compared to other kids her age, she IS more adventurous than many. That is the really scary piece that my mommy blogger friends might not realize. Picky eating behaviors, or whatever we should be calling it, are now extending beyond the toddler years into the tween, teen and even college age. My older daughters tell me stories of the peers who eat nothing but junk. Imagine a 20 year old ordering pasta with butter, how crazy is that?  What do you call that? Picky? Dare I say “stupid”?  What these kids are missing out on is huge. There is a whole wide world out there filled with amazing, delicious food.

This is one of the reasons she is accompanying me and my husband to Italy this week. There aren’t any chicken nuggets in Italy, right? She’ll experience a wonderful “slow” food culture first hand. We’re even going to take a full day cooking class in Florence.

In addition to the art, the history and the language, I hope my daughter finds herself inspired to expand her palate while on this trip.  Stay tuned for more photos and recipes. My plane leaves in less than an hour!

Ciao!

Whack-a-mole

I do enjoy playing Whac-a-Mole when I bring my kids to the arcade. For those of you who don’t get out that much to participate in this sort of amusement, the Whac-A-Mole machine consists of a large, waist-level cabinet with five holes in its top and a large, soft, black mallet. Each hole contains a single plastic mole. Once the game starts, the moles will begin to pop up from their holes at random. The object of the game is to force the individual moles back into their holes by hitting them directly on the head with the mallet, thereby adding to the player’s score. The more quickly this is done the higher the final score will be. As the game goes, on the pace gets faster, sometimes with 2 moles at a time rearing up out of the holes. You’ve got to be fast and hit hard to beat the moles and win the game. Its good exercise and builds hand eye coordination.

As  a parent who is trying to feed their kids the right stuff, I feel we are playing Whac-A-Mole every day with the food industry.  Let me explain my metaphor and see if you agree.

Way back when I was growing up, it was somehow determined that fat made you fat. The food industry responded with loads of “low fat”  and even “fat free” food products. Everyone rushed out to get them. And everyone continued to get fatter, and sicker. Next came the no carb craze and just about over night, everything, even bread, became “low carb” And everyone continued to gain weight and lose their health.

These days, the moles that pop up in the food industry’s Whac-A-Mole game are things like trans fats. We pounded that one down with our mallets, but the food industry responded with palm oil and cottonseed oil: two ingredients that are hurt our health and the health of the planet (as I’ve written about in previous posts) . HFCS was the next bad boy ingredient that popped up in the Whack-A-Mole game, the food industry is responding by renaming high fructose corn syrup into corn sugar and replacing HFCS in some drinks with real sugar. Will that sneaky mole get by us, or will we pound it back into its hole with our mallets?

There is way to win this game. You see, the food industry wins every game as long as we keep putting our money into their system. Bang all the moles you want, but the machine gets your quarter no matter how high the score. What we all need to do is walk away from the Whac-A-Mole game that the food industry has set up.

Invest your money elsewhere in real food that you can believe in. Food that is grown closer to home, food that doesn’t have ingredients you can’t pronounce, food that doesn’t have a fancy marketing budget.  Don’t play their game anymore.

Watch this Whac-A-Mole action and see if you feel the same way when buying standard American food in the supermarket. There really is a better way to eat and to live besides being forced to play continual game of Whac-A-Mole…..

Earlier this week, I wrote a guest post in The Slow Cook and the Better DC School Food blogs about sugar in schools. In this article, I barely scraped the surface of this issue. Sugars are not just “empty calories”, sugar is a major anti-nutrient that can wreck havoc with your health.

The confusion over sugar continues. After all, fruit contains sugar, and what about beets and carrots?  My teacher and mentor Joan Gussow  once famously said  “I prefer butter to margarine because I trust cows more than chemists.”  I too, trust Mother Nature more than food companies. Carrots, beets and fruit are fine. In fact, they are really good for you!

Nowadays, many people understand that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is bad news. The beverage industry is responding by putting “cane sugar” into their drinks. Jones Soda boasts of having “pure cane sugar” in their soda, Pepsi is now boasting of “real sugar” in their Throwback brands that are being blasted all over Facebook and Twitter.  Vitamin Water with “crystalline fructose” is now showing up as a healthier alternative in school cafeterias (its not!).

