Greetings! There is no doubt that popular food brands have enormous appeal and influence, especially on children who are exposed to heavy marketing. Not a surprise therefore that even 3 year olds can recognize these brands. The bad news is that most of these brands offer sugary, salty and fatty junk foods, to which kids get hooked on early! Parents have to face this challenge as they try to encourage their children to develop healthy eating habits. Sounds familiar?

I started this week by suggesting that we need to have an offensive-defensive strategy for dealing with the attack of popular food brands. The idea is to create your family’s brand of food and nutrition by applying common branding techniques of identifying core values, developing a main message with a logo/slogan, promoting with friends and family and aggressively defending it with a few rules.

Another approach is to identify a few brands and products that resonate with your core values to support your battle against the not-so-healthy-but-otherwise-popular food brands. Association with these brands then becomes an extension of your personal brand.

This week, instead of the usual Five for Fridays, I want to share with you 5 of our favorite brands and why we like them. And no, I have not been paid to highlight them here; the idea here is to offer you a few suggestions as you try to discover what is important to you.

I would love to hear your comments! Feel free to share your favorite food brands and products.

Earth’s Best Organic

Earth’s Best, by far, is our most favorite brand! Our twins grew up on Earth’s Best fruit and vegetable purees, and they continue to love their organic toddler snacks such as Letter of the Day Cookies, Yogurt Rice Crisp Bars and Instant Oatmeal.

In researching Earth’s Best for this article, I found out – much to my surprise – that the company’s founders Ron and Arnie Koss are twins! Their vision of nurturing children with purest foods and growing those foods responsibly to promote a healthier earth resonates with our core values completely.

Earth’s Best brand now belongs to the Hain Celestial Group, Inc. who is responsible for bringing their toddler products to market, and of course, we are very thankful! Their product lineup ranges from infant formulas to baby’s first foods to toddler snacks and meals. They seem to be big on using Seasame Street characters as a marketing tool on their products. Honestly we are not too crazy about it! For us, the appeal is in their promise of organic quality and commitment to the environment.

For a complete list of their products and to learn about their history, visit Earth’s Best website.

Horizon Organic

We are a big fan of Horizon’s organic milk with DHA. We have had our twins on this milk ever since they started cow’s milk. At first, we were looking for an organic milk brand, but when we found Horizon’s milk with added DHA in our local supermarket, it was a no-brainer! DHA is known to support healthy brain and eye development in infants and toddlers. The source of DHA is from algae branded as life’s DHA from Martek Bioscience Corporation.

We believe that milk is an important source of nutrition for a growing child, unless there is the unfortunate situation of milk allergy. Selecting certified organic milk is better because it does not contain any antibiotics or growth hormones.

We are impressed by Horizon’s commitment to organic principles, compassion for their livestock and passion for the land. In my research, I found Horizon’s Standard of Care, which goes in great detail about their beliefs and management practices to support these beliefs. The integrity of this brand is impressive.

For a complete list of their products and company facts, visit Horizon Dairy website and Horizon Organic Facts.

Campbell’s Kids Soups

Campbell’s soups are a household name, no doubt, as you can tell by the prominent place they occupy in any grocery store. Our daughter enjoys Campbell’s kids soups with her favorite characters like Dora and Disney Princess. She loves to help Mom open a can and pour its contents in a saucepan for a quick meal. On a busy day, these ready-to-eat soups come in very handy! We are careful to read the labels because these soups can be high in salt, although Campbell’s is ahead of the curve in reducing the sodium content from its products.

We like Campbell’s as a brand, because they seem to really listen to their consumers while being sensitive to the economic difficulties. Clearly, their brand is positioned for the masses. Although their approach to healthful nutrition and environmental sustainability is incremental in our opinion, we do like their focus on affordable nutrition and continuous improvement. They have also figured out a great way to encourage consumers to prepare home cooked meals using their soups and recipes on the label. From that point of view,  we believe that Campbell’s has the potential to enable a move away from fast food and restaurant food toward home cooking at a very large scale.

Here is an interesting piece of trivia I found while researching their brand – they also produce their own seeds for tomato and peppers!

For a complete list of their products, visit Campbell’s Condensed Soups.

