Chocolate Milk: Necessary Nutrients or Marketing Ploy?

My daughter’s school recently stopped serving chocolate milk. I, along with other moms, cheered. The kids, not so much. When they complained to the principal, she asked them to do some research and present their case. We haven’t heard from them yet, and in fact, they’ve stopped complaining.

As we work toward increasing participation in school meals (and in turn, making school meals something kids and parents WANT to participate in), we’ll be watching those milk sales. In the meantime, I wanted to share some of the articles I found while researching the battle over chocolate milk in schools.  Is it really such a tough call, or is it just that the dairy industry’s million dollar marketing campaigns are working?

Switch to Low-Fat Milk Lowers Calories for NYC Schoolkids, ABC News/Health
“…At subsequent board meetings, milk industry advocates suggested that without whole milk or chocolate- or strawberry-flavored milk, student milk consumption would decline, thus decreasing calcium and vitamin intake. Nonetheless, the Department of Education began phasing out whole milk in 2005, and limited flavored milk to fat-free chocolate milk…”

Where Do You Stand in the Chocolate Milk Controversy?, Be Well @ Stanford
“Led by the Milk Processor Education Program and the National Dairy Council, the [Raise Your Hand For Chocolate Milk Campaign] aims to “keep chocolate milk on the menu in schools nationwide,” in light of “lunch advocates [who] are calling [to remove chocolate milk from the lunch line, a decision that could] cause more harm than good when it comes to children’s health.” The repertoire of widgets, colorful handouts and downloadable documents make it clear that a significant amount of money has been invested in this campaign…

Chocolate Milk: Better than No Milk?, Los Angeles Times
“School administrators debate whether the vitamins in milk are worth the added sugar. In Illinois, students organize to overturn a ban.”

Clarifying the Chocolate Milk Controversy, Rudd Sound Bites
“The “chocolate milk controversy” story this week is not about nutrition; it’s about marketing. The Dairy Industry’s national marketing group, the Milk Processor Education Program, is launching a new $1 million initiative to promote chocolate milk, especially in schools. I didn’t understand why they were promoting chocolate milk instead of regular milk in schools…”

Real Foodies Go to the Movies

When a group of us concerned parents were meeting once a month, we always thought it would be fun to get together and watch our favorite movies about food. We DID screen Two Angry Moms, and it was eye-opening. Here are our other favorites:

King Corn: “Two recent college graduates plant a single acre of corn and set out to follow it on its journey from the seed to the dinner plate.”

Fast Food Nation: “Inspired by the incendiary bestseller that exposed the hidden facts behind America’s fast food industry comes a powerful drama that takes an eye-opening journey into the dark heart of the All-American meal.”

Grocery Store Wars: Cuke Skywalker, Princess Lettuce and their friends fight against Darth Tater. May The Farm be with you.

The Meatrix Trillogy: Leo the pig takes the red pill offered by Moopheus and sees the real world of factory farming.

The Future of Food: Provides an overview of the key questions raised by consumers as they become aware of genetically modified foods.

Food, Inc.: “In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment.”

Fresh: “FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.”

What’s your favorite foodie movie?!?!

Tools You Can Use: Constructive Classroom Rewards

This handout from CSPI explains why the best policy is not to use food to reward children for good behavior or academic performance: Constructive Classroom Rewards: Promoting Good Habits While Protecting Children’s Health

You can read more about how to make rewards, fundraisers, snacks and celebrations healthier in this guide from KC Healthy Kids and Blue Cross and Blue Shield: “Healthy Alternatives to School Celebrations, Rewards, Fundraisers and Snacks.”

Real Food Challenge: Good ‘ol PB&J vs the Uncrustable

PB&J is one of our go-to quick fixes for lunches and snacks. If we expect to be away from the house for more than a few hours I take some along so we don’t have to eat out. My kid’s getting protein, healthy fats, carbs and whole grains, plus a little bit of fruit, and because I use real food, she’s not getting high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated oils. It takes only minutes to make and she loves it. What could be more perfect?

Nothing in my opinion, but the makers of Uncrustables – those white bread, additive laden sandwiches sold by the box in the freezer aisle – would have us believe otherwise. Curious about whether they were better, cheaper, faster, I went to an urban grocery store to do some math and read some labels. Here’s what I found out:

1. “Natural” is a marketing term and it’s not regulated. Natural flavoring may not be safer than artificial flavoring as stated in this 2004 MSNBC.com article by food editor Phil Lempert, and three different brands of “natural” peanut butter had very different looking ingredient lists. I had to read several labels before I found the brand or item that had the fewest ingredients or the most ingredients that could be found in my kitchen.

