Back to School Health Tips for You and Your Kids!

Most kids' fast food meals are unhealthy - From Web Md. Kids fast food meals are loaded with too many calories and too much fat and sodium, according to a report issued today by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

"You can hunt around and you will find a few [kids'] meals that are nutritionally pretty good," says Michael Jacobson, PhD, executive director of the CSPI, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. "But the vast majority of meals are too high in calories, saturated fat, or sodium. They are all made with refined white flour rather than whole wheat flour -- not the kind of meals we ought to be encouraging people to eat."

Kids' Fast Food Meals: Report Detail
CSPI's researchers, led by Margo G. Wootan, the center's nutrition policy director, assessed the nutrition of children's meals from 13 different restaurant chains.
They looked at all the possible children's meal combinations -- all the ways that an entree, side item, and beverage could be combined -- and came up with 1,474 possible choices at the 13 chains.

Then they compared the options with a set of nutritional standards. The meal should not have more than one-third of the daily requirement for the average child aged 4-8, or not more than 430 calories. Fat should not be more than 35% of calories, with saturated and trans fat no more than 10% of calories. They looked at added sugars and sodium, with cutoffs for each.

Kids' Fast Food Meals: The Hall of Shame
Ninety-three percent of the 1,474 options had more than 430 calories, they found. Forty-five percent of the options were too high in saturated and trans fat, and 86% were too high in sodium.
Five meal choices earned CSPI's "Hall of Shame" award. On that list:

• Chili's country-fried chicken crispers, cinnamon apples, and chocolate milk, with 1,020 calories
• Chili's cheese pizza, home style fries, and lemonade, with 1,000 calories
• KFC's popcorn chicken, baked beans, biscuit, fruit punch, and Teddy Grahams, with 940 calories
• Burger King's double cheeseburger, fries, and chocolate milk, with 910 calories
• Sonic's grilled cheese, fries, and slushie, with 830 calories

Top 10 Tips for Dealing with Picky Eaters. It is really common for kids to be picky about what they eat and to turn their nose up at healthy foods. These top 10 tips will help even the pickiest eater enjoy healthy mealtimes.

1. Get them excited about healthy food: 
   Let them smell, touch, taste, ask questions and try fruits, veggies, yogurts and other healthy foods in the kitchen. Ask them what they think of the foods and let them know their opinions count.
2. Get them involved in the kitchen: 
   Let them help you with small, kid-safe jobs in the kitchen such as mixing ingredients. Be sure to thank them for their help.
3. Give them a say in what they eat: 
   Help your kids make the right food and drink choices from an early age. If they have a say in decisions they will be more excited about what they eat. It’s a great way to get them to take charge of their health.
4. Take them grocery shopping with you: 
   Get your kids involved in shopping decisions. It may take a little more time in the supermarket but it is likely to lead to less tantrums at meals.
5. Keep the junk food out of the house: 
   Your kids can’t eat unhealthy snacks if you don’t buy them. Kids will moan at first but soon they will get hungry and reach for the apple instead of the chips.
6. Add healthy food when you can: 
   Find ways to add healthy foods into foods your child already likes. You can put blueberries in pancakes, chopped fruit on cereal, or small pieces of broccoli in macaroni and cheese.
7. Help them learn: 
   Encourage your kids to draw or doodle pictures of healthy foods or write a poem. Post on the fridge and make sure they know you are proud. 
8. Sit down together: 
   Try to set aside your meals as family time. Turn off the TV and enjoy eating together.
9. Keep healthy snacks on hand:
   Bring healthy snacks when you pick them up from school, after sports practice, and at other times when you know their stomachs will be grumbling.
10. Make healthy food and meals fun: 
    Try cutting up food into fun shapes or making faces out of fruit and vegetables. Putting healthy snacks such as oatmeal cookies or dried fruit into a fun bag can turn healthy foods into a cool snack for your child.

Good Food for Thought

5 Minute Humus (Yields 4 cups)

Ingredients

1. 4 garlic cloves
2. 1 teaspoon salt
3. 2 (1-pound 3-ounce) cans chick-peas, drained and rinsed
4. 2/3 cup well stirred tahini*
5. 3 tbs fresh lemon juice, or to taste
6. 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, or to taste
7. 1/2 cup water

Directions:

On a cutting board mince and mash the garlic to a paste with the salt ( you can puree this as well). In a food processor puree the chick-peas with the garlic paste, the tahini, the lemon juice, 1/4 cup of the oil, and 1/2 cup water, scraping down the sides, until the humus is smooth and add salt to taste. Add water, if necessary, to thin the humus to the desired consistency and transfer the humus to a bowl and chill. Great if served with toasted Pita chips.