Cheerios

Although our twins are no longer that crazy about Cheerios, this cereal is a family favorite and occupies almost a permanent place on our cereal shelf. When they were younger, it was one of their favorite finger foods, especially when they needed to munch on something in the car!

Although there are many different types of products in the Cheerios family, we go for the plain standard Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios. We like the whole grain oats, low sugar and vitamins (particularly vitamin D) in this cereal. Recently, there has been some recent controversy about their claims around cholesterol and heart health, but we think it is more of a legal issue for them rather than a real concern with the product.

For a complete list of their products, visit Cheerios.

Green Giant Frozen Vegetables

We usually keep our freezer stocked with several packages of Green Giant frozen vegetables. Although fresh produce is the best choice, the convenience of packaged frozen vegetable -  some ready to serve with a sauce – makes it easy to add veggies in your daily diet. We like the affordable diversity of different frozen vegetables from Green Giant. But we also try to limit our selection to some of their simpler products like peas, cauliflower, broccoli and mixed vegetables. Their rice pilaf is also one of our favorites.

As a brand, which is now a part of the giant General Mills, they seem to be able to retain their identity and maintain a connection with their roots in the Minnesota River Valley. We are also impressed by their commitment to sustainability. They are sponsoring an innovative project with The Nature Conservancy. It involves using a combination of native vegetation in infiltration ponds to collect the water runoff from the fields. It is then diverted to a bioreactor (trenches filled with woodchips) where the excess nitrogen is removed and land erosion controlled. This system will also create a habitat for wildlife. Sounds like an interesting idea; although it may take up to 10 years to see the results.

For a complete list of their products, visit The Green Giant.

Enjoy and share with us your favorite brands and products.

©2010 Littlestomaks.com

Disclaimer: We have not received any sponsorship or free products from these brands and companies for our review. Our opinions are based on personal use and publicly available information.

The theme of this year’s  National Nutrition Month is Nutrition from the Ground Up! Last week, I posted 2 responses from registered dietitians who suggested going back to basics on nutrition in light of this theme. Here are a few more opinions on the question of What does Nutrition from the Ground Up mean to you?:

Dina Rose, PhD Sociologist and author of It’s Not About Nutrition wrote:

First and foremost, it means eating foods that come from the ground, not a factory.  Then it means paying to foods not nutrients.  We should give less attention to the nutrient by nutrient science that encourages us to decompose our meals into the nutrients they provide more attention to the whole foods that we actually eat.

Registered dietitian Cindy Williams found herself thinking about the following two points:

Most of our food originally comes from the ground. A great guide to healthy eating is to choose foods which we can still recognise as coming from the ground – fruit, vegetables, beans and wholegrains. They provide a whole host of health giving properties.

Good nutrition starts young. From the moment we are conceived our health is being determined by what our mother eats. The food we feed our children, and our attitude to food, greatly determines our child’s future health.

Registered dietitian Nour El-Zibdeh suggested that we treat food as more than as a sum of nutrients and make small changes to develop a deeper connection to its origin:

When I think of Nutrition from the Ground Up, many thoughts come to mind. It means that there’s more to food than a sum of nutrients, that no supplement pill when nourish my body the way real food would.  It means that it matters where my food comes from and who’s been caring for it. It means that I will teach my kids to enjoy, love, respect, and be thankful for the food they have, and it’s not just a product they pick from grocery store shelves. But it also means that any steps that I make to eat more wholesome and real foods need to be realistic, practical, affordable, and not drastic, so that I can maintain it on the long term.

For someone looking to eat more wholesome foods, the steps they need to take depend on where they start from. If they’re used to packaged frozen dinners, then putting a meal together from fresh ingredients is change. For someone who always makes a fresh meal, buying local, season, from a CSA or farmers market might be the type of change to make. It’s an individual decision, and I can only encourage and inspire my clients, provide them with the right tools, and trust them to do what they feel is best for themselves, their families, and their community.

And registered dietitian Amber Pankonin wrote a few points to summarize her discussion with fellow dietitians:

We agreed the message was simple- eat more fruits & veggies. (That is visually displayed in the logo by the cornucopia in the “eat right”) However, did ADA tailor this message in light of recent events? For example, we all know the first lady paid professionals to plant a garden at the White House. Were they making a political move here?