Bread: Have you read bread labels lately? You need just four ingredients to make it from scratch: yeast, flour, salt and water. Yet even the Nature’s Pride 100% Natural, 100% Whole Wheat bread I found at the store has eleven ingredients, and six are a mystery: wheat gluten, cultured wheat flour, natural flavor, whey, soy lecithin, cultured corn solids. They sound innocent enough, but I don’t really know what they are made of.

Peanut Butter: This one’s easy. Smuckers, the makers of Uncrustables, also makes Natural Peanut Butter. Two ingredients: Peanuts, salt.

Jam: It was not so easy to find an inexpensive jam that wasn’t sweetened with high fructose corn syrup or the misleading “grape juice concentrate” which, along with pear- and apple-juice concentrate, is often stripped of its nutrients and flavor, leaving only the sugar. I settled on Polaner Strawberry Preserves: Strawberries, Sugar, Fruit Pectin, Citric Acid.

Now for the Uncrustables (the circled items are actual foods)…

2. It’s cheaper to make your own. A loaf of bread, jar of peanut butter and jar of jam can make 18 half sandwiches for a total of $8.43.  That’s 47 cents a sandwich. A 4-count box of Uncrustables costs $2.75 at this store, making them about 69 cents each. Here’s the breakdown:

Peanut Butter: $2.69 for 14 servings

Bread: $2.25 for 18 slices

Jam: $3.49 for 24 servings

4. The homemade version is just as convenient: Uncrustables need to thaw before you can eat them. This may take around 3-5 minutes, which is about the time it takes to make PB&J from scratch. If you don’t have three minutes in the morning to make a sandwich, spend ten on the weekend and make a whole loaf of bread into sandwiches. Stack them back in the bread bag and pop them in your freezer.

5. The Crust: Apparently a study by German researchers found that bread crust contains eight times more of the cancer fighting antioxidant pronyl-lysine that does the soft squishy center. But I’m not a Ph.D. so I don’t really know how to decipher scientific studies. I am a mom, though, and I don’t want my daughter to think she needs special food just because she’s a kid. Talk about inconvenient. So I serve her the crust and let her decide whether to eat it. Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn’t.

Taste Test: I have to admit the Uncrustable tasted better than I expected. I’m tempted to have my kid do a side-by-side comparison, but I’m pretty sure I know how it will turn out. (Remember the McDonald’s food wrapper experiment?) It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m the grown-up and if I give her the homemade version, that’s what she’ll eat.

Decision: I’m sticking with the real deal. It’s quick and convenient, it travels well, it’s less expensive, my kid likes it, and, when made with ingredients that are as close to their natural state as possible, it’s nutritious.

And now it’s your turn: What labeling/marketing/pricing trick bugs you the most?

Time for Lunch! This Labor Day (Sept. 7)

Slow Food USA is “asking parents, teachers and every responsible citizen to speak up and tell our nation’s leaders that change can’t wait: It’s time to provide our children with REAL FOOD at school.”

Slow Food’s Time for Lunch campaign offers many ways to get involved: sign the petition, ask your friends to sign the petition, contact your legislators, post fliers, and finally, organize an Eat-In, which I intend to do. An Eat-In is “a potluck that takes place in public and gathers people to support a cause – like getting real food into schools.” Watch for details here at realfoodforschools.org.

If you can help find a location, print or distribute fliers, green it up, or otherwise promote/support this event, please let me know. And definitely save the date — lunch on September 7 — to show how important real food is for kids!

Tools You Can Use: Recess Before Lunch Handout

During school lunch time, do kids rush through lunch so they can be first in line for recess? Are they fidgety, rambunctious, noisy in the cafeteria? (If you don’t know, it’s probably time to make a lunch date with your kid.)

Many schools across the country have successfully implemented “Recess Before Lunch.” While it make take some finagling of the schedule, the benefits are worth the work of rescheduling: Kids eat more veggies, drink more milk, waste less food, are more quiet and better behaved, to name just a few.

This info sheet from Action for Healthy Kids is a great tool for promoting Recess Before Lunch in your school.

For more information, download Montana Team Nutrition’s Recess Before Lunch Guidebook.

Tell us about your school — “play time before lunchtime” or vice versa?

Real Food Is…

…?

For the 4th Annual Farm to Cafeteria Conference in Portland, Oregon last March, Action for Healthy Kids and the Community Food Security Coalition sponsored a video contest for students in elementary school, middle school, high school and college. The challenge was to “produce a 30 second to 3 minute video that informs, inspires, and encourages student advocacy to restore connections to community, food, land, and place through Farm to Cafeteria programs.”

