There are some really bad kids toys out there. Jaw droppingly bad. And when I saw this one on Finding Summer’s Anti-Consumerism Link Farm post, my jaw did drop.

I could see this being useful for budding documentary film producers putting on a home re-make of Supersize Me, but otherwise I wouldn’t be welcoming my children to pretend to be McDonald’s employees or McDonald’s consumers.

At home, we have some play food. It is a mix of some Melissa and Doug stuff (oh, wait…that disappeared when it was recalled), non-branded plastic whole food items (e.g. vegetables, breads, meats, etc.), and some branded packaged foods (e.g. can of soup, cake mix, box of cereal) that are not all that fabulous but that rounded out the play cupboards (made for me by my dad when I was a kid) for about $10 at Canadian Tire. We also love going “grocery shopping” at the play market at the Children’s Museum in Gatineau. The kids love picking up a shopping bag and picking out eggplants, croissants, and a whole variety of fun foods on their shopping trip.

But if I was going to start-over, or if I decide to add to the collection at some point, I think the ideal would be a mix of:

• Felt food
• Wooden food
• Real dry organic packaged whole foods: We saw some great mini-packages of brown rice, red lentils, and other foods at the local organic grocery store in Berlin that were designed as kids toys.

How about you? When your children play food do you want them playing McDonald’s or Farmer’s Market? How does their food related play reflect or influence their real life relationship to food?

Photo credit: crazytales562 on flickr

In the North American context, there always seems to be a battle between processed foods and whole foods. Processed foods are convenient, but full of sodium, sugar, preservatives, unhealthy fats, food colouring, and all sorts of crap you can’t pronounce. On top of that, there is the packaging the kills the environment and also harms our bodies (e.g. BPA lined cans). Whole foods, on the other hand, are mostly healthy, but take time to prepare.

I have to admit that I am a lover of convenience. But I also hate all the crap that gets put into processed food in North America. I am a fervent reader of labels and usually don’t like what I see. Before we knew about the dangers of BPA and the fact that it is in canned food, I fed Emma a lot of canned veggies. She loved the little pieces (peas, corn, carrots, beans) and having them nice and soft and right out of the can was incredibly convenient. But when I learned about the issues with BPA as well as all of the sodium that gets added, I stopped doing that for the most part. I still used it for some beans, but otherwise switched to fresh fruits and vegetables for her.

But then I arrived in Europe and went shopping at our local Bio Company. I bought my usual fresh fruit and veggies, but also gave in to the begging when we passed the jars of organic sweet corn. Yes, jars. Jars made out of glass. Jars that are not BPA laced cans (there may be some BPA in the lid…not 100% sure). It has a small amount of sea salt in it, but nothing compared to the amounts of sodium most North American canned foods are laced with. It uses lemon juice instead as the main preservative.

Then we moved on to the tomato sauce section and I found a great pasta sauce with much less sodium than you would find in most North American jarred pasta sauces. As I was choosing the pasta sauce, the begging began….I want the ketchup with the tiger on it! Of course! It attracts kids. My kids wanted it. But the secret is that this wasn’t the most nutritionally void ketchup on the shelf (as it so often the case with processed foods targeted at kids in North America). Instead, it was the most nutritious ketchup option on the shelf. The main ingredient is tomato paste, followed by apple sauce. There is no added sugar. Let me repeat, no added sugar (i.e. no high fructose corn syrup).

What really bugs me about the processed food industry in North America is not the fact that it is processed. It is the fact that it could be processed AND healthy. But generally it is not. Processed foods, for the most part, are full of crap. This is my call to action to the North American processed food industry to make products with ingredients I can pronounce, that will appeal to my kids, but that will not jeopardize my kids health. It can be done. Really. It can be.

Until then, when in North America, you’ll find me at the farmer’s market whenever possible.

Since we arrived here in Berlin, our lives have changed in many ways. We’ve moved from the country to the city, from English/French to German/Turkish, from a large home to a small apartment. One consequence of this change is that we are leading a much simpler life in many ways.

• We don’t have a car, which means we walk or take public transportation everywhere we go.
• Other than a toaster, we do not have any small appliances in the kitchen. No coffee maker, no microwave, no food processor, no electric mixer, no waffle iron, no raclette set, and so on. There is also very little in the way of pots, pans and bakeware. One pot with a kid and two small old frying pans (probably teflon) with no lids (and the pot lid doesn’t fit them either). I ended up buying a deep, non-teflon, frying pan and a baking dish to supplement what is here already).
• Since we are living in someone else’s apartment (smaller than our house and filled with someone else’s stuff) and since we travelled here by plane, we have significantly less stuff than we do at home. A small fridge, two small dressers to put the clothes for all four of us in,  one shelf in the bathroom for all of our stuff (including toilet paper and towels).
• We have no TV, very few toys, and no real play space (indoor or outdoor) that can be accessed without leaving “our property” (i.e. venturing onto public spaces requiring supervision for a 3 and 5 year old).