As an RD, I encourage my patients & clients to eat a variety of foods including fruits, veggies, whole grains, milk & lean protein. Does this slogan imply that good nutrition only involves eating fruits & veggies? What if I eat beef, fish, or turkey? (Thus the question from my tweet- what if I eat something that walks, swims, or flies?) What if we eat food that does not come from the ground? One RD discussed that it revolves around the food chain- the animals have to eat the grains & veggies but will the general public make that connection?

And to sum it all up, @psmom tweeted:

growing or knowing where much of our food comes from!

I think a common theme here is paying more attention to the real source of our food. It’s not just about what we grow from the ground, such as fruits and veggies, but also animal products if they are obtained in a natural way. If we raise animals out of their natural environment, load them up with drugs to increase yield, then those products are not really from the ground. What we eat is part of an ecosystem, but somewhere along the way in our quest to increase the output of our food factories, we seem to have forgotten it!

What do you think? What does this notion of Nutrition from the Ground Up mean to you? What small changes have you made to your family’s diet recently?

Please share in your comments below. I would love to hear from you!

©2010 Littlestomaks.com

I cannot believe that over a billion people worldwide are undernourished in the 21st century! Do we call this progress?

Right to food is a universally accepted fundamental right. Not only is this crisis a moral problem for the rest of the world, I believe it is also a security problem. Extreme poverty and hunger are breeding grounds for the spread of fundamentalism.

October 16, 2009 was the World Food Day sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The theme for the 64th anniversary of the World Food Day this year was Achieving food security in the time of crisis. Here are a few sobering statistics:

• Over 1 billion people worldwide are hungry and undernourished for the first time in history. That is nearly 1 in every 6 people in the world
• About a 100 million more people were added to the roster of the hungry this year compared to last year
• The declining trend in the proportion of undernourished in developing countries was reversed in 2008 and 2009
• Nearly 90% of the world’s hungry live in the Asia-Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa

Certainly, the current global economic crisis has made things worse for everyone. But those in the low income countries and developing countries are disproportionately affected. There are a lot of smart people looking at the problem of food insecurity from an economic and resource point of view. However, we as individuals can take this opportunity as a reminder to reflect upon our relationship with food:

• Do we eat to live or live to eat?
• Do we know where our food comes from?
• Do we know if most of what we eat can even be called food?
• Do we know if the food we consume is produced in a sustainable way?
• Do we know about the waste and spoilage from farm to the fork?

Food is the fuel we need for life. Yet the only time we think about it is when our grocery bill goes up and we have to make tough choices. We are fortunate to be living in the land of plenty. Most Americans spend very little on food as a percentage of their total income. Still, we feel the pinch when price of bread and milk goes up by a small amount.

Many others in the world have no such luck. Some even spend their entire daily income on getting a few bites to eat.

We can send them our dollars in aid. But unless we examine our relationship with food in a fundamental way, we cannot hope to solve this problem anytime soon.

Now that is some food for thought.

©2009 Littlestomaks.com

Happy Friday! Here are 5 interesting nutrition stories of the week that caught my eye. Enjoy and drop a comment to let me know what’s on your mind.

Doubts emerging about restaurant calorie labeling

It has been a year since the chain restaurants in New York City started labeling their menu items with calorie content. A new report raises questions about its effectiveness in changing consumer behavior in the short term and solving the problem of obesity in the long run. New York City estimates that menu labeling will reduce the number of obese New Yorkers by 150,000 in 5 years and prevent 30,000 cases of diabetes. In a city of over 8 million people, these are small numbers; still many are questioning these estimates. Plus many restaurants seem to be “cheating” by posting lower calorie numbers than actually present in certain food items when tested. Does it mean that menu labeling does not work? I think it all depends on your viewpoint. It is not a silver bullet for the obesity problem; simply a step in the right direction. As long as it makes people think twice about buying the high-calorie food, it has a chance to change attitudes. Posting calories is just a start – in fact, complete nutritional information including salt, fat and sugar content should be made available if a consumer wants it. It takes a long time to change consumer behavior and we should keep taking small steps like calorie labeling. This is not a time to shoot it down!

