My 3-year-old son attends daycare during the school year, three days a week while my husband is in class.  His daycare provides breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack.  This is certainly more convenient for us than having to pack his meals, but the downside is that we have less influence over what he eats.  We got a packet of paperwork for the upcoming school year and found a form inside that I vaguely remembered seeing last year, when it wasn’t relevant.  The daycare follows the USDA patterns for meals and snacks, which detail the types of foods required and portion sizes for children of different ages.  This includes milk as part of breakfast and lunch, and as an option for snacks.  A doctor must sign a food substitution form for children to receive food other than what the USDA meal patterns require.  While the intent–to protect children’s health from arbitrary or unhealthy restrictions or substitutions–is good, it does imply that parents cannot be trusted to make the decision to have their child receive soy milk rather than cow’s milk.  Considering the number of people who cannot digest milk, in addition to those who choose not to drink milk for other reasons, this seems unfair.  What a coup for the dairy industry to have the US federal government require that their products be served to young children, who are developing their eating habits!  This government endorsement leads to the belief by many of the that dairy consumption is necessary for optimum health.

Fortunately, I had a “health maintenance exam” scheduled for this week (an appointment made back in May, because it took that long to get in).  The doctor didn’t have a problem signing and stamping the form when I explained that we’d switched to soy milk at home and wanted our son to drink soy milk at daycare as well.  So that hurdle has been cleared for this year.

I recently finished a 16-day bike trip from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC as one of two leaders responsible for seven teenagers.  As I expected, during the trip I ate a lot of junky food that normally does not appear in my diet.  Before the trip was half-over, I had already phoned my husband to share my craving for a stir-fry with broccoli, snow peas, red peppers, some kind of tasty sauce, and a little bit of chicken, served with rice.  (He made exactly that for dinner the day after I came home.)

Anyhow, one of the junky food products that I consumed during this trip was Tang.  Yes, Tang, that sweet orange powdered drink mix.  I was aghast when I read the label claiming that Tang contains  ”fruitrition.”  This invented word helps sell the fact that Tang is “fortified with select vitamins found in fruit juice.”  (According to the Kraft website, this “may include vitamins C, A (beta-carotene), folate, B2, B3 and B6, depending on local regulations.”)  Woo-hoo!  Let’s fortify a flavored drink mix and then try to sell it as a healthy product, by combining the words “fruit” and “nutrition.”  Pay no attention to the fact that according to the ingredients list, Tang contains less than 2% orange juice solids.

Additionally, the Tang label trumpets that it has half the sugar of 100% fruit juice.  Oh boy!  Instead, it has the artificial sweeteners sucralose, acesulfame potassium, and neotame (according to Wikipedia; I don’t have an actual jar of Tang in front of me but that sounds like what I remember from reading the label).  I just don’t get the current trend in reducing the amount of sugar in products by using artificial sweeteners.  Yes, many (if not most) people consume more sugar than they should, but using artificial sweeteners is not the best solution.  I just don’t trust artificial sweeteners.  Sugar is natural and has been around for a long, long time.  Our bodies can deal with sugar.  Sure, we shouldn’t eat too much of it, and people with diabetes are another story, but for most people, I believe that sugar is a better choice than artificial sweeteners.

The sad thing is that parents will buy Tang and think that they’re doing something good for their children.  They will think that they are providing their children with the nutrition of fruit juice at a lower cost.  Instead, the cost to society of their children growing up with this warped view of healthy eating may be astronomical.

In a previous post, I compared Peter Pan creamy peanut butter with Meijer natural creamy peanut butter.

Last week, while camping, I shopped in an unfamiliar grocery store.  I didn’t see a store brand natural peanut butter, so I grabbed a jar of Skippy Natural creamy peanut butter.  I didn’t read the label before purchasing it.  When I later looked at the ingredients list, I was dismayed to find that in addition to peanuts, Skippy Natural peanut butter contains palm oil, sugar, and salt.