This has had some disadvantages:

• The kids have less freedom to play in the house/yard.
• The fact that the kids have less freedom to play in the house/yard and fewer toys also means that I have less freedom to get my things done (household tasks, work, and downtime) without having to supervise (ensure they don’t wreck the place we’re staying in or hurt themselves) or entertain (keep them busy, interested, etc.).
• Three year old Emma who isn’t used to walking a lot gets very whiny and clingy (with lots of “carry me” requests) when we are out of the house for a while.
• I can’t easily cook some of the things that I cook at home (missing dishes, pots and pans or appliances or missing ingredients that I would normally have on stock all the time at home).

But it has also had some distinct advantages:

• The kids are certainly getting their daily quota of sun (Vitamin D), fresh air, and exercise. Between doing errands and doing fun stuff, we probably spend between six and eight hours being active outside each day.
• Despite plenty of stops at local gelato dealers, we are probably eating better than we did at home.  I don’t have  well stocked freezer and well stocked cupboards, so there is less temptation to grab a frozen whatever or a jar of something when I don’t feel like cooking. Julian also isn’t in school anymore, so I don’t have to worry about the school’s rules regarding allergens (e.g. nut-free) when making food decisions. Most pleasantly surprising, some of the things at the local organic shop that are branded right at kids (e.g. have a dancing bear and balloons on the front of them), are actually healthy (unlike in North America). The ketchup, for example, has no added sugar and is almost only made up of tomato paste and apple sauce. It tastes remarkably different from the ketchup we buy in Canada (and the other brands here), but the cute bear and balloons go a long way!
• While I’m more stressed by the kids (part of going from being a work out of home mom in my own country to being a stay at home mom in a foreign country), I am less stressed about life in general.
• The kids aren’t watching TV. I don’t love TV or hate TV, but I do think that most kids, ours included, probably watch too much of it most of the time. Not having a TV here at all certainly makes it easy to ensure they aren’t watching too much of it. The only thing they watch at all is an occasional few minutes of a DVD on my computer after dinner. But otherwise, they have to find other ways to stay entertained…ways that require the active use of their brains instead of just passively watching the images go by.

So far, I give the simple(r) life a big thumbs up for family time and health. But wow am I exhausted. ZZZzzzzzzzZZZZzzzz…good night!

Welcome to the April Carnival of Natural Parenting: Parenting advice!

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month we’re writing letters to ask our readers for help with a current parenting issue. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

***

Dear Readers,

I have a McDilemma and I’d like your help. This week we are moving to Berlin for the summer. We are excited  about all of the opportunities this creates for our family, but there is one thing I am dreading already. The McDonald’s one block from our apartment.

I don’t like McDonald’s. I try to avoid it for both ethical and nutritional reasons.  Where we live right now, that isn’t very difficult. There is no McDonald’s or other fast food within walking distance of our home. That means that our kids are generally strapped into their car seats in a fast moving vehicle when we pass a McDonald’s. When they do ask for it, they have been told that it is junk, that eating it frequently would make them unhealthy and sick. Sometimes they accept that explanation and sometimes they object to it, but either way it is soon forgotten as we drive down the road and something more interesting pops into their brains. I’m not outright opposed to fast food and our kids do get the treat of fast food, on occasion, from one of McDonald’s somewhat more ethical (but yet not perfect) competitors. Ultimately, the reality of where we live means that access to fast food is easily controlled by us.

Now, as we get ready to head off to Berlin, I find myself dreading the potential daily battles brought on by the McDonald’s that is one block from our apartment and on the way to many of the places we would want to go (the park, the pool, the organic grocery store). I don’t know for sure yet, but the golden arches may be visible from the bedroom my kids will be sharing. Sigh. We will not have a car (which I’m thrilled about – lots of walking and public transportation), so strapping them in and whirring past it is not an option. I’m hoping to avoid numerous tantrums on the street corner. You know the kind. The ones that test my patience and bring out the worst in my parenting.

There are a number of ways we could approach this.

• We could forbid McDonald’s altogether. Let them know right from the start that we will not be going there and why. Take the tantrums as they come and deal with them with as much patience as humanly possible.
• We could allow occasional McDonald’s visits and remind them when they are begging for it that they will get their treat on [insert date] and that they will have to wait until then to have it.
• We could teach them about the perils of McDonald’s, but ultimately leave the decision up to them. If they want to go there, we will, but with the assumption that if it is not forbidden and if they are armed with the information to make a good decision, that they will opt against McDonald’s more often than not.

Each of these options has its merit, both in terms of parenting and my own values. Each of these options also has drawbacks, both in terms of parenting and my own values.