Somehow consumers didn’t get the big picture message: refined sugar is bad for you! That refined sugar could have aliases like HFCS or cane sugar or crystalline fructose (found in Coca Cola’s Vitamin Water). All of this stuff will rot your teeth, expand your waistline, raise your cholesterol, the list goes on and on.

The World Health Organization defines free sugars as all monosaccharides and disaccharides added to foods by the manufacturer, cook or consumer, plus sugars naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juices.

One other point worth mentioning: fruit juice = sugar hit. A glass of 100% juice is NOT the same as eating a piece of fruit! As a matter of fact, your morning glass of OJ can be contributing to your high cholesterol. Parents who think they are doing their kids a favor by giving them Minute Maid Lemonade or  Snapple 100% juice for an afterschool snack are damaging their kid’s livers, making them even more hungry, and of course, helping to make their dentists rich.

Apparently, fructose makes it so you don’t feel full. Makes complete sense that food manufacturers would want to use HFCS in their products. If you don’t feel full, you’ll keep eating and drinking. Great for a food company’s shareholders, not so great for your health.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg and the Center for Science in the Public Interest have declared war on salt. They claim salt is a major factor in heart disease and stroke.  Perhaps they should take a good long look at sugar! They’ll find a connection to diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and much much more.

Bottom line:

Eat Real Food. Drink Water.

In all of my years as a health professional, teacher and consultant,  I’ve been telling patients, clients and students the same thing about what to drink.  It’s really simple. Drink water.

As a dentist in private practice, I worked hard to convince parents of young toddlers to stay away from juice and drink water instead. Some of those toddlers were already hooked on juice, I supported those parents in making serial dilutions until their kids were drinking 100% water. Without a doubt, water is the  best drink for their teeth and for their bodies. I worked to convince the pediatricians in my community to stop recommending juice for toddlers. There is absolutely no health benefit gained by drinking juice. It creates a  sweet tooth and can be the catalyst for picky eating behaviors.

As a nutritionist and school food advocate, I’ve given many presentations that make the argument against soda, diet soda, sports drinks, “flavored waters” and juice. None of these products are good for our kids teeth, minds or waistlines. Water is the best drink for students.

Two giant multinational corporations, Coke and Pepsi, have shifted from just selling brown colored sugar water over the years. Coca Cola now own brands like  Minute Maid, Capri Sun, HiC, Nestea, Monster Energy, Odwalla, Powerade, Vitamin Water.  Pepsi owns Tropicana, Gatorade, Izze, Propel Fitness Water, SoBe.

I’m betting that you’ve seen some or all of these brands in your child’s school cafeteria or in your local market.  You may have been tricked into buying these products. They are heavily  promoted as “healthier for you” beverages. I wish they were healthier, but they really are not! My mom switched to “light” cigarettes in the 1970′s. Mom, along with millions of other smokers, thought light cigs were “healthier” for her than the full strength ones. It seems like the beverage companies are playing the same game.

Water is the best drink to drink. Eat fruit, drink water. Contrary to what you might believe there is no health benefit in drinking fruit juice. Pediatric endocrinologist, Robert Lustig, MD makes this point very clear by demonstrating that fructose is toxic in large quantities, because it is metabolized in the liver in the same way as alcohol, which drives fat storage and makes the brain think it is hungry.

As the years have gone by, I’ve learned more and more about the environmental impact of what we eat and drink. It should be no surprise that if something is harmful for the environment, its harmful to human health as well. After all, we are all connected.

When considering the bigger picture, the planet we’re living on, we’ve got to think beyond the drink and consider the container.  It’s time to take a stand against bottled water.  Movies like Flow and Tapped explain why we need to be concerned about this issue. Today Annie Leonard released a simple 8 minute movie, The Story of Bottled Water that tells it like it is.  Have a look:

Now that the Girl Scout Cookie sales have started, I can’t sit by and stay silent about the atrocities that these well meaning scouts are innocently perpetrating on their families, their friends and even the planet. I’m well aware that these cookies have a place in the hearts and minds of so many people. My mom was a  troop leader and the cookie chair when I was a kid. When I was a much younger, more naive mom, I was part of the cookie craze. My daughter got a big fancy badge one year because we staked out her sister’s child care center and sold them out of the back of my van!  I’m no longer that young and innocent. Now that I know what I know about the ingredients of Girl Scout cookies, I can’t eat them, I don’t let my kids eat them and I really want to encourage you not to buy or eat them either.