My initial reaction was to feel betrayed.  I thought I was buying a healthier peanut butter by choosing one that was labeled “natural”, but I bought the added fat, sugar, and salt that I had intended to avoid.  Upon reflection, I figured that this natural peanut butter differs from regular peanut butter in that it doesn’t contain partially hydrogenated oils.

I compared the Nutrition Facts and found that one serving of Skippy Natural creamy peanut butter contains the same quantity of saturated fat and sugar and slightly more sodium than one serving of Peter Pan creamy peanut butter.  (150mg sodium vs. 140mg)

This serves as a reminder that “natural” is not the only quality upon which we should judge our food.  The fact that something is natural doesn’t mean it is superior, or even safe.  Poison ivy is natural.  Snake venom is natural.  It would be very easy to eat a grossly unhealthy diet of all-natural foods, including oil, butter, and eggs.

The next time I buy a natural peanut butter, I will be checking to be sure it contains nothing but peanuts.

In a parenting group to which I belong, there is currently a discussion about the merits of eating like our ancestors.  The idea is that human beings evolved eating a certain kind of diet and that optimum nutrition can be attained by eating the diet that our bodies have evolved to eat.  Proponents of this philosophy believe in eating diets based on whole foods, rather than the junk that so often passes as food.

I agree that there is a certain amount of sense and logic to this.  Of course, eating foods that our great-great-grandparents would recognize is healthier than eating cheese puffs and fruit snacks.

However, I think people romanticize the diets of yester-year.  I would wager a guess that most of us descend from common people who toiled day in and day out to eat an extremely limited diet.  Exotic foods, and even many common foods out-of-season, were likely not available to our forbears.  Food storage and safety were nowhere near our modern standards.  Grains and meat might be infested with insects, unrefrigerated dairy products swimming with bacteria, fruits and vegetables rotten.  Hunger was not an unusual occurence for hundreds of millions of people throughout world history (and for hundreds of millions of people today, for that matter).

I, for one, would rather not go back to those “good old days.”  While modern supermarkets offer a plethora of nutritionally deficient products, they can also be used to eat a diet that is far superior to that of most of our ancestors.

Credit goes to my father; his opinions on this topic have influenced mine.

A few months ago, I started reading The Crazy-Makers: How the Food Industry is Destroying our Brains and Harming our Children by Carol Simontacchi.  The premise of the book is that the standard Western diet, full of processed food and lacking in nutrition, has a negative effect on mental health.  I found it an interesting hypothesis and was looking forward to learning about the evidence that would support it.  Unfortunately, I found the book so terrible that I gave up reading it after the introduction and the first chapter.  Maybe it got better, but I’m judging it based on that much of the book.

To begin with, the book was not as well-referenced as I would have liked.  There were many statistics (mostly quite negative, to prove the point that Americans are screwed up and their lives suck), but not all statistics were clearly referenced.   Some of the statistics were misleading, such as a statistic from 1981 that was discussed as if it represented the current situation, although the book was copyright 2000.  Other statistics seemed like they could be misleading also; I would have to check the original sources before trusting them.

There were a few religious references, nothing that I found objectionable, but I am cautious when people start talking about religion because some religious people are not very strong in their science.

The author mentioned that in her clients’ food diaries, “It was not uncommon to see a seven-day food diary containing twenty-one meals with almost no vegetables, no fruit, no protein, and no water.”  The “no protein” comment puzzles me, as it’s my understanding that most Americans get way more protein than they need.

While flipping to look at the endnotes, I saw a “healthy” recipe in the back for cream puffs that included butter, eggs, and general-purpose flour.  Those don’t register as particularly healthy ingredients to me.

In the endnotes, I saw a reference to a telephone conversation with Sally Fallon, the president and treasurer of the Weston A. Price Foundation.  This organization discourages processed foods and believes that animal fat is necessary for good health.  I agree with them in giving the thumbs-down to processed foods, but the evidence I’ve seen has convinced me that animal-based foods are not only unnecessary but harmful to human health.  Thus, seeing a reference to Sally Fallon makes me a little suspicious about the author’s conclusions.