Keeping in mind the ages of my children (three and five) and the fact that I would prefer not to buy them McDonald’s for ethical reasons (don’t want my money being spent there), for nutritional reasons (don’t want my family eating that crap regularly), and financial reasons (McDonald’s is not as cheap in Europe as it is here and the money that would be spent on McDonald’s could go a lot further at the grocery store or the market), please tell me, dear readers, what approach you would suggest and why?

Image credit: Vertigogen on flickr

***

Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be updated by the end of the day April 13 with all the carnival links.)

• Replace hitting with…? — Acacia at Be Present Mama is at a loss on how to handle her three year old’s hitting.
• Two Questions — Alexandra at Breastfeeding Momma would like some ideas on how to strengthen her bond with her 8-month-old daughter; she’s also looking for input on an emotional topic: vaccines.
• Balancing Needs When Baby Trumps Mama — Alison at BluebirdMama wonders how her child’s need for noise and energy balances out against her need for quiet and space. (@childbearing )
• The McDilemma — Annie at PhD in Parenting is on the arches of a McDilemma. (@phdinparenting)
• Where is the mutually agreeable solution? When parenting calls for blood draws — Arwyn at Raising My Boychick has a child who needs regular blood tests that are torment for him. How does a parent honor a child when his health is on the line? (@RaisingBoychick)
• When To Wait To Nurse — Cave Mother wonders what age toddlers can be asked to wait to nurse.
• I don’t love you Mama! — CurlyMonkey wonders what to do with her daughter’s intense feelings. (@curlymonkey_)
• Help a Mama Out — Danielle at Born.in.Japan isn’t getting much sleep with her cosleeping, night nursing, cranky little guy and hopes you can help with some suggestions for shuteye. (@borninjp)
• Dear Abby: My daughter really misses her Daddy — Darcel at The Mahogany Way needs to know how to help her daddy’s girl get the connection with her father she needs — and not feel left out in the process. (@MahoganyWayMama)
• What’s Going on at School? — Deb at Science@home is in a quandary: how can she find out what really goes on at school without stepping on the teacher’s toes? (@ScienceMum)
• April Carnival of Natural Parenting: Parenting Advice — Dionna at Code Name: Mama wants to find volunteer work that includes her toddler. (@CodeNameMama)
• How do you deal? — Erin at Beatnik Momma does not want to engage in “mommy wars.” She’d like your input on how (and how much) to discuss her natural parenting choices with curious friends and family who parent differently. (@babybeatnik)
• Dear Abby — The Grumbles at Grumbles and Grunts gave her son a banana…and no solid food since. What’s the next step in baby-led weaning? (@thegrumbles)
• Excuse me, I have a poop question — Jessica at This is Worthwhile has a question for you about toddler tinkling. (@tisworthwhile)
• The Half Empty Nest Syndrome: What to do when Momma gets replaced by a cow? — Joni Rae at Kitchen Witch Momma is suffering from “half-empty nest syndrome”: what do you do when your babies start growing up? (@kitchenwitch)
• Peer Pressure — Kate at Momopoly worries what message her daughter’s new friend is sending — but how to break up such an infatuation? (@Momopoly)
• When I Fall Down — Katherine at Momioso.com needs your wisdom on how to be more gentle and at peace with herself. (@naturalparent)
• A question of sleep and sanity — KeepingMumSane needs your toddler cosleeping advice in order to, well, keep mum sane! (@keepingmumsane)
• April Carnival of Natural Parenting: Parenting advice — Lauren at Hobo Mama needs a chiropractor … or help getting her 36 lb toddler to walk up the stairs. (@Hobo_Mama)
• Driver’s Ed for Mommies — Maman A Droit is a self-confessed terrible driver and is scared to drive with her baby in the car.
• Solo Parenting — Mammapie at Downside Up and Outside In needs tips for being a single working mother while her partner’s away. (@mammapie)
• Itsy Bitsy Biter — Mamapoekie at Authentic Parenting needs your advice about her daughter, otherwise known as the pitbull.
• How Can I Avoid Beauty Obsession? — Melodie at Breastfeeding Moms Unite! is at a loss ever since her tomboys turned into wannabe princesses. (@bfmom)
• Seeking Stability in Chaos — Michelle at Seeking Mother is in a heart-wrenching position. She needs your input on how to make a toddler feel secure during a time of transition, the illness of a parent, and multiple (new) caregivers. (@Seekingmother)
• Mama, That’s Too, Too Boring! — Michelle at The Parent Vortex started out asking how to encourage her preschooler to get dressed — and four days later, she began to without prompting! (@TheParentVortex)
• Dear Lovey Hart, I am Desperate. — Mommy Soup from Cream of Mommy Soup has several questions for you, from how you play favorites when no one’s your favorite to how to tell off strangers curious about the ample size of your family. (@mommysoup)
• Diaper Duty Dilemma — Paige at Baby Dust Diaries has a simple request: talk to her about cloth! (@babydust)
• What Do You Need My Son — pchanner at A Mom’s Fresh Start wishes her calm four-month-old hadn’t turned into an inquisitive and dramatic six-month-old. How do you handle changes in baby’s personality? (@pchanner)
• Dear Natural Parenting Community — Sarah at OneStarryNight wants to know how to respond to criticism from family and friends over breastfeeding. (@starrymom)
• Natural Parenting Carnival — Help — Sarah at Consider Eden feels like either her to-do list or her parenting is suffering, because she can’t do both! (@considereden)
• To potty learn or not to potty learn – that is the question — Sheryl at Little Snowflakes wants to know whether it’s time to start potty training. (@sheryljesin)
• Seeking Patience — Starr at Earth Mama looks to the collective tribal wisdom of this community to learn how to teach patience to children.
• A Dirty Girl Comes Clean — Tashmica at Mother Flippin’ is struggling. How do parents deal with their inability to keep their children protected from danger? (@Mother_Flippin)
• Uli and the Pussy Cats — Thomasin at Propson Palingenesis has a toddler who likes to put kitties in headlocks and ride them like horsies. How best to separate the little beasties?
• Perceptions of Discipline — Zoey at Good Goog doesn’t use conventional discipline with her child — and doesn’t know how to respond around people who do. (@zoeyspeak)