Celiac disease 4 times more common today than 50 years ago

New research from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., according to a New York Times article, suggests that today there are 4 times more diagnosed cases of celiac disease compared to the 1950′s. Celiac disease is a serious immune system reaction to gluten (protein in grains such as wheat, rye, barley) which attacks the intenstines and disrupts the absorption of nutrients. A lot of early cases or gluten intolerance remain undiagnosed. Even though the headlines seems alarming, it is still a small number. I do not mean to diminish its impact, but there is no reason to panic and stop eating wheat or other grains simply because you experience digestive discomfort a few times. Surely, you should discuss it with your doctor who can do a complete checkup. I say this because there is a lot of hype about gluten-free diet these days. Lower your intake of processed foods, and eat more whole grains. Go gluten-free only if needed, and only after consulting with your doctor.

50% of food lost from farm to fork

Amazing, isn’t it? No wonder, the food prices are so high. Improving the efficiency of our food supply chain will not only be good for the environment, it will also result in lower food prices. It strikes me as ironical that when it comes to food prices, the farmer gets the major portion of the blame. Also, the focus is on fertilizer-hungry, high-yield crops which results into a massive over-production. If only we could focus on the supply-chain efficiency, then maybe we could have a more sustainable food chain. This, and other interesting quirks of our current food supply chain are included in this entertaining video from IBM social media – check it out!

Most physicians and nurses use dietary supplements – should you?

A survey of 900 physicians and 277 nurses sponsored by the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) showed that about half of the physicians and nurses used dietary supplements regularly. Overall health and wellness was the most common reason given for using these supplements. They were also quite likely to recommend dietary supplements to their patients for a variety of reasons. I think the CRN, which is a trade association representing manufacturers of these supplements, can hardly be considered an unbiased agency for this type of a study. After reading the whole report, I can also say that their sample of physicians and nurses cannot be treated as random. Therefore, the high positive response in favor of supplements cannot be considered as representative of all health care professionals out there.

Having said that, I personally take a multivitamin on a daily basis because I know that even a fruit and vegetable rich diet today is not sufficient to provide all the necessary vitamins and minerals. Our industrialized farming methods have depleted the nutritional quality of the soil, and fruits and vegetables today are not as rich in vitamins in minerals as they were several decades ago. If you are not taking a supplement, discuss with your doctor if you should. Be careful while selecting the dietary supplement – they are not regulated by the FDA and there are many quality and safety problems. Don’t fall for the out-of-the-world claims for all sorts of miraculous treatments and cures; if they sound too good to be true, probably they are. Exercise the same caution when selecting a nutritional supplement for your toddler. For more tips, read Dr. Husbands answer about toddler nutritional supplements on my Ask the Expert column.

Tips for dining out with preschoolers

Dr. Kathleen Cuneo of Dinner Together, who wrote a guest post here, alerted me to this excellent article for tips on dining out with preschoolers. We have personally experienced this challenge because we have to manage two – not one – energetic toddlers while trying to enjoy our own meal. I think her advice of having realistic expectations from your toddlers is right on the money. We have to simply accept that most preschoolers cannot sit still the whole time. This article offers 7 very practical tips you can use with your little ones. One of our tricks is that we order something for our twins right away and request that they bring it within 5-10 minutes. That’s probably the most we can keep them interested in sitting at the table without anything to eat. Once their food arrives, we order ours and feed them while it is being prepared. Of course, if the service is good, we remember to leave a generous tip.

Enjoy your  weekend! And let me know what you think.

Photo source -The Wandering Angel on Flickr
©2009 Littlestomaks.com

In honor of the Earth Day (April 22) this week’s Five for Fridays is dedicated to news articles related to food sustainability. Enjoy and do let me know what you think.