The “About the Author” information said that Carol Simontacchi was “currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Brain Nutrition from the Union Institute.”  I looked up the Union Institute (I’d never heard of it before).  Currently, Interdisciplinary Studies is the only Ph.D. they offer, with a concentration in Ethical and Creative Leadership, Public Policy and Social Issues, or Humanities and Society.  None of those are even in science, no less something as specialized as Brain Nutrition.  A quick internet search turned up this bio of Carol Simontacchi, related to her appearance as a guest on a radio show on December 29, 2007.  It says she earned a Master of Science from Columbia Pacific University (another school I’ve never heard of) and doesn’t mention anything about a Ph.D.

There might well be some good information in this book, but I had so many concerns about the credibility of the author and the evidence presented that I was not comfortable accepting the information.  I decided it wasn’t worth my time to read the rest of the book.

Today I’m comparing Peter Pan creamy peanut butter with Meijer natural creamy peanut butter.  The Peter Pan peanut butter is what we had in our pantry.  My husband is the one who usually does the grocery shopping and that’s the brand he prefers; I grew up eating Jif.  Meijer is our grocery store.  I wanted to try natural peanut butter, so it was an easy choice to buy the store brand.

The serving size for both brands is 2 tablespoons (32g).  To compare the two, I will type the nutrient category, then the value for the Peter Pan peanut butter, then the value for the natural peanut butter.

Calories: 190, 200
Total fat: 17g, 16g
Saturated fat: 3.5g, 3g
Trans fat: 0g, 0g
Cholesterol: 0mg, 0mg
Sodium: 140mg, 10mg
Total carbohydrate: 6g, 6g
Dietary fiber: 2g, 2g
Sugars: 3g, 1g
Protein: 7g, 9g
Iron: 2%, 4%
Niacin: 20%, (no value given)

The ingredients of the natural peanut butter:  Peanuts.  The ingredients of the Peter Pan peanut butter: Roasted peanuts, sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (cottonseed and rapeseed), salt.  Hmmm…  Peter Pan adds sugar, oil (which is fat), and salt.  No wonder the Peter Pan peanut butter contains more fat, sodium, and sugar per serving than the natural peanut butter. 

The natural peanut butter tastes just as good as the more processed peanut butter.  The texture isn’t quite as smooth, but in a sandwich, I don’t notice the difference.  Oil tends to separate from natural peanut butter, so you have to stir it to mix the oil back in before using it.  My jar suggests keeping the peanut butter in the refrigerator to retard oil separation.  I’ve been keeping mine in the fridge and have barely noticed any oil separation, but the cold peanut butter is harder to spread.  Whether it’s taking a moment to stir the natural peanut butter before using it or putting a little extra effort into spreading the peanut butter, I think the minimal amount of additional work involved in using natural peanut butter is worth knowing that you’re eating nothing but 100% roasted peanuts.

One final consideration is price.  The 18 oz. (510g) jar of Peter Pan peanut butter costs $2.19 (USD), or 12.2 cents per ounce.  The 16 oz. (454g) jar of Meijer natural peanut butter costs $1.79, or 11.2 cents per ounce.  The natural peanut butter is less expensive than what we bought previously.  This might not be the case for someone who normally buys a store brand processed peanut butter rather than a name brand, but it’s true for us.

 

I recently came across a recipe for chocolate mousse in the vegetarian starter kit produced by PETA and tried it out yesterday.  It couldn’t be much simpler: puree tofu in a food processor, melt chocolate chips, then blend the chocolate in with the tofu.  The recipe called for 1 1/4 lbs. silken tofu and 3/4 cup melted semisweet chocolate chips; my tofu package contained 12.3 oz. tofu (or approximately 3/4 lb.) so I adjusted the amount of chocolate chips to 1/2 cup.

The results were quite satisfactory.  Other than a few very small blobs of tofu that missed the blade of the food processor, the final product was creamy and smooth.  It tasted good, although I think it would have been better with a little more chocolate.   If I hadn’t made it, I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that it was made with tofu instead of dairy.  I sprinkled powdered sugar on the tops of the cups of mousse before I put them in the refrigerator to chill.  That was a mistake, as the powdered sugar absorbed the moisture of the mousse and basically melted away.  Note to self: top with powdered sugar just before serving.