A few days ago, I wrote about how I despise the McDonald’s and Coke sponsorship of Olympic athletes. Today, I want to share a few better Olympic sponsorship videos with you.

American Ski Champ and Organic Farmer: Bode Miller

Hockey Players and Egg Farmers of Canada: Hayley Wickenheiser and Kim St.Pierre

Thanks to Lisa from from Borden Communications and Design and Rebecca from A Little Bit of Momsense for tipping me off to the Bode Miller video which was also posted on The Green Fork.

Earlier this week, Canada welcomed a new hero into its hearts. Not only the winner of our first gold medal during these Olympics, but the winner of the first Olympic gold ever won by a Canadian on Canadian soil, and a genuine good human being too.  Alexandre Bilodeau is just the type of person I would like my kids to look up to. Not because sports are super special and sports heroes are better than anyone else, but because he had goals, he worked hard, and he achieved them all while being a great family guy and talking genuinely about how his older brother with cerebral palsy is his inspiration.

Until…

Hours after winning his gold medal, Bilodeau headed off to McDonald’s. Almost everyone eats fast food now and again. I get that. We do too. But when I’m trying to convince my kids that McDonald’s is not good for you, that fast food will make you sick if you eat it too often, they get to see their Olympic heroes smiling and talking about how great McDonald’s is and how much they love it. Mommy isn’t an Olympian. If I want to achieve something big like those Olympians, I’d better listen to them instead of listening to Mommy. I’d like to say my kids are smarter than that, but who am I kidding? They are five and almost three. Advertising works on them. If the TV says they must have it, they believe it. If an Olympic gold medalist says they must have it, they REALLY must have it.

It isn’t just Bilodeau. Check out Cindy Klassen, yes the one wins lots of medals and who flew back anxiously from competition in Europe to be with her sister who had been in a horrible accident.  Again, the ability to win and the human element. Just what McDonald’s wants. Just what any sponsor would want. Take a look at this video where Klassen and other Canadian olympians talk about how they eat Egg McMuffins and McDonald’s Fries “every chance they get”.

Peddling junk to our kids

Our children are increasingly obese and ingesting dangerous amounts of sodium. The processed foods and fast food industries are largely to blame. The last thing I need, any of us need, is for our children to be convinced by their heroes that McDonald’s fries will help them become a sports star.

In his column in today’s Ottawa Citizen, “Not lovin’ Olympic junk-food peddlers“, Dan Gardiner wrote:

Governments give public money to the Olympics, in part to encourage healthy lifestyles, and this money helps make the Olympics a brand so powerful that McDonald’s and Coca Cola pay to associate themselves with it in order to strengthen their own brands and improve sales of junk that contributes to the spiralling rates of obesity and obesity-related diseases which governments are fighting by spending large and growing amounts of money on, among other things, the Olympics.

If public policy were a competitive sport, this performance would not own the podium.

A British Columbia pediatrician also strongly criticized the association between junk food firms and the Olympic Games.  According to a CBC article, “MD critical of Coke’s Olympic sponsorship” :

The Olympics might promote physical activity among young people but that does not make up for the potential harm of too many sweet drinks and too much fast food, according to Dr. Tom Warshawski.

“The nutritional damage so much of their products probably do outweighs or exceeds the good things that happen in terms of physical activity,” Warshawski told CBC News Tuesday.