This is not about childhood obesity or that word, “moderation”.  I’m fine with a few cookies every now and then. I’ll buy Tate’s cookies or whip up a batch of my own.  It’s not about the calories or even the fat grams in Girl Scout cookies.

Here’s a link to the Nutrition information for this years Girl Scout cookies. It’s not the nutrition information, the calories or grams of trans fats that I’m concerned about.  Its the INGREDIENTS. You’ll need to magnify the page to be able to read them. For the most part, they got rid of any High Fructose Corn Syrup. Little Brownie Bakers knows that moms no longer tolerate HFCS as an ingredient. They’ve replaced it with sugar. It’s not the corn syrup or the sugar that is keeping me and my kids away from these cookies.

It’s the poor quality oils that will keep me from buying Girl Scout cookies.

The Tagalongs, Thin Mints, Samoas and DoSiDos contain cottonseed oil. Let’s start with the fact that cotton is not a food. My pal, Dr. Andrew Weil says no way is cottonseed oil okay. It is loaded with pesticide residue, cotton is one of the most highly sprayed crops. Since cotton crops are under far less chemical regulation that other other crops used specifically for food, many pesticides or chemicals can be used on cotton crops that are illegal for use on food crops, how creepy is that? This oil is super cheap, so a cookie company looking to make a super cheap product will use this ingredient. In addition to the pesticide residue, cottonseed oil is extremely high in inflammatory Omega 6 oil. The ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 in cottonseed oil is 259:1. For optimal health, we want a ratio of 2 parts Omega 6 to 1 part Omega 3.  If you’re trying to increase your Omega 3 for health reasons, and you eat an edible foodlike substance like a Girl Scout Cookie made with cottonseed oil, you’ll have to guzzle a gallon of fish oil or flaxseed oil to balance out our omega 6:3 ratio!  Plain and simple: cottonseed oil is a hazardous ingredient that you don’t want your family ingesting.

Besides personal health, Girl Scout cookies endanger planetary health as well. That’s a bold statement, huh?  The more I’ve learned about food and food systems, the more I’ve learned about our fragile environment. Here’s why I make that statement. Every single flavor of Girl Scout Cookies this year contains Palm Oil. What’s so bad about palm oil? While it is a saturated fat, that’s not why I don’t want my kids to be eating it. I use lots of saturated fats in my cooking: butter, coconut oil even some duck fat and occasional bacon grease! Saturated fat is not the issue.

The issue is environmental. To grow palm oil, we destroy rain forests. Its not just about destroying the  planet’s  most biodiverse  ecosystems which are home to millions of plant and animal species, including highly endangered orangutans, clouded leopards, and sun bears. Its about creating runaway climate change that will impact our future on this planet. I’m not making this up- read more about it here from the Rainforest Action Network.

Now that my girls are older, I can look forward to the future when I will be a grandma. I hope to take the time to bake cookies with my grandkids, just like my grandma did with me. If we keep plowing down rainforests in the name of cheap oil to put in cheap cookies, I might never get a chance to see grandkids.

Parents of scouts: please don’t have your kids sell these cookies. Take some time, make some real cookies, make a donation to the Girl Scouts, it’s a great organization. I’d like to see their cookies go extinct. There are so many other worthwhile fundraisers that are good for people and for the planet. Please pass this on to anyone you know who  cares about the fate of the earth and hopes to have grandkids one day.

Last night while most of the country was watching the Super Bowl, I was learning about fructose metabolism. A lecture by Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist held my attention for over 90 minutes as he explained how fructose, present in both fruit juice and most soda can act as a poison in our livers. This revelation makes loads of sense to me, both personally and professionally.