My 3-year-old son ate some for dessert tonight and didn’t comment on what he thought of it, good or bad.  He didn’t finish it, but he didn’t eat much of his dinner either.  I think the hot weather has depressed his appetite.  My husband hasn’t tasted it but he said he would later this evening.  I’ll update once I get his verdict.

As far as how nutritious this recipe is, I’d say it’s a lot better than chocolate pudding made with cow’s milk and not quite as healthy as unadulterated fresh fruit.  It has added sugar.  It’s not entirely vegan because there is milk in the chocolate chips.  But it’s dessert.  And it’s chocolate.  And that’s a good thing.  Who would have ever thought I’d be eating chocolate-flavored tofu for dessert and enjoying it?

P.S.  My husband never did try the chocolate mousse.  Another time, perhaps.

Although I’ve discussed giving up dairy in the past, I haven’t really explained why.  There are many good reasons to reduce or eliminate dairy from one’s diet.   Some people are concerned about the treatment of cows.  Others feel that an excessive amount of resources is used in dairy production.  I personally find the reasons related to human health most compelling.  There is substantial evidence that dairy consumption is unhealthy in a variety of ways.  Meanwhile, it is entirely possible to eat a healthy diet without consuming dairy products; cow’s milk is simply unnecessary for humans.  So why eat something that you don’t need and that could be really bad for you?

In my research on this topic, I came across a concise list of 16 reasons to avoid dairy products.  Rather than re-inventing the wheel by describing them all here, I’ll let you follow the link.

This article summary provides a good basic background of Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s work, along with some information from the Physician’s Committee on Responsible Medicine and plenty of statistics related to dairy consumption and health.

One additional reason that I’ve encountered that is not mentioned in the links above is that Crohn’s Disease may be related to bacteria in milk.  (Here’s another article with less information, but from a more reputable-looking source.)  My husband has Crohn’s, so this has particular relevance to my family. 

Someone who is very curious or has way too much time on their hands might check out http://www.nomilk.com/ or http://www.notmilk.com/.  I am hesitant to recommend these sites because I found many broken links on the No Milk page and I didn’t care for some of the writing on the Not Milk page.  However, they do have a great many links to possibly interesting and relevant information.  Keep in mind that these websites are not exactly objective, so use your critical thinking skills if you browse around them.

Finally, if you’re truly interested, I would recommend reading Dr. Campbell’s book The China Study.  This book presents a well-supported argument for a whole foods, plant-based diet and has quite a bit of information on why dairy consumption may not be such a good idea.

Originally posted June 5, 2008 on http://burckeri.wordpress.com

Recently, I discovered that Canada has replaced the 1992 Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating. Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide was released in February 2007 (okay, so I’m a little late noticing it, but it’s news to me). I must say that I am quite impressed, especially when comparing it with the Food Pyramid offered by the United States.

For one thing, Canada’s Food Guide is accessible to a multicultural population. It is available not only in English and French, the two official languages, but also in Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, and Urdu. The examples of serving sizes include a wide range of foods, such as pita, tortilla, couscous, and kefir. In addition, there is a Food Guide specifically for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, which includes foods traditionally eaten by Canada’s Native population.

The format of the main visual presentation is appealing. Canada’s Food Guide is represented as a rainbow. Each color band represents a food group and contains pictures of foods from that group. The inner bands have less area than the outer bands (think back to math class), and they represent the groups for which fewer servings are recommended. In comparison, I become irate every time I think about the new version of the Food Pyramid in the United States. What were they thinking when they changed it? The former version was logical–it had horizontal bands, with the base of the pyramid representing the group for which the largest number of servings was recommended, and the top representing foods to be used sparingly. There were illustrations of foods that belonged in each group. Now, it’s just a bunch of different-colored triangles. Unless you’ve memorized the thing, you don’t know which color represents which food group, and the difference in the sizes of the triangles (representing more servings for some groups and fewer servings for others) is much less obvious. And they added a picture of a figure climbing stairs on the side, to represent the importance of physical activity. Woo-hoo! How on earth could any reasonable people who cared about making good nutritional information accessible to the public have decided that this was an improvement over the previous version?

