Bad habits
Almost none of my friends from my pre-pregnancy life have babies so when I got pregnant I didn’t have the kind of support system where I could ask questions from someone with experience. Since I’m a bit of a geek I ended up turning to an internet message board. The thing about a pregnancy board is that everyone is coming from a different place. Some mothers are well educated and middle class while others haven’t graduated high school. Ages range from women in their teens to women in their early forties, and women come to the board from all parts of the country and Canada a few even come from Europe. The message board is, truly diverse. Sadly I’m not much of a joiner, so I don’t participate so much as lurk.
The message board, unfortunately, brings out my bossy, self-righteous side. When I read things from women I disagree with I just want to tell them they’re wrong. Letting a baby cry it out at three weeks old? Wrong. Putting your nine month old in time out? Wrong? Feeding your one year old grilled cheese, boxed macaroni and cheese, chicken fingers or fish sticks every single day? Wrong, unhealthy, and the beginning of a lifetime of bad habits.
Let me rant for a minute. Children need to be exposed to different foods every day. Whether they’ll eat them or not is up to them, but a variety of healthy choices need to be offered. Sure, Sam eats Cheddar Bunnies for breakfast sometimes, but that’s after he’s nursed and been offered yogurt, fruit and cereal. Healthy foods have to be offered first. It makes me sick when I see babies eating happy meals, cheesy poofs and bags of chips on the playground.
I’m not saying you can’t give your child treats. But babies shouldn’t be eating 100 calorie snack packs of Oreos. Just because it’s only 100 calories doesn’t mean it’s not crap. There’s nothing wrong with eating cookies, chips and french fries every once in a while but every once in a while isn’t what’s making children obese. It’s the daily ration of the deep fried, partially hydrogenated, high fructose corn syrup filled crap. Look at chicken nuggets. Some parents incorrectly assume that they’re chicken, how bad can it be? Well 50 to 60% of the calories in chicken nuggets come from fat. (source) Just look at the ingredients in McDonald’s chicken nuggets.
Chicken, water, salt, modified corn starch, sodium phosphates, chicken broth powder (chicken broth, salt, and natural flavoring (chicken source)), seasoning (vegetable oil, extracts of rosemary, mono, di- and triglycerides, lecithin). Battered and breaded with water, enriched bleached wheat flour (niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yellow corn flour, bleached wheat flour, modified corn starch, salt, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium lactate), spices, wheat starch, dried whey, corn starch. Batter set in vegetable shortening. Cooked in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, (may contain partially hydrogenated soybean oil and/or partially hydrogenated corn oil and/or partially hydrogenated canola oil and/or cottonseed oil and/or sunflower oil and/or corn oil). TBHQ and citric acid added to help preserve freshness. Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an anti-foaming agent.
Why is there an anti-foaming agent? Shouldn’t chicken nuggets just be chicken dusted with flour, dipped in egg and breadcrumbs then fried in oil or baked? Look at all of the times sodium is listed in the ingredients. The frozen boxed nuggets found in the supermarket aren’t much better. They’re fully cooked or pre-fried for your convenience.
I don’t care if it’s convenient. It’s not healthy. If your kid won’t eat anything besides chicken nuggets it’s because you allow it. Most literature available says that babies and toddlers need to be offered something ten times before they’ll try it. I don’t yet know if that’s true. Sam’s unpredictable and will eat falafel one day and think I’m trying to poison him with it the next, but it doesn’t stop me from offering it. I offer him fruit and vegetables when he’s hungriest then move to the carbs later. Or, if he’s inconsolable I’ll let him take the edge off of the hunger with a some crackers and then move on to the real food when he’s calm enough to eat it.
Either way he eats what we eat, and eating a variety of fruits, vegetables and whole grains is important to me so generally he eats all right. When I don’t feel like cooking and he eats mac and cheese from a box it’s Annie’s Homegrown and when he eats nuggets they’re Veggie Patch Spinach Nuggets. They aren’t the healthiest foods he could be eating, but they are healthier alternatives- they’re no chicken nuggets.
Speaking of chicken nuggets there are tons of recipes available to make them at home using no anti-foaming agents and ingredients you’ve heard of. Here’s just one of many extensive lists of chicken nugget recipes at Cooks.com And your kids can help you dip the batter.
eating healthy, healthy alternatives, children’s eating habits, chicken nuggets, why do McNuggets have an anti-foaming agent
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June 12th, 2007 at 11:05 am
I agree - within limits.
I do think it’s harder to eat healthy these days than it used to be - largely because it is tough to get fresh food that’s affordable. My husband used to get fresh milk delivered to his door. Now we drive half an hour to get organic milk. Over the weekend, we stopped at a food market to get gas and a quick drink - no plain milk! None. Zippo. No juice. Soda, energy drinks and strawberry milk (that, as it turned out, was expired).
The point is that our country - unlike other countries - does not yet truly support eating healthy. I think that’s why so many kids have poor eating habits.
It’s hard to buy healthy but it’s super easy to buy processed food. So parents do it.
You have to be creative to find local food or organic food. Why is that? Why is it easy for me to find Chicken McNuggets than fresh meat? We have no butchers anymore. Only a few cheese shops. A bakery is rare. And the stuff in the grocery stores - no matter how good the grocery store is - is not the same.
June 12th, 2007 at 11:35 am
You’re right. Our country is one of the few where the poor are obese instead of skinny. It is cheaper to buy processed crap than it is to buy real food. Michael Pollan wrote a really interesting article about how the Farm Bill is a huge part of the problem. http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=88
They sell Horizon organic milk at Shoprite (and possibly Acme? I can’t remember), which isn’t quite the same as organic milk you can buy from a local farm, but it’s better than nothing.
June 12th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
First of all…LOVE Spinach nuggets!! They are simply the best!
But for real, what you’re saying reminds me of one of my mom’s key sayings: “don’t cater to the kids. Don’t cook them a separate meal. The kids eat what the adults eat.” … okay so she probably had a more concise way of putting it, but essentially, if they were having spinach as part of their dinner, you better believe it went on my plate. I was never forced into trying anything, but it was always on my plate. My sister is now doing the same with her son and I’d say it’s working!
June 12th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
I, personally, can remember spending many an evening at the dinner table, alone. Alone, that is with a plate of peas. I grew up thinking that my parents were ogres and mean, mean, people. But when I think back now I realize that they really catered to me - I was fairly finicky - A lot of it had to do with texture and spices. But I wasn’t “mainstream” picky and I did eat a lot of ‘weird’ things - my dad used to openly question my patriotism when I would happily eat artichokes, mushrooms, olives and clams - but I wouldn’t touch a hamburger, apple pie and/or macaroni salad.
Luckily for me, my parents also enjoyed the “weird” foods I would eat (makes sense, it’s not like I was getting crepes at the school cafeteria) -
As you’ve said, children are exploring the tastes and textures and their also learning their boundaries - just wait until other children are thrown into the mix - “Charlie said Cheddar Bunnies are gross - I want Goldfish!!!!”
June 12th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Other children will probably be the death of my idealistic expectations.
Like the one where I never force Sam to eat anything. If he doesn’t want to eat something I don’t make him- I don’t think the “open wide, here comes the train into the tunnel” thing helps him learn anything. But who knows. Maybe 8 year old Sam will be sitting alone in front of a plate of stir fried spinach and ginger rice.
August 22nd, 2007 at 9:03 pm
I see more babies–yes, babies–and toddlers eating cheetos than anything else. And doritos.
Gross.