It is not only seasoned journalists and medical doctors that are making this argument. In a blog post for the Good Food Revolution, 12 year old Hanna Stein writes:

Any athlete training for the Olympic games could never risk eating a diet consisting of fast food. (ie. McDonald’s). They have to stay on a strict diet to keep their weight perfect for training and competition. There is no way they are living up to the things they are telling us from the televisions all over the world that they value McDonalds as a nutritious meal. Who could possibly be proud to say you value a way of eating that is not possible for an athletic when we suspect it is simply for the money they obtain through endorsements. Where is the dignity and pride that we want to see in all of our Canadian athletes that are representing Canada itself at the Olympic games? McDonalds presents a false value to our youth in telling us that a McDonald’s meal is nutritious and a substitute for real food. This can potentially have a long-term impact on the health of our future generation.

She rightly questions the government for allowing McDonald’s to be a major sponsor of the games, given how much taxpayers are paying for these games and the fact that Canadians should be able to expect our taxes to benefit our country and positively reflect on our identity. Instead, we are telling the world that we love junk.

Where are our farmers?

Where are the agricultural marketing boards in all of this? Why aren’t the taxpayer supported organizations that exist to promote Canadian farmers and their products, the ones who sell real food, stepping up to sponsor Olympic athletes? Why isn’t the government helping those types of sponsorships to take place. Not only are Canadians eating the wrong things, but our farmers are also struggling financially. The Olympic Games could have been a huge opportunity to showcase Canada’s food to the world and to see athletes supporting healthy eating habits.

It turns out one of the agricultural marketing boards is supporting a few Olympians. The Egg Farmers of Canada are sponsoring female hockey players Hayley Wickenheiser and Kim St-Pierre (thank you to Brian Rice from Processing Politics for letting me know):

Egg Farmers of Canada is proud to support Olympic and World Champions Hayley Wickenheiser and Kim St-Pierre. As the official nutritional partner of Team Canada, we know that athletes need energy to perform at their best. Eggs are packed with 6 grams of the highest quality protein giving our athletes the energy they need before a game. To perform at your best, start your day with a gold medal breakfast!

I’ll take my eggs without a side of McMuffin, thank you. I’m glad to see the egg farmers supporting our olympians, but wish it was higher profile and wish there were a lot more sponsorships and advertising spots featuring partnerships between Canadian farm products and Canadian olympians.

But…big profits = big money to spend on sponsoring athletes = even bigger profits. No profits = no money for sponsoring athletes = bankruptcy. This is a dangerous cycle.  The government needs to step in to help our farmers, help our athletes and help our kids. If they don’t do it now, they’ll be shelling out the money on health care costs anyway.

Last week a mother found an industrial staple in her son’s Gerber Graduates pasta. This week, the Canadian Stroke Network gave its Salt Lick Award to Gerber Graduates. According to the press release [emphasis mine]:

Two of Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence – the Canadian Stroke Network and the Advanced Foods & Materials Network – today awarded the third annual national “Salt Lick Award” to Gerber Graduates Lil’ Entrées. This choice was made because the “Chicken & Pasta Wheel Pickups” dinner serves up the sodium equivalent to two orders of medium McDonald’s Fries.

The Gerber Graduates meal, which the packaging says is “appropriate for children 1 year or older” and “specially made for toddlers,” contains 550 mg of sodium, or more than half a toddler’s adequate daily intake of 1,000 mg. Meanwhile, according to the McDonald’s Canada website, a medium order of French Fries contains 270 mg of sodium.

Don’t let those peas fool you…this isn’t a healthy meal.

This doesn’t come as a surprise at all, given Nestle’s (which owns Gerber and Stouffer’s) staunch defense of its sodium-laden Stouffer’s meals as appropriate for young children.

What are appropriate sodium levels?

Sodium-levels are an epidemic. According to the Institute of Medicine, which was jointly commissioned by the Canadian and U.S. governments to determine appropriate sodium levels for dietary consumption,  recommended sodium intake for each age group is:

• 1000 mg for children aged 1 to 3
• 1200 mg for children aged 4 to 8
• 1500 mg for people aged 9 to 50
• 1300 mg for adults aged 51 to 70
• 1200 mg for seniors aged 70+

According to the USDA Food Guide, toddlers (1 to 3 years old) should be taking in an absolute maximum of 1500mg t o avoid adverse effects. So recommended levels are 1000mg and the absolute maximum is 1500mg.

What is wrong with consuming too much sodium?

According to the Globe and Mail, half a teaspoon less of salt per day could save 100,000 lives and US$24 billion each year. Sodium has numerous adverse health effects, which are documented well on the Sodium 101 website, including:

• Sodium and Blood Pressure
• Sodium and Obesity
• Sodium and Cancer
• Sodium and Asthma
• Sodium and Osteoporosis
• Sodium and Heart
• Sodium and Kidneys
• Sodium and Fluid Retention

How can I cut back on the sodium in our diet?