The winning videos are entertaining and inspiring to say the least.

K-12 Category Winner: Who Put that Burger On Your Plate? by the fifth graders from Elysian Charter School, Hoboken, New Jersey.

College Category Winner: Real Food Is by Colorado College Farm Club, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

To see all the submissions, go to http://www.youtube.com/group/FarmToSchool

How do you finish the sentence “Real food is…?”

What do the kids in your life think about real food?

KC Urban Farms and Gardens Tour – Save the Dates!

The Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture presents the KC Urban Farms and Gardens Tour (Spectacular Spectacular is more like it – ten days of urban farm fun!). Plan to get out and learn about the benefits of urban food production, and to see for yourself all the amazing ways food is being grown in city neighborhoods.

Here’s a tentative schedule. I’m sure more specifics will be available as plans come together…

2009 Farms and Gardens Tour and Event Dates

Thursday, June 18, 6-8PM: Food From the City…For the City, KCMO Central Library: panel of urban farmers and gardeners highlight the variety of ways people grow food in the KC metro.

Saturday, June 20: Mini Market Tours @ Farmers’ Markets

Tuesday, June 23: Urban Foods Film Shorts @ All Souls UU Church

Wednesday June 24: Eat Out Local Night

Wednesday, June 24: Building Edible Cities: Urban Agriculture for Planning and Design Professionals

Friday, June 26: Bad Seed Market hosts daytime Urban Homesteading Class and “Funky Friday Night” Farmers Market, 4:30 – 9 PM

Saturday, June 27: Mini Market Tours @ Farmers’ Markets Other planned events: Harvest Meal – Bread of Life Church, Children and Youth Programs at area libraries, Starting an Urban Farm Class, Starting Community Gardens Class, Architecture & Urban Agriculture & Planning Program

Urban Farms & Gardens Tour: Sunday, June 28, 11am-5pm: Shawnee, KS, to Independence, MO, and many points in between will welcome visitors to tour farms and gardens. Day of the tour fun: children’s activities, live music, art, “Ask a Nutritionist¨ and more! Different types of farms and gardens will be featured on the tour, including:

• Urban Farms… Feed the People- farms that grow food to feed others, selling direct to the community
• Educational and Charitable Gardens… Sow the Seeds- farms that teach youth and adults how to grow their own food or that grow food to donate to the hungry
• Community Gardens… Grow the Neighborhood- garden sites for the community
• Home Gardens & Urban Homesteads… Feed the Family- a more intensive approach to feeding family and friends

Buy tickets at Brown Paper Tickets! $5.00 per individual, $12.00 per family, Group rate for groups of 10 or more $3.00 each person.

Food Preservation Classes in Missouri

Want to feed your family (or a classroom!), locally grown food in the dead of winter? Learn the art of food preservation in these upcoming workshops by the University of Missouri Extenstion.

You can also take classes from urban homesteaders Bad Seed in the Crossroads.

Tools You Can Use: School Nutrition Series

In 2008 I wrote a series of nutrition guides for KC Healthy Kids that  were produced through a grant from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City. Click the links to be directed to kchealthykids.org where you can view the complete documents.

Exploring New Flavors: How to Shape Kids’ Food Preferences at Home and at School

This guide explains how teachers, school staff and parents can acquaint students with new foods well before they line up for lunch. A feature article highlights Kiersten Firquain’s implementation of the first Farm2Cafeteria program in Kansas City. Other sections share resources and how-tos for helping students develop new food preferences.

Healthy Alternatives for School Celebrations, Rewards, Fundraisers and Snacks

This guide helps parents, school staff, and students “think healthy” when planning celebrations, rewards, fundraisers and snacks. You’ll find low-cost options, good-better-best choices, tips for easy preparation, recipes, and cross-cultural concepts.

Marketing Healthy Choices in the School Cafeteria
This publication explores unique approaches to increasing revenue in the cafeteria without compromising the health of students and staff. If you’re a parent, look this guide over, then offer to help your school food service department market their healthy foods!

Nutrition Placemat
This colorful placemat was created to encourage kids ages 2-5 eat their colors and get moving.  You can make the placemat at home — just print the document (in low resolution or high resolution), place the pages back to back, and put contact paper on the front and back. Finish by cutting and smoothing the corners.  Help your child match the colors on his or her plate to to colors on the place mat!

Special thanks to Liz Nord for designing the guides, and to Brian Grubb for designing and illustrating the place mat!