This is the National School Lunch Week. Improving the quality of school nutrition is one of the ways to address the problem of childhood obesity. It is encouraging to see that the USDA has established the HealthierUS School Challenge to recognize schools that promote good nutrition and physical activity. This week, Secretary Tom Vilsack is recognizing schools who have achieved the “Gold” status in this program. My question is: how come more schools are not participating in this program? The Secretary should address the barriers to his program’s adoption and measure performance in a transparent way. Only then he can hope to achieve the scale needed to truly address childhood obesity.

Here are the 5 nutrition related news that caught my eye this week. Enjoy and drop me a comment to share your thoughts.

Honey! I shrunk the food ingredient list

In a positive trend, Registered Dietitian Janet Helm (@JanetHelm) points out that packaged food producers are scrambling to simplify and shrink the list of ingredients on their products. Michael Pollan should feel happy – after all, he is the one who has been telling people not to buy foods that contain more than 5 ingredients or difficult to pronounce ingredients! Actually, I agree with him and welcome this trend. Even though all these ingredients including additives, colorants and preservatives are considered to be safe, it just doesn’t make sense to me when I pick up a product which has over 20 ingredients. Why process the food so much?

Some of the new products – Haagen-Dazs five ice cream for example – now claim to be made just like the way you would make at home with only a handful of ingredients. Hmmm…I wonder if they cost more than the regular products! That would be a brilliant marketing idea – make more money with less!

Rice eaters have healthier diets – really?

A new study based on national food consumption surveys finds that rice eaters in general tend to have healthier diets because they eat more grains, more vegetables and dietary fiber, less added fat, less saturated fat and less added sugar. Rice is cheap and provides a rich source of carbohydrates.

I was intrigued by this news, not because we eat a lot of rice in hour household, but because the correlation implied that people should switch to rice! But then upon a closer look at the story I found that this research was sponsored by the USA Rice Federation. There is nothing wrong in urging people to eat more rice, but then the study should also point to the risks of eating too much rice. White rice is a refined grain and even when enriched with added vitamins and minerals, it is nutritionally inferior to brown rice. It also has a high glycemic index which will make your blood sugar rise rapidly. On the other hand, brown rice comes with an expiration date, may be more expensive, takes longer to cook and you may not like its chewy texture.

Just because someone eats rice, does not mean their diet is healthy on its own.

Home remedies for the common cold not backed by science

No doubt, eating warm chicken soup when you are down with the cold and flu is very comforting. But is there any scientific evidence that home remedies like the chicken soup, drinking plenty of fluids, vitamin C, zinc, echinacea, honey and garlic can treat or prevent your sickness? In an extremely well-researched article, Dr Ayala (@DrAyala) concludes that there is no solid scientific evidence on food, nutrients and relief from the common cold. Her advice – you can try these home remedies for comfort, and they don’t hurt except that you need to be careful about supplements.

I do take vitamin C every day, but I am under no illusion that it is the magic bullet for preventing cold and flu. The best way to prevent cold and flu is to avoid contact with sick people and frequently wash your hands. Vitamin C is an immunity booster, not an immunity builder. Proper nutrition, healthy lifestyle, good hygiene are the building blocks for good health. Not an isolated supplement!

New York City bans bake sales in schools

Would banning bake sales from schools solve the childhood obesity problem? New York City regulators seem to think so! They seem to be on a roll because in their zeal to impose a wellness policy, they are going after everything they can find which can be labeled as nutritionally evil for the health of our children. This is nutritionism at its best without regard to the cultural norms.

You might be wondering why it bothers me so much! After all, I don’t live in New York City and my children are too young to go to school.

What I find troublesome is that regulators and policy makers feel that simply by making new rules and demonstrating their power, they can change unhealthy behaviors. It is only the stick, never the carrot! In this case, everybody is rightly upset that they will lose a very traditional way of raising funds for school activities. But are the regulators providing any alternative? A few exceptions to the new rules are provided, but they are practically useless in terms of fundraising.

They should try to focus on encouraging children to make the right choices about their eating habits in the long run. Not simply ban stuff without providing alternatives.

Parents magazine offers tips for turning your baby into a veggie lover

Dr Greene, the author of Feeding Baby Green, has a nice article in the November issue of the Parents magazine. He advises to build on your child’s curiosity about colorful things by introducing him to colorful fruits and veggies. Start early, keep trying,  and introduce variety right from the very beginning. A lot of parents are concerned about allergies, so they do not introduce new foods quickly. He disagrees with this approach and offers scientific data which suggests that babies learn to love new flavors best when they are introduced to new foods in rapid succession. He gives you a nice list of 21 plant families you should sample with your child before he reaches the age of 1.

It may work, or it may not work – and of course, all bets are off in the toddler years! That is when they get picky and nothing seems to work anymore. Here are a few articles we have published to help you with fruits and veggies:

Ask the Expert – Developing a Taste for Fruits and Veggies
Help! My Kids Don’t Eat Enough Fruits and Veggies
Ask the Expert – Getting Complete Nutrition on a Vegetarian Diet
Help Your Child with Autism Have Fun with Food

Enjoy and do let me know you think. I would love to have you share your best tips in comments below.

Photo source -tomhe on Flickr via everystockphoto
©2009 Littlestomaks.com

Ni Hao! Hope all of you are having a great week so far. This week is Food Allergy Awareness Week. This is the 12th year that the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) has organized a week of awareness about food allergies. Check out their website for more details on how to get involved if you are interested. If your child has food allergies, I would love to have you leave a comment and share your tips for managing nutrition.

Here is another set of 5 nutrition related news and articles from this week that I found interesting. Feel free to share your opinions in the comments section.