I cannot stress enough that the best thing you can do to decrease the sodium in your family’s diet is to rely on fresh food, rather than processed food.

When you do buy processed food, check the labels carefully and compare different brands. I recently realized that the 50% less salt version of one brand’s bacon had the same amount of sodium as the regular bacon from another brand. The 50% less salt bacon of that second brand had significantly less sodium. Same thing with frozen lasagnas, pizzas, chicken nuggets, burgers, pasta sauces, etc. Almost all of them have tons of sodium, but some are better than others. Get used to reading the label and remember that what is on the label is the percentage of the absolute maximum allowable sodium for an adult, so you need to adjust down to (a) the normal levels and (b) to a child’s level if you are planning to feed the meal to a child.

According to the Canadian Stroke Network, numerous toddler meals had high sodium levels, including:

• Gerber Graduates for Toddlers Lil’ Entrées “Macaroni and Cheese with peas and carrots”: 520 mg of sodium per serving
• Parent’s Choice (Wal-Mart brand) My Little Meals™ “Shells & Cheese with Frankfurters”: 520 mg of sodium per serving
• Gerber Graduates for Toddlers Lil’ Entrées “Cheese Ravioli in Tomato Sauce with carrots, peas and corn”: 480 mg of sodium per serving
• Heinz Toddler “Vegetables, Beef & Pasta Casserole”: 470 mg of sodium per jar
• Heinz Toddler “Beef Stroganoff”: 420 mg of sodium per jar

But there were also other popular brands (which they do not name unfortunately) that have no added sodium. So check those labels…when it comes to convenience food, it is not all made equal.There are tons more tips too at Sodium 101.

My advice: Buy fresh or at least check labels. And keep boycotting Nestle (Gerber).

There was a twitter party tonight where Kraft was promising to donate 50 boxes of Kraft Dinner (KD) for every tweet with the #bluebox hash tag. The goal was to reach one million boxes of KD being donated. Kraft’s donation drive, in conjunction with Feeding America, uses the slogan “Share a Little Comfort.” The thing is…Kraft Dinner is not comfort food for people who cannot afford to eat well.

According to a 2008 University of Calgary study called Discomforting comfort foods: stirring the pot on Kraft Dinner® and social inequality in Canada by Melanie Rock, Lynn McIntyre, and Krista Rondeau, “food-secure Canadians tend to associate Kraft Dinner^® with comfort, while food-insecure Canadians tend to associate Kraft Dinner^® with discomfort“. The reason for this is that eating Kraft Dinner is a choice for food secure Canadians, i.e. those who can afford to buy food, and they can pair it with nutritious sides like proteins and vegetables to make a well rounded meal. For food insecure Canadians, i.e. those who cannot afford to buy food, Kraft Dinner is often what they have to eat at the end of the month when the money has run out and they cannot afford anything else. They often have to prepare it without milk, resulting in a significant loss of both taste and nutritional value. According to a CBC article on the study, food secure Canadians often think Kraft Dinner is an appropriate donation to a food bank because it is convenient, easy to prepare, and their kids like it.

Is there a better way to donate a dollar?

The average cost of a box of Kraft Dinner in Canada is $1. The total cost to prepare it is a bit more once you add in the required milk and butter or margerine. I typed “what can a food bank buy for $1″ into Google and found a ton of results right away showing that a $1 cash donation can go much further to alleviating hunger than a box of Kraft Dinner, e.g.

When donating to the foodbank, cash is best – your every $1 will buy $3 worth of food.

Donate to the Bay Area Food Bank online where $1 can provide up to 7 meals for someone in need.

For every $1 donated to the Calgary Food Bank, we are able to distribute $4 worth of food to those in need.

Every dollar donated allows us to buy $6 worth of food.

If you donate money versus canned goods, food pantries are able to buy so much more, according to Mr. Arnold. Let’s say that a person buys $5 worth of canned foods at a grocery store and donates it. If they had given $5 as a cash or credit card donation to Food Bank of the Rockies or the nonprofits they distribute food to, they could have used this $5 donation to purchase up to $50 worth of food from their suppliers including the same grocery stores that the person had bought the canned food from. What an amazing thing.

It is ridiculous that in Canada there are farmers who can barely afford to feed their own families. Farmers who have to go to the food bank. While at the same time, Canada’s poor cannot afford nutritious food and is being forced to eat donated Kraft Dinner while Kraft rakes in double digit profit margins. We need to to something to make nutritious food more affordable and more accessible and to allow farmers to earn a living.

I don’t have the answer. I wish I did. But I know that part of it involves donating cash to the food bank instead of donating Kraft Dinner. Another part involves developing strategies that will allow food banks to distribute more fresh food, including things like the food bank booth at our local farmer’s market where people could purchase extra produce and donate it (they aren’t there every week, but I think they should be).

