The Lunchbox Patdown

An article on Huffington Post today described a recent incident where a 4-year old's lunch was inspected by the USDA and deemed "not nutritious enough" forcing the child to eat school supplied chicken nuggets instead.

I want to rant, really I do. And, doing so may not further the conversation so let's look at this for a moment. A few thoughts:

1. Does anyone at the USDA actually have children? (Yes, wee rant there). Every parent knows our kids go through weird food phases. I don't care how health conscious, organic, local-focused and wealthy you are, sometimes your kids will only eat one thing and one thing only. My son, now 23, went through a "ham sandwich" phase which actually didn't include any ham. White bread and mayonnaise. I wasn't happy about it, but I used it as a teaching moment (you can have your ham sandwich when you eat these banana slices - come on parents, half the job comes down to these moments). 
2. Did we need another way to further the phobia that "Government People Are Bad?" We already malign the people who work at the TSA, many teachers are not respected and police? In some urban areas, they are feared. Apparently we're not getting to kids early enough to teach them to fear public servants, now we have to take a 4-year old's lunch away? That poor little girl. 
3. USDA Meal Guidelines are not right for everyone. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but following the USDA guidelines would make a fair number of Americans sick. Dairy (in the form of  overly processed milk from cows dining on drugs and hormones), gluten run amok, GMO grains? Our kids (and we) deserve better.
4. Cheap does not equal good. The food supplied to school cafeteria's is done by through the award of competitive contracts. Low cost almost always wins. The people who win these contracts are incentivized to deliver the cheapest food that meets the minimum USDA guidelines. Are our kids eating sustainably raised, grass fed beef? Chickens who graze on bugs? No! They are eating the worst of the worst of the processed food system. The food is cheap and pumped with chemicals so it lasts a long time on a shelf. As a side note... there is a company, Revolution Foods, who are focused on doing better. There may be others I'm unaware of, please share if you know of them.

I could go on... but you get the idea. To round out the discussion, let's consider one defense of the idea of inspecting brought from home lunches: Some lunches brought from home are actually worse than what the cafeteria provides. I don't have data or numbers, but having been a parent and visiting during lunchtime, I can assure you some kids have soda and a snack cake in their lunchbox. 

What are we to do? Let's start with education! I know! A crazy idea considering we are talking about our schools here. Unfortunately, we have many parents and many kids who really don't know what a nutritious lunch looks like. We have taken much of the food and health education out of our schools in favor of the programs for "No Child Left Behind" so we have an absence of knowledge. How about bringing these classes back (and inviting parents) so we all learn together what makes for healthy eating? How about we recognize that there isn't a one-size-fits-all diet for every person in this country? How about we consider lunch as only one part of a day full of healthy eating? If I've had a big breakfast, I might not want a big lunch. Can we bring some humanity back into this? How about we use lunch as a teaching moment instead of a lunchbox patdown exercise. Just a thought...

Let Our Children Teach Us

The simplest ideas are always the best. The greatest thing about this new food label is it uses knowledge we already have and strategies we are taught in pre-school:

• Red = Stop
• Yellow = Slow
• Green = Go

The first part of the implementation could be the food in our schools. Each choice along the cafeteria line would be labeled like this:

Or this:

This system is so easy it cannot fail. It does not require special training and is so intuitive the numbers inside of the boxes almost don't matter. By implementing this in our schools, we could make great strides to help our children make good food choices and teach them to be aware of what they are eating. The kids would take the strategy home and tell their parents they want to "Eat Green." The points reward system could be used for special school-related activities.... extra recess, a special healthy luncheon with a local sports star, an awards ceremony at the end of the year to acknowledge the best eaters. 

Making a difference isn't hard. We only need someone brave enough to take the first step. 

Cereal Isn't Real

As promised in yesterday's exposure of soy milk creation, today we'll cover how grain becomes cereal. Cereal is commonly made from corn, wheat, oats, rice and barley. We'll use wheat as our starting point today; the process is the same for all grains.

Wheat - Harvest - Trucked to Plant - Cleaned - Crushed (to remove outer, healthiest, layer of bran) - Mixed with Flavoring Agents (sugar, vitamins, minerals, salt, water) - Pressure Cooked - Dried - Tempered - Extruded - Shaped - Coated (colors, flavoring, frosting) - Packaging - Transport - Grocery Store - You

When you eat a boxed cereal you are sixteen degrees from the breathing wheat. And, when the cereal says whole grain they don't crush it, the rest of the process remains the same.

What is, potentially, the worst thing you could eat for breakfast tomorrow? A bowl of cereal with soy milk. The combination that would be a meal 37 degrees from nature. It simply can't be good for us.

Change Food Advertising: One Parent at a Time

After Monday's post on Princess Soup, Jane Brody and the NY Times have joined the bandwagon to talk about marketing food to kids. Jane's blog contains some important data about how food companies skirt the rules when determining what they market to kids.

Bottom line - don't allow your kids to watch TV. It is the greatest power of consumers and parents. If the TV is off, the kids won't watch the commercials and won't want the sugary cereal and sodium-laden soup. If the kids aren't watching the commercials, the food companies will abandon the commercial market (who knows what they'll next come up with, but we'll deal with it when it comes). This will drive down the cost of television commercials making way to the organizations that support whole, natural food to begin to buy commercial time for things like broccoli and kale. Go kale!

Food Marketing to Kids

Princess Soup raised my awareness. Today, I did a little digging on the business of marketing food to our children. According to this report, published in 2007 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, children ages 2-7 see an average of:

• 17 minutes of advertising each day
• 12 food ads each day or more than 4,400 a year

Food companies spend billions of dollars each year advertising food to our children. Few, if any, of those dollars are devoted to whole, natural fruits and vegetables.

Am I the only one who considers this is problem? Until we can change the advertising rules your best bet is to turn off the television.

Dinosaurs and Yogurt

Recent attention have begun to question the impact of food marketing on American children. We have a significant issue with the health of our children. Our children are now obese and getting more so by year. The incidence of Type II Diabetes in American children has grown significantly during the last 10 years. This is a problem.

Why? What happened? It would be too simplistic of a view to pinpoint the issue on any one cultural change. More than likely it is a combination of more two-parent working families, the costs of fast food (cheap due to farm food subsidies), and the increase in the video game generation distracting kids from the age old pursuit of going outside to play.

And, dinosaurs. Yes, Tony the Tiger and the Trix Rabbit seemed rather harmless at the time. Watch children’s television on Saturday morning and you’ll see yogurt being hawked by dinosaurs, TV dinners recommended by fluffy stuffed characters, and snacks by cheetahs. Is this good for our children? I happen to think we should be teaching our children about vegetables and fruits for their own sake, not because of an attractive fun character jumping around on a television screen.