Parents work hard to provide balanced meals for their children, trying to avoid the fast food drive through lane and making sure their child doesn’t have weight issues. Typical items may include oatmeal for breakfast, yogurt for a snack, a taco for lunch and fish sticks at dinner. It’s better than eating out right? Think again. These items can often have more sugar, sodium and trans fat than you realize.
Northland mom Julie Casey says it’s extremely challenging, especially for working parents or families with kids on the go. She says her 4- and 2-year-old daughters MaKenna and Peyton eat a lot of fun kid yogurt products and cereal fruit bars, but lately she’s noticed the amount of fat and sugar content in these products. “It’s amazing how much sugar is in there,” she says.
Registered dietician Misty Newland with the Independence School District says Casey’s right. Newland says consumers can be confused by what’s on the front of the package. “The big thing to keep in mind is to read the whole label starting with the ingredients list, because it will show you what’s really in the product,” she says. Don’t blindly accept what the marketers want you to think is in the product. Newland says a good rule of thumb is to look at the first five ingredients of the label to determine how nutritious the product is.
The next time you are shopping, consider this list of surprisingly unhealthy foods:
Yogurt: Some manufacturers have loaded kid-friendly yogurt with excess calories. Stick to plain, low-fat or nonfat yogurt and add fresh fruit or crunchy low-sugar cereal stirred in for more flavor. Yogurt should have two ingredients, milk and live cultures.
Instant oatmeal: Some of the flavored instant oatmeal products have more than 12 grams of sugar per serving and are high in sodium. Newland recommends using regular oatmeal and adding in unsweetened apple sauce and dried fruit for flavor.
Fruit juice: The marketing lingo can be confusing for consumers when words like “immune promoting”, “100% of the daily value” and “antioxidants” are used.
Breakfast/energy bars: Sugar is often listed as one of the first few ingredients on many of these bars. Instead of a nutritious snack, your child is eating a candy bar.
Rice cakes: They might seem like a nutritious snack but rice cakes are often high in sodium and sugar and are really empty calories that leave your child still hungry minutes later. Have your child eat whole-wheat pita chips with hummus or peanut butter.
Fish sticks: Fish may seem like a healthy choice but frozen fried fish sticks are fat-laden and loaded with preservatives.
Tortilla and taco shells— Some of these products are made with hydrogenated fat or trans fat which can raise bad cholesterol and lower good cholesterol. Search for whole-wheat alternatives made with canola or other vegetable oils.
Organic: Something can be organic and still full of sugar. Whether it’s high fructose corn syrup, brown sugar, maple syrup or honey, Newland says sugar is sugar.
Consumers must read ingredients labels and steer clear of the marketing lingo on the front of the package. Newland says that’s something they teach elementary school children in the Independence School District. As part of the health education curriculum, all students go through the Nutrition Detectives program to learn how to decipher what’s in food products. “It all goes back to being a good consumer and children can help parents make the best choices at the grocery store,” Newland says.
For mom Casey, the label reading is paying off. She’s noticed a new product similar to the old shoe-string potato chips but made of vegetables instead. The idea sounds nutritious, but when Casey read the label, she learned a lot. “The high fat content wasn’t that much different from that of potato chips, plus it had a lot of sugars and preservatives,” she says.
Newland says not all products that are fun, convenient and attractive to kids are bad. “My advice is if you’re going to go for those fun foods, make sure you’re reading the labels and getting what you think you’re getting,” she says. Understanding the ingredient label will help all consumers make healthier choices whether you’re feeding children or yourself.
Heather Claybrook is a Northland mother of three hearty eaters.