Since the popularity of Atkins and South Beach diets, many of us have understood how refined carbohydrates can lead to high trigylcerides and fat accumulation. But many nutritionists and health professionals  continue to believe that  a calorie is a calorie and all sugars act the same in the body.  Dr. Lustig proceeded to blast those theories out of the sky with his lecture, demonstrating that fructose metabolism is eerily similar to alcohol metabolism in the liver.

High levels of fructose do not just appear in our diets in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Most people, with the exception of employees of Coke and Pepsi, now agree that our increased soda consumption plays a role in the obesity epidemic.  Fructose is also abundantly present in fruit juices, which have been promoted as a healthy beverage since the Nixon administration.

According to Dr. Lustig, fructose acts as a toxin in the liver resulting in a non alcoholic fatty liver and leads to gout and hypertension by creating excess uric acid. Not only are we seeing fat kids, we have increased incidence of hypertension and gout in young patients. Bottom line: we were never meant to be able to metabolize these abnormally high amounts of fructose.  By eliminating all forms of sugary beverages and adopting a water or milk only strategy, you can be on your way to reversing weight gain and other metabolic damage.

It will be very hard to pull fruit juice out of schools, now that the soda industry owns brands like Tropicana (Pepsi) and Minute Maid (Coca Cola), but after watching this lecture, many will agree its an important next step. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of juice thanks to the damage I’ve seen it create in children’s teeth. I’ve always advised parents to eat the fruit instead to get the entire benefit that Mother Nature intended: fiber, micronutrients all in the right proportions.

Don’t take my word for it. Watch this lecture yourself and see if you start to re-think your drinks. Warning: some complex biochemistry will be shown, that a science nerd like me loves. Just breathe and go with it, you’ll be glad you did!

She is fed up with school food and is taking it personally. Very personally.  An unidentified teacher somewhere in the mid-west has started a horrifying stunt. She will be eating (and photographing) her school’s lunch every day this year.  I greatly admire her bravery to put her health on the line to make a point.  School lunch in the USA is in need of a huge overhaul.

Thanks to the large number of concerned parents and health professionals here in the blogosphere, I expect that her  journey, which is reminiscent of  Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me film, will grow a huge following. The timing couldn’t be better.  The nation is starting to focus on the state of school lunch as  Congress is expected to update child nutrition programs this spring.  The re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act will impact the health of 31 million children.

This  school lunch conversation needs to go beyond calorie counts and fat grams. We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words, the photos being uploaded daily to the Fed Up: School Lunch Project blog tell a lot. Viewing today’s posted lunch of a “bagel dog” along with some pale anemic looking tater tots made my stomach queasy and makes me wonder more about the health and well being of  kids who are eating this every day.

Our kids deserve real food in schools, not packaged processed chemicalized fare. We need to teach them more than just the USDA food pyramid by incorporating school gardens and food based education through out the curriculum. This is a most worthwhile investment in their future. Real food is preventative healthcare which will save all of us enormous amounts of money in the future.

What can you do to make some waves like this teacher?

Have kids and parents write letters: Slow Food’s Time for Lunch campaign offers some great tools that will help you to get this message across.  Letter writing can have a big impact that legislators can’t ignore.  Legislators who already understand the importance of better school food can refer to letters as evidence of support.

Visit your kids cafeteria and have some lunch. Better School Food has an action plan and a handy checklist that you can bring to the school cafeteria. Bring your camera to lunch and send the photos to your legislator. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

This week, I had the good fortune to see 3 great movies that told the tale of climate change and sustainability. I hope you get a chance to see at least one of them. If you do, your life will never be the same.

After reading Bill Mc Kibben’s Deep Economy a year ago, there’s been no turning back for me. I can no longer stay asleep and pretend that climate change isn’t happening and that our food system is OK. It’s not just that kids are getting fat, there are bigger problems happening that need bold fixes.

These three films put a smile on my face. More importantly, movies like these give me hope that perhaps other people are waking up too.

The Yes Men Fix the World was funny and thought provoking. These guys have more chutzpah than anyone. Their stunt with the “Hallaburton Survivaballs” was nothing short of awesome. Their pranks continue. This week, they chased Senator Arlen Specter in their Survivaball costumes. These guys are missing out on a big opportunity this Halloween, these suits could be big sellers!