The nutritional advice in Canada’s new Food Guide seems sound, based on what I’ve been reading. I love the fact that they gave an entire list of junk food to limit: cakes and pastries, chocolate and candies, cookies and granola bars, doughnuts and muffins, ice cream and frozen desserts, french fries, nachos and other salty snacks, alcohol, fruit flavoured drinks, soft drinks, sports and energy drinks, and sweetened hot or cold drinks. Compare that to what the US government has to say about “discretionary calories.”

Canada’s Food Guide is vegetarian-friendly. It advises people to “Have meat alternatives such as beans, lentils, and tofu often.” It also places fortified soy beverages in the Milk and Alternatives category. In comparison, the US Food Pyramid does not provide any non-dairy options in the Milk, Yogurt, and Cheese group, leaving an entire food group inaccessible to people who cannot consume milk or choose not to. In the US version, lactose-reduced and lactose-free products are pushed. The possibility of a person not consuming dairy is acknowledged, but with disclaimers that make it sound like a less-than-desirable option: “Calcium-fortified foods and beverages such as soy beverages or orange juice may provide calcium, but may not provide the other nutrients found in milk and milk products.” (from the milk group link above) “The amount of calcium that can be absorbed from these foods varies.” (from this page) However, vegetarians may not appreciate the recommendation of Canada’s Food Guide to “Eat at least two Food Guide Servings of fish each week” (although I personally like fish and I think that eating fish is healthier than eating land animals). I am a little disappointed by the wimpy advice, “If you eat luncheon meats, sausages, or prepackaged meats, choose those lower in salt (sodium) and fat.” Why not, “If you eat luncheon meats, sausages, or prepackaged meats, cut it out and find something better to eat!”

An interesting change from the 1992 version of Canada’s Food Guide is that the Vegetables and Fruit group has replaced the Grain Products group on the outside of the rainbow (the largest band, indicating the greatest number of servings recommended). This is consisent with the recommendations in Dr. Fuhrman’s Simple Family Food Pyramid in the book Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right by Joel Fuhrman, M.D. Dr. Fuhrman’s pyramid struck me when I read his book over three years ago because I had always seen grains promoted as the food group from which the greatest number of servings were recommended. The government of Canada bumping grains down and promoting vegetables and fruits to this prominent position definitely lends credibility to Dr. Fuhrman’s recommendations.

All in all, I think that the changes to Canada’s Food Guide were positive and that as a nutritional guide, it is superior to the United States’ Food Pyramid. Maybe when the United States finally wakes up and gets a socialized medical system running, the government will realize that each person’s poor dietary choices and ill health cost all of society. Maybe then the government will sponsor better nutrition education. Let’s hope so.

Originally posted May 23, 2008 on http://burckeri.wordpress.com

I’ve managed the switch to soy milk quite well. My husband tried it once or twice, decided he didn’t care for it, and has been buying regular milk for himself. He will use soy milk in cooking if I remind him (and he agreed that you couldn’t even tell the difference in mashed potatoes).

After the first couple days of switching to soy milk, Peter started complaining. However, he would protest, “I don’t LIKE soy milk!” in between bites of cereal with soy milk; his professed dislike of soy milk wasn’t slowing him down any in eating the cereal. Shortly after that, I realized that there were half-gallon containers of soy milk in the refrigerated dairy section of the grocery store that were significantly cheaper than the quart-sized containers on the shelf. When we started buying half-gallon containers, we just called their contents “milk” and Peter hasn’t complained since. Someday he’ll figure it out, but we’ll deal with that when the time comes. He still drinks regular milk at daycare. I have a vague memory of the paperwork at the beginning of the school year stating that parents who did not want milk served to their children had to get a written statement from the child’s doctor approving this decision. Maybe I’m just making it up, but he only has one more week of daycare and then he’ll be off for the summer, so there’s no point in pursuing it now.

Originally posted April 27, 2008 on http://burckeri.wordpress.com