More interesting ideas from Michael Pollan

Maybe the fact that I am currently reading Pollan’s highly acclaimed “The Omnivores Dilemma” got me interested in this post by him on The Huffington Post, written to coincide with the Earth Day. Think Global Eat Local seems to be his prescription for reducing the amount of fossil fuel it takes to grow our food these days. Turns out, the Agriculture sector is second to Transportation when it comes to fossil fuel consumption. When so many people are talking about electric, hybrid or flex fuel cars, it surprises me a little that we don’t really hear much about reducing our dependence on oil in the agriculture sector. Pollan advocates a decentralized food supply system where consumers would buy locally grown food directly from a farm or an year-around indoor farmers’ market. He proposes a flexible system of government regulations based on scale and marketplace. He suggests encouraging hospitals and universities that receive federal grants to supply their cafeterias with locally grown fresh produce. These are big ideas – nothing wrong with that – it would also be good to think “small” at the consumer level so we can create a true demand for sustainability. What do you think?

An organic garden on the White House lawn

Last month Michelle Obama joined 23 fifth graders to start the work on a 1,100 square foot vegetable garden at the White House. This post by Crunchy Domestic Goddess provides some interesting details like the fact that the entire Obama family, including the President, will work on the garden pulling weeds every so often! It will have a wide variety of vegetables, fruits and herbs. It will utilize organic seedlings, White House compost and natural pest control methods. The idea is to inspire everybody to consider growing a little bit of their own food in their own backyards. And looks like the momentum is building – some 43 million US households plan to grow their veggies and fruits this year, up 19% from 2008, according to the National Gardening Association. If you are interested, they have a very good articles and resources for starting your own garden. Check it out!

The economics of a home garden

This article in the Wall Street Journal provides a glimpse of the Dollars and Sense of a home vegetable garden. The National Gardening Association estimates that for an average family, about $70 worth of seeds and supplies each year can yield $600 worth of vegetables. That’s one huge return on investment! What people forget though is the start-up cost of setting up a garden (on a raised bed if needed) and tools, which could cost you over $100. Not to mention the back-breaking work each day watering, pulling weeds and fighting pests. It is not for everybody, but if you enjoy working outdoors then surely you can save some cash. It sure trumps mowing the lawn each weekend, which does not give you any real financial return.

One problem people may face is that most Homeowners Associations have rules that regulate what you can and cannot do in your own backyard. So be sure to check with them before you decide to take the plunge!

9 leaders who are making a difference for food sustainability

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is honoring farmers, business leaders and thought leaders through the Growing Green Awards to recognize their efforts for food sustainability:

1. Will Allen, Growing Power, Milwaukee, WI – sustainable aquaculture and organic vegetable production
2. Judith Redmond, Full Belly Farm, Guinda, CA – 250 acre organic farm
3. Joel Salatin, Polyface Farm, Swoope, VA – Pasture based “beyond organic” grass-fed beef, poultry, sustainable lumber
4. Fedele Bauccio, Bon Appetit Management Co., Palo Alto, CA – Low carbon diet initiative
5. Michael Rozyne, Red Tomato, Canton, MA – non-profit marketing and distribution for small farms and co-ops
6. Thaleon Tremain, Pachamama Coffee Coop, Davis, CA – Certified fair-trade coffee from 150,000 farmers in South America, Central America and Africa
7. Ann Cooper, Berkeley Unified School District, Berkeley, CA – Prchasing and menu changes to promote sustainable and healthy food, founder of Lunch Lessons LLC
8. James Harvie, Institute for a Sustainable Future, Duluth, MN – Healthy food in healthcare for hospitals, Healthcare without Harm
9. Sibella Kraus, SAGE, Berkely, CA – sustainable agriculture education

Behind each of these leaders, is a great story. Check out these links and get inspired!

Eating out? Pick a restaurant with an eye for food sustainability

Can a restaurant source its food ingredients from local producers, serve seasonal cuisine and still be in business? The answer is a big yes. I have not tried one yet, but I came across this online restaurant finder on LocalHarvest where you can search for a restaurant by zip code or state. I was disappointed to find only 6 restaurant in my state of Florida, and none in the city I live. Could be that their database needs updating; I sure hope that there will be more restaurants in this area soon who will support the core ideas of food sustainability by serving locally grown fresh, organic food. Have you been to one in your area? Drop a comment about the restaurant and your experience.

Enjoy your weekend!

Image source: Woodleywonderworks on Flickr
©2009 Littlestomaks.com