Ready for your order? Now let me tell you about sodium in our special today…

When I am dining out, I am usually quite impressed by the ability of the server to rattle off details of their specials of the day. But did you ever wonder why they don’t tell you anything about salt as they try hard to make your mouth water by the fancy description of the recipe? Turns out that if they did, the shock value would be enough for you to simply say “no thank you” and walk out never to return again!

In their report “Heart Attack Entrees and Side Orders of Stroke“, researchers from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) disclose that many of the popular menu items in chain restaurants have “dangerously high levels” of sodium. They examined 17 chain restaurants and found that 85 out of 102 meals had more sodium than a whole day’s worth (2300 mg) and several had more than 4 days worth of sodium! Among the top 10 saltiest meals -  Red Lobster’s Admiral Feast has over 7100 mg and Oliver Garden’s Tour of Italy lasagna with breadsicks, salad, dressing and a coke has over 6100 mg of sodium. Items on Kids menu are no better either with some containing as much as 2400 mg of sodium. CSPI estimates that reducing daily sodium intake by just 25% over the next 10 years could help save the US government over 9 billion dollars per year in direct medical costs.

Isn’t it ironical that even with so much salt in the meals, they still have the salt and pepper shakers on each table?

When eating out, ask for the low salt version of the dish you want to order. Same goes for fat, cholesterol and sugar. If enough customers start asking for healthy food, I think restaurants will change their menu to favor healthy recipes.

If Cheerios^® claims to lower cholesterol, should it be considered a “drug”?

The FDA certainly seems to think so. This week, they sent a warning letter to the CEO of General Mills informing him of “serious violations of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act” by the promotion of Cheerios® Toasted Whole Grain Oat cereal as cholesterol lowering. That would qualify it to be a drug they reasoned, because it seems to treat a medical condition for which drugs are prescribed. In the eyes of the FDA, it counts as an unapproved use since the product has not been evaluated by the FDA for safety and efficacy. Drug approval takes very long and requires a very strict quality control in manufacturing. This could turn out to be quite serious for General Mills who may have to withdraw this claim or modify it to comply with the regulations.

Another claim that FDA found troublesome was that “heart-healthy diets rich in whole grain foods can reduce the risk of heart disease”. Seems like they conveniently forgot to include fruits and vegetables in this claim, which together with a diet low in fat and cholesterol lower the risk of heart disease. Whole grains or dietary fiber is only one factor.

We personally like Cheerios -  it is a brand I have written about favorably in the past. But I am glad that FDA is sensitive to such over-ambitious claims cited in their warning letter. It is not uncommon to see health-related claims on products – for example, nutritional supplements make all kind of claims – but then they are also required to add that their claims have not been evaluated (and approved) by the FDA.

Will this affect your decision to by Cheerios or other products from General Mills? Weigh in.

HIV and safety of breast milk

Imagine the heartbreaking dilemma of a woman with HIV wanting to feed her baby with breast milk. Now imagine that this woman lives in a poor country, where women like her are routinely told not to breastfeed and formula is not affordable.  What are her options? Should she let her baby grow up without the benefit of breast milk, or in the worst case, even die of early childhood diseases?

It  is a sensitive topic; something a lot of us are fortunate enough not to have to worry about. Yet, the problem cannot be ignored if we want all children to grow up healthy. I was pleased to read about the efforts of researcher Sera Young of UC Davis, who is helping women of Tanzania learn a protocol to pasteurize breast milk by flash heating without affecting its nutritional value. Even though the WHO recommends HIV-positive to pasteurize breast milk,  no one in those countries knows how to do it. This project is a great start in that regard. And it is encouraging to note that the acceptance level is very high. The challenge will be to ensure that the pasteurization protocol is properly followed so that the breast milk is safe and still maintains its nutritional value. It is one thing to do it under the watchful eyes of a researcher, and something else to do it everyday on your own. But I do hope that it works in future at a much larger scale.

Link between obesity and food allergy?

This is what you could call a double whammy! Not only do we have rising rates of childhood obesity, we also have an increase in the number of early childhood food allergies and sensitivity to various foods. Now researchers from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, have uncovered a link between obesity and high levels of IgE (antibody associated with an allergic response) based on the 2005 – 2006 NHANES data. Although, they are careful not to draw too many conclusions, it hasn’t taken all that long for people to ask the question “Is obesity fueling food allergies“? It is hard to say if high BMI and obesity is a cause of food allergy, or simply a common feature. Also, is there even a common cause between the two? Hard to say – because even though poor nutrition is linked to high BMI, we cannot say for sure that it also causes food allergy or intolerance. Could it be that the child’s parents have allergies? Could it be that they introduced these foods too early when the child’s digestive system was not fully developed? Just by looking at the survey data and drawing conclusions based on a statistical analysis does not mean that obese children are more likely to develop food allergies.

Support Share Our Strength’s Great American Bake Sale

If you love to bake and would like do some good at the same time, you have a great opportunity to help end childhood hunger. Can you believe that 500,000 more children live in poverty now compared to an year ago and 16 million children rely on food stamps? Personally, I find this statistic embarrassing in our land of plenty! Now, Share Our Strength is running their Great American Bake Sale campaign where you can get involved – the proceeds of your bake sale will go to fund after-school and summer feeding programs in your community and across the country.

You can also support them by blogging about it, or even contributing a recipe to their virtual bake sale! They will raise money by selling eBooks of recipes.

The only thing I will add is that even though this campaign is sponsored by Domino and C&H sugar, try to go low on sugar! Leave a comment if you decide to contribute.

Enjoy your weekend!

Photo source – Davichi on Flickr
©2009 Littlestomaks.com