Next on my list was No Impact Man This movie started as a blog, turned into a project in which many environmental groups are collaborating. I dragged my teenage daughter to see this one. She could relate to the Starbucks sipping, Prada wearing wife who had to make some big changes for the sake of the project. Lowering our environmental impact takes us out of our comfort zones but has some unexpected benefits.

Last but not least, I saw Food Inc. again last night. The movie was screened for a full house of students at SUNY Purchase. This movie was even better the second time around. So many important points were made about the food we eat. Changing our conversation around food is, in my opinion, the most important move that each of us can make to decrease our carbon dioxide emissions. You’ll never look at your dinner or the supermarket the same way after watching Food Inc.

These films need to be seen by high school and college students. This is the audience who won’t be afraid to challenge the status quo. It’s going to be their world in a couple of years, I’m counting on them to make some noise!

Movies like these build movements beyond the theater. The Yes Men’s pranks continue, along great resources online, including curricula for teachers. The No Impact Projects continue to make ripples along with Food Inc’s petitions and online resources.

Maybe the world is gonna be OK after all.

As we roll into week #2 of the pandemic swine flu, I continue to be entertained by what ends up in the media about this pesky health issue.

VP Joe Biden and his comment on recycled air on airplanes, the mysterious reduction in the number of deaths in Mexico along with the conservative zealots who still want to close the borders. Talk of vaccines and questions like,does Donald Rumsfeld still get rich if we all take the Tamiflu? Panicked countries slaughtering their pigs for no good reason, Purell hand sanitizer is no where to be found because panicked germophobes have bought it all up.

The Pork lobby has been hard at work: they succeeded at changing the name from swine flu to H1N1. Their latest goal: a photo op with President Obama eating some pork BarBQ to encourage Americans to support the pork industry. Do American eaters really think they can catch an airborne flu from eating bacon?

The Pork gang is spinning the story beyond belief stating that pigs might catch the new H1N1 from people! What’s next? Piggies wearing blue masks?

All of this wacky panicky behavior covers up a deeper darker issue: is our industrial food system to blame for this new disease? And if so, what can we do about it? David Kirby, investigative reporter and author of Evidence of Harm has been busy writing a book on factory farming. His articles on Huffington Post are a powerful motive for changing the way we eat.

I like to look at the bright side of a crisis like this. Seems to me that the foodies, food advocates & activists, sustainability minded folks and conscious eaters could create a teach-in on factory farming. Perhaps CAFO awareness week in which we ask more questions about where our food comes from. Boycott the Lunchables, the chicken nuggets and all the other animal products coming from CAFOs. This can be an opportunity to highlight and support small, local/ regional farmers.

2009 is supposed to be the Year of the Ox, but it certainly seems to be the Year of the Pig so far, allow me to explain!

The American News Project in a story entitled The Food Lobby Goes to School, was surprised to find the National Pork Board to be one of the lobbyists pushing for more of their products in school food.

Sustainable food advocates and many vegetarians have known for some time that the way the food industry raises lifestock is toxic to our health and the health of our planet. It was great to read the piece by NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff entitled Our Pigs Our Food Our Health which connected the dots between industrial hog farms and diseases such as MRSA.

Great timing for Nicolette Niman, whose well written book about meat production,Righteous Porkchop, hit the stores just as this Swine Flu story hit the newspapers.

David Kirby wrote a piece on swine flu suggesting that this is a great example of “Mother Nature Biting Back”, it seems to me, he’s probably right.

The National Pork Board is hard at work to change the name of Swine Flu into “North American Influenza” in a desperate attempt to spin their image. Those PR folks they hired to lobby for more pork in school food just got a bigger job to do!

So what do we do in light of all this besides just wash our hands?

Here’s five suggestions that could support your health.

1. Cut back on refined sugar- it impairs immune function.
2. Support your gut with the “good bugs” by regular use of probiotic supplements or even a daily bowl of miso soup.
3. Get enough sleep each night.
4. Meditate daily.
5. Eat lower on the food chain: more veggies!

When eating, support your local farmer, buy grass fed, pasture raised animals from small, local/ regional sources. Stay away from giant producers – Tyson, Smithfield Farms, Cargill who have created this toxic environment that is conducive to disease and pollution.