Image credit: I am Gretchen on flickr

Today is Blog Action Day 2009. Last year’s theme was poverty and I effortlessly wrote a long post about our Empathy Deficit and how it is preventing us from making poverty history.

This year’s theme is climate change. Just a few days ago I was listening to Tim Flannery on CBC radio talking about his latest book, Now or Never,  and reminding us all how critical the situation is with climate change. We need to act now to reverse the horrible effects of human activity on the environment before it is too late. Wondering why you should bother? Whether you can make a difference? Read the Crunchy Domestic Goddess’ post Climate Change – Why Bother.

Ten ways to feed your family without killing the planet

We all like to eat. We all need to eat. But we can eat better. Better for ourselves and better for the environment. There are many ways you can do this, but I thought I’d throw together a top ten list of ideas for Blog Action Day.

1. Become a vegetarian or eat less meat: Going Vegetarian or Vegan is a sustainable choice.  In fact, eating meat is a significant waste of resources and adopting a vegan diet has a greater impact on the fight against global warming than switching to a hybrid car.

2. Eat organic: Help mitigate the detrimental effects of climate change by eating more organic food. Organic agriculture eliminates the detrimental effects of pesticides on our environment, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and reduces energy usage.  It is possible to incorporate more organics into your family’s diet while on a budget.

3. Drink tap water: Don’t buy bottled water. The energy used in cleaning and bottling the water and shipping it to you is ridiculous. Instead, carry around a stainless steel water bottle and drink tap water.

4. Breastfeed: Breastfeeding is not just best for your baby and best for you, it is breastfeeding is also best for the environment. The manufacturing of infant formula is an inefficient use of resources, creates toxins and waste, contaminates water, contributes to air pollution and consumes energy. The manufacturing of bottles is also detrimental. In addition to being a natural food source without those detrimental environmental effects, breastfeeding is also a natural child spacer and helps reduce overpopulation (overpopulation increases poverty and pollution).

5. Plant a garden: Find a space in your backyard and plant a garden. If you don’t have the time or space for a full-fledged garden, start with a few things that are easy and that you eat a lot of. We did a variety of different types of lettuce in planters one year. Since we eat salads once or twice per day, it made a big difference.

6. Support local agriculture: Become a partner in Community Supported Agriculture, shop at your local farmers’ market, and seek out local produce in your supermarket. Supporting local producers is more than just helping out your neighbours. Buying local when it comes to food also significantly cuts down on the emissions and energy use involved in transporting and storing food.

7. Pack a litter-less lunch: A lot of us pack lunches everyday for ourselves or for our kids. Andrea from a peek inside the fishbowl wrote a great post earlier this month with tips on packing a litterless lunchbox.

8. Ditch the disposables: Try to get rid of or cut back on the disposable items that you use when feeding your family, like bottles, plates, cutlery, napkins, straws, and so on. Find re-usable solutions instead.  To get more ideas read up on and participate in the Crunchy Domestic Goddess’ Ditch the Disposables Challenge.

9. Cut back on processed foods: Processed foods hurt the environment in many different ways. Manufacturing processed food impacts the environment. Transporting processed food impacts the environment. Storing processed food in mega freezers and refrigerators uses tons of energy. Try to plan ahead and make double of some meals so that you will have some ready-to-go convenience foods of your own at home (e.g. make two lasagnas instead of one and then freeze one for another time, make large batches of soup and tomato sauce).

10. Look into the environmental practices of companies you buy from: Look up the corporate ethics of the companies that you buy from and see what their environmental track record is. Don’t read their own corporate social responsibility stuff or if you do, read it with a grain of salt. Instead, read the reports of third party non-governmental organizations that follow corporate ethics.

We’re not good at doing all of these, all of the time. But I do want to improve and check more of them off of my list. I also want to engage industry, restaurants, and governments to make more of these things a priority. To make it easier for people to make the right choices without going significantly out of their way and without having to break the bank. Humans are creatures of convenience. That is what got us into this hot mess, so we need to make it convenient to do the right thing. To link this to last year’s theme, we need to take action to ensure that those hovering around or below the poverty line can afford to make sustainable food choices.

This is one of a series of posts that features Nestle’s answers to my questions that came out of the Nestle Family event. To access the other questions and answers, go to follow-up questions for Nestle and click on the questions you are interested in. Answers will be posted as they are received and analyzed.

Question

You indicate that “Nestle complementary foods are not marketed or presented as breast-milk substitutes” and that you support the May 2001 WHA Resolution that changed the recommended duration of exclusive breastfeeding from 4-6 months to 6 months. Given your support in this regard does this mean that you do not market any food/drink products at all for the use by infants under 6 months of age in any country and that none of your labels for cereal or baby food indicates that it can be used starting at 4 months?

