LIKE MANY OF YOU, I’M A COMPULSIVE READER OF INGREDIENTS LABELS. But I have a confession: the “healthier: I perceive a product to be, the less likely I am to check the ingredients. As a result, I’m often unpleasantly surprised to discover when I get home, that, say, my frozen peas have added salt or…
NO OFFENSE, BREAKFAST, you’re important too, but for kids in school Lunch has it all going on. Sure breakfast gets kids through the morning, but without a healthy lunch, kids just can’t function in the afternoon. Recently, I spent some time in my son’s preschool lunch program and while it’s been interesting on a number…
SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, I FEEL LIKE I DON’T EVEN NEED A BLOG POST TO EXPLAIN THIS, that just the name of this product sums it up. Goldfish Bread? Come on. Pepperidge Farm touts this bread as having “3g of fiber plus essential vitamins and minerals” and “No high fructose corn syrup.” Plus it lists a myriad…
Summer’s here and if you have kids that means ice pops for every special occasion. And in the summer, special occasions abound: Memorial Day weekend, end of school parties, July fourth, every weekend with friends, family vacation, and “What the hell, it’s really hot out.” Here’s my run down of conventional ice pops, from Worst…
I DETEST KIDS FOODS — at least on a regular basis. Everyone likes to buy something special sometimes, but kids foods shouldn’t be an every day or every meal occurrence. Why? Because kids foods prevent kids from eating and enjoying regular food give kids the idea that they need special food cost more are often…
Most people don’t want to think too much about where their meat comes from beyond the meat department in the grocery store. As a society, we spend a lot of time anthropomorphizing animals, which makes it hard to think about slaughtering and eating them. Who among us would eat Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web or the…
THERE ARE TWO REASONS YOGURT TUBES MAKE IT TO THE CTF WORST FOOD LIST. One: they contain additional ingredients not found in regular yogurt. Two: they are a huge rip-off. Ingredients In the best case (Stonyfield Farms Yokids Squeezers), you’re getting the addition of emulsifiers like tapioca starch, carob bean gum, and carrageenan. In the…
One question I hear over and over again when talking to people about eating fewer processed foods is “How do I start?” It got me thinking back to how I started changing my families eating habits, how overwhelming it seemed, and what small first steps I took. The result is this three-part series of posts…
DEAR EVERYONE: STOP GIVING KIDS FRUIT SNACKS AS IF THEY AREN’T GLORIFIED CANDY. The ingredients are so similar, the cost so much more, and these gummy globs of sugar are keeping kids from eating actual fruits. Think I’m overreacting? Read on. The packaging of fruit snacks gives us with the impression that they are in…
By Dr. Dina Rose A big thank you to Dr. Dina Rose for giving CTF permission to re-post this fabulous piece about ingredients. Dr. Rose is a food sociologist who writes It’s Not About Nutrition, a blog about the “Art & Science of Teaching Kids to Eat Right.” SEE IF YOU CAN MATCH UP THE…
If you’ve read about recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) and want to avoid it in your kids’ diets, here is some information about companies and brands without milk from cows given rBGH. The good think is many products are now labeled as rBGH-free. For example, Polly-O string cheese in the smaller size is labeled rBGH-free…
SUNNY D JUST WENT GREEN. And while it is impressive that Sunny D ‘s six manufacturing plants in the U.S. and Spain went to zero waste this year – beating the company goal by three years – this faux juice still rates as a Worst Food. Strike 1: Misleading marketing To start with, if a…
DOES THE PREFIX “ECO-“ MEAN ECOLOGICAL OR ECONOMICAL? Take a look at these products. Which ones are organic or environmentally friendly? Unless you read the fine print, you could be fooled. I sure was – and so was the Home Depot guy. He recommended Ortho Ecosense to me as an organic solution to my tomato…
YOU HAVE TO GIVE KELLOGG’S CREDIT. Through some sort of marketing magic, they’ve convinced everyone Pop-Tarts are a breakfast food. Now, if only we could get them to use that marketing magic for good and not junk food, we might achieve world peace. At least Quaker had the guts to come right out and call…
BRACE YOURSELF. I’m about to go after some of your favorite foods – sodas, snacks, treats, and more. These ingredients can also be found in foods like pasta sauces, cereals, and side dishes – things you eat at meals every day. All five have all been linked to serious health problems. In some cases the…
AS A MARKETING GIMMICK, MOTTS FOR TOTS CLAIMS “40% less sugar†than other fruit juices. The idea is, since many people cut their kid’s apple juice with water, those people could just buy it already cut with water in a juice box. BUT HERE’S THE TRUTH: Motts for Tots juice box – 13g of sugar…
THE IDEA OF LEMONADE IN THE SUMMER CALLS TO MIND kids with lemonade stands, sitting on the porch with friends, and backyard barbeques. Ice cold lemonade on a hot day is delicious and a real treat. Country Time lemonade takes that idyllic imagery, grinds it into a powder, and captures it in a container…
THE WELLNESS BITCH SHARED THIS ARTICLE ABOUT a recent USDA Inspector General’s report on the quality of our meat supply. For those of you who don’t have time to read the article or report, here are the highlights (or maybe I should say lowlights). What toxins were found in meat? The U.S. meat supply is tainted…
FOOD COMPANIES LIKE BETTY CROCKER WOULD LIKE NOTHING MORE than to perpetuate the myth that cooking is hard and time consuming. Without that myth, they couldn’t sell “food†products like Suddenly Salad. Suddenly Salad is a boxed pasta salad mix that comes in many flavors, each less healthy than the last. The idea is to…
RECENTLY AT MY THREE YEAR OLD SON’S SOCCER PRACTICE I noticed something that, quite frankly, made me cringe: parents giving their kids sports drinks. The sports drink industry has done a great job of making us all think that if we sweat a little (or in the case of most three-year-olds playing soccer, not at…
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