*Tahini is made from stone ground sesame seeds and is available at most better grocery or gourmet stores in 16oz. jars.

5 Minute Guacamole

1. 1 medium tomato
2. 2 ripe avocados
3. 1 small onion
4. 3 heaping tbs low fat sour cream
5. 2 garlic cloves (or 1 tbs minced garlic)
6. 2 tsp lemon juice
7. a pinch each of red pepper (cayenne), cumin, black pepper and salt (to taste)

Directions:

Dice the tomato and onion and set aside. Peel the avocados (they are ripe when you lightly press with your fingertip and it leaves an impression). Combine in a food processor, the avocados, sour cream, and garlic, and puree until creamy. Pour the mixture into a bowl, and add the tomato, onion, and lemon juice, and mix well by hand (spoon). Add pinches of the ground peppers and salt to taste. Keep chilled. Great with sun-dried chips and toasted bread strips.

If you would like to contribute a recipe to this newsletter, please email it to info@poiesishealth.com

Enjoy!

FYI

Healthy Snacks

In addition to fresh fruit, which are often high in fiber and Vitamin C, low in fat, and have no added sugar, other healthy snacks that are quick and easy for kids to eat can include:

• fresh fruit, such as apples, bananas, grapes, oranges, strawberries, watermelon, etc.
• dried fruits, including raisins and prunes, although these are considered sticky foods that can put kids at increased risk for cavities, so consider having your kids brush and floss after eating
• fruit cups or canned fruit in water, 100% fruit juice or light syrup
• raw vegetables, including carrots, celery, or broccoli, that can be served with a low-fat dip or dressing
• dairy products, such as low-fat cheese, yogurt, and pudding, or a homemade fruit smoothie
• whole grain snacks, which can include some breakfast cereals, crackers, cereal bars, baked chips, and popcorn (without added butter), or pretzels
• popsicles made with 100% fruit juice

Kids and Sugar - from Parenting.com

Lick the Sugar Habit. The New Sugar Busters! Little Sugar Addicts. Good Carbs, Bad Carbs. A slew of new books would have us blame sugar for everything from behavioral problems to skyrocketing rates of childhood obesity and diabetes. Yet babies come into the world with a sweet tooth (nature's way of drawing them to breast milk), so you may wonder, how could an occasional lollipop or cupcake be so detrimental? Is sugar really poison -- or a harmless part of childhood? For all the hype on both sides of the controversy, the truth may surprise you. Pediatricians and nutritionists agree: In modest amounts, sugar can have a healthful place in a child's diet (or an adult's). But many kids get too much, too often. Worse, sugar-rich foods tend to be full of empty calories and often displace the nutritious foods children need. A recent landmark study of more than 3,000 infants and toddlers found that close to half of 7- to 8-month-olds are already consuming sugar-sweetened snacks, sodas, and fruit drinks, a percentage that increases dramatically with age.

Findings like these concern health experts, especially because eating high-sugar foods early on makes kids crave them more later. Fortunately, "parents can do a lot to train their young child's taste buds so she doesn't end up wanting sweetness so much," says Gail Frank, a nutritional epidemiologist at California State University, in Long Beach.

Just as children differ in body type, activity level, and temperament, there's no set measuring spoon for the right amount of sugar in their diet. At the same time, how sugar plays into various health considerations can help guide you toward the right balance for your child:

• Cavities
• Behavioral Probelms
• Obesity
• Diabetes

To read the full article, click <here>.

Children and Exercise - Children turn away from exercise in droves in their early teen years after getting much more exercise when they are younger, according to a study spotlighting a factor in the rise of youth obesity.

The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, documented a steady decline in physical activity in 1,032 children in 10 places around the United States who were followed from ages 9 to 15.

At ages 9 and 11, more than 90 percent of the children met the recommended level of at least an hour per day of moderate or vigorous exercise. But by age 15, only 31 percent hit the recommended level on weekdays -- and just 17 percent met the mark on weekends, the researchers found.

Boys did better than girls, but both showed the same pattern of declining activity as they got older.

Girls fell below the recommended level of an hour a day on average at age 13 for weekdays and age 12-1/2 for weekends. On average, boys slipped below the recommended amount of exercise at age 14-1/2 for weekdays and age 13-1/2 on weekends.

Put away the Wii, turn off the tube, and go play outside!