Nestle’s Answer

Nestlé fully supports the May 2001 WHA Resolution 54.2 which changed the recommended duration of exclusive breastfeeding from 4 – 6 month to 6 months, thereafter introducing complementary foods while recommending continued breast feeding for as long as possible. Thus we implement this resolution in the same way as we implement the WHO Code and we have completed label changes on complementary foods to follow the 6-months recommendation. In addition, in developing countries Nestlé applies the WHO Code not only to starter formula (0-6 months of age) but also to follow-on formula (6-12 months). It is the only major manufacturer to do so.

My Response

I asked about labels. I didn’t ask about websites. While I don’t have time tonight to run out to all of our local stores to check the labels on the products, a few clicks of the mouse demonstrated that if Nestle does “fully supports the May 2001 WHA Resolution 54.2 which changed the recommended duration of exclusive breastfeeding from 4 – 6 month to 6 months“, it obviously forgot to tell its Web staff.  I went to three Nestle baby websites and found suspicious content and recommendations on all three.

Gerber USA

I figured I would start my journey in the United States. I went to Gerber’s (owned by Nestle) website to get information on its baby food products and on introducing solids. While all of the labels in the product pictures are too small to be able to see what is marked on them, there was some interesting information on introducing solids.

In response to the question “When should I start my baby on solid foods“, Nestle doesn’t say to wait until at least six months. Instead, it says “around the middle of your baby’s first year“. Around the middle could mean a bit before six months or a bit after six months. Depending on how the individual person interprets “around” that could mean between 4 months and 8 months.

Nestle mentions the baby should reach the Supported Sitter developmental stage. There is no information provided on when that might be. Also other leading sources on when you should introduce solids indicate that the baby should be able to sit well without support (i.e. sits independently) .

Instead of clearly and unequivocally saying that the baby must be at least 6 months old and have met certain developmental milestones, Nestle has chosen to just eliminate the information on the age at which solids should be introduced.

Nestle Canada

This one was even more overt. Nestle Canada has age-based pages that indicate what the baby should be doing and eating at different stages. On the page for 4 to 5 months old, Nestle is heavily pushing solids using both visuals (the baby being spoon fed and the box of cereal) and text (the links on introducing cereal and introducing solids).

When you actually click on the links on introducing cereal and introducing solids, some of those pages tell you that you should wait until six months. But if that is the case, what on earth is this information doing on the 4 to 5 months page to begin with? And shouldn’t they move them from the 4 to 5 month section (where it is linked from and as appears in the breadcrumb) to the 6 to 7 month section?

Also, on its product page for baby cereals Nestle Canada conveniently doesn’t mention an age to start its Stage 1 cereals, but its Stage 2 cereals are listed as being for 6 months and up. Wouldn’t Stage 1 logically come before Stage 2 and therefore be before six months?

Nestle Germany

There are 47 products listed in the Stage 1 (Stufe 1) category that is listed as 4 months and up. Those products, a few of which can be seen in the screen capture from the 4 months and up product page, include

• vegetables
• fruit
• meals of mixed vegetables and meats (including spaghetti bolognese)
• cereals
• juices and teas

These products include ingredients like berries, honey and tomatoes that are not supposed to be introduced until much later due to being allergens, botulism risk, etc. The labels on the products listed on the website clearly have the same 4 months and up label that is listed on the website itself.

The AAP recommendation

On page 54 of IBFAN’s monitoring report, or the second page of the section on Nestle’s Code violations, IBFAN provides the following interesting information [emphasis mine]:

In April 2003 the company [Nestle] announced that it had “completed label changes on complementary foods to follow the six-month recommendation“. During their general monitoring, IBFAN observers have checked the age recommendations of all companies and provide evidence that the change promised by Nestlé finally occurred in many countries but not in all. See Section 2 for continuing violations.

It is hoped that Nestlé will abandon its double standard and apply the change in all countries, reflecting the universality of the Code and subsequent Resolutions. Other companies would have to follow suit if Nestlé continues a decisive leadership role.

However, at the end of 2003, Nestlé gave a large grant to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to pay for the cost of sending the AAP 2004 Pediatric Nutrition Handbook for free to over 50,000 doctors. The Handbook reverses AAP’s 2000 endorsement of “six months exclusive breastfeeding” by going back to the old “4 to 6 months.” The Handbook mentions “4 to 6 months” several times but has only one footnote to say that the AAP Section on Breastfeeding favours the 6-month recommendation. Double standards once again?

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Supportive on the surface only?

Perhaps Nestle has now updated all of its product labels in store to say six months plus (but I can’t be sure of that and highly doubt it). But even if they have, these other actions regarding Web content, handbooks, and other materials suggest that Nestle is using other ways of continuing to perpetuate the myth that solids should be introduced before six months of age. In fact, like the boycott that so few Americans are aware of, you will probably find that few Americans (Germans, Canadians, etc.) are aware of the updated recommendation and Nestle would like to keep it that way.