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.

We found this lentil soup in our local Whole Foods store a couple of weeks ago. We liked it so much that I decided to write a quick review here. I definitely recommend it for you to try.

Here is what we like about this product -

1. It is organic and the 19 oz. can with 2 servings makes a full meal if you serve it with Basmati rice.
2. Great nutrition since lentil is a good source of protein and iron.
3. Contains a blend of carrots, celery and spinach which provide fiber, vitamin C, additional iron and calcium.
4. No cholesterol and trans fat.

Here is what we don’t like about this product -

1. Main problem – too much salt! One serving contains 950 mg of sodium which comes to 39% of the daily value.
2. It contains added sugar, although the amount is low – only 2 g per serving. We don’t add sugar to our recipe of lentil soup, so I don’t understand why sugar needs to be added here.

Overall, a big thumbs up. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Disclaimer – I have not received any sponsorship or free samples of product from Muir Glen for writing this review. For complete nutritional information and other products, visit Muir Glen website.

©2009 Littlestomaks.com

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This organic instant oatmeal from Earth’s Best is my daughter’s favorite. We buy it online from Earth’s Best website, where a box of 10 pouches is (total weight 15.1 oz) is listed at $5.19. Each pouch delivers 170 calories, only 20 of which are from fat. We also like the fact that it is USDA certified organic. Look at all the “green” boxes in the table above (“green” is good!) – there is a quite a good amount of minerals and vitamins in each serving. The only negative is that the sugar content is high (there is no daily value for sugar; however according to my estimates, the total daily amount should be less than 95g). There is lots of fiber and protein. We sometimes add a little milk to give an extra boost of calcium and protein.

Compare it to Quaker Instant Oatmeal (Maple and Brown Sugar). Quaker’s product has about the same serving size, calories and fat content. It is higher in sodium (270 mg), sugar (13g); lower in fiber (3g) and it does not contain as many vitamins and minerals. Plus it is not organic.

Quaker’s organic instant oatmeal is listed at $6.59 on their online store. Again it is high in sodium (95g), sugar (12g); lower in fiber (3g) and does not contain as many vitamins and minerals. Plus, according to their website, it is in limited distribution.

All in all, we give the Earth’s Best instant oatmeal a big thumbs up!

What is your toddler’s favorite breakfast food?

There is no doubt that organic food costs more. Now that the times are tough, you are probably watching your budget more carefully. Even if you have not completely switched to buying conventional foods, you are already thinking about making some trade-offs. In this post, I want to offer some ideas that can help you maintain a high proportion of “organic” in your shopping.

But why does it cost so much more?

It is quite normal to get a sticker shock in the organic aisles because organic food can cost anywhere from 20 to 100% more than a similar non-organic conventional food. The main reasons are that organic farming is more labor intensive, yields are low and there has not been any increase in the acreage used for organic farming, therefore, supplies are low. Conventional farming, on the other hand, benefits from subsidies and high yields from the use of agrochemicals and pesticides.

So what can you do? Here are five ideas.

Go organic for fresh produce

Fresh produce such as vegetables and fruits is probably the best return on your organic dollars. You can be sure that they are grown using organic methods and are free of chemicals and pesticides. They retain most of their natural flavor and vitamins. Not only will you save money by not buying processed foods, you will also control what you make out of them using your favorite recipes. You can keep them fresh longer by using this product (called E.G.G, I have not tried it, but it should work), or by following some simple advice on this website.

Cut down on package food and snacks

Food processors must buy expensive organic raw materials to make products that can be certified organic. Add to that high energy and transportation costs, and the net result is that these products are more costly to produce. The manufacturers need to maintain their profit margin, so they pass on the added cost to you, usually by decreasing the package weight. So you get less for your money.

You can find creative ways of making healthy snacks yourself without having to buy packaged foods. Use fruits, yogurt, nuts, peanut butter, crackers or other stuff lying around in your pantry. You can get many ideas from the web; one that I found interesting was a list of ten healthy sustainable snacks . And here is another.

Invest in a breadmaker

A loaf of organic wheat bread can cost you an extra dollar, if not more, over regular bread. The price of organic bread has gone up quite a lot in recent days mainly due to the rise in the price of organic grain. And as with other processed foods, breadmaking takes up energy, packaging and transportation. You can get a decent breadmaker from Amazon.com for less than $100. On a rough estimate, it can pay itself back in less than one year for a family of four (2 loaves of bread per week). Plus you can try out different grains and flavors.

Cut down on animal products and frozen foods

Milk, eggs and yogurt aside, you may consider taking a closer look at meats, frozen foods, and meat-containing processed foods, and limit their purchase. Animals need to be fed organic feed before foods based on animal products can be certified organic. Supply of such feed – organic soy and corn mostly – is very tight and demand very high; so they are very expensive. You could buy fresh or farm-raised fish rather than poultry, beef or pork. Fish can be expensive; however it has much better nutritional value compared to other meats anyway. There is some confusion whether fish is organic or not , so do your research before you make up your mind. You may also look for vegetarian sources of protein if you decide to cut down on meat.

I have never been a fan of frozen food. I don’t experience the same flavor and taste as a freshly prepared meal, however, I do understand the convenience factor. Still, all the processing, storage, transportation and stocking up in a freezer consumes a lot of expensive energy. Organic or not, frozen food is an expensive proposition.

Buy in bulk, buy store brands

Shopping at Sam’s Club, Costco or your local warehouse store can help you save money since you buy in bulk. All you have to do is to figure out your storage problem! Wal-Mart is another option; you can now find Gerber’s organic foods in many varieties in the baby section. Store brands at Whole Foods or similar stores can also help you save money. You can get a list of other not-so-well-known private label companies offering organic food on The Organic Pages Online. You can probably order online from their websites.

What do you think? Have you tried something else that has worked for you better? I welcome your comments!

This new product is an instant hit with my son! My wife just ordered them from the Earth’s Best website. We found this to be a healthy and delicious snack, made from whole grain brown rice and organic yogurt. One bar makes a single serving of 70 calories. It is low in total fat, saturated fat, sodium, total carbohydrate and sugars, and rich in vitamins and minerals. The only negative is low protein and no vitamin D.

1 box of 6 bars is listed at $4.49 on Earth’s Best on line store.

See the table below for nutritional analysis. Traffic light color coding is based on FDA’s recommended guidelines of %daily value (DV)

Overall, we give it a big thumbs up!

If you have tried it, let us know what you think.

You want to do the right thing for your toddler. You want to protect the environment. And you are willing to pay extra for it. Yet, when you pick that box of crackers with colorful graphics and catchy slogans, you are not sure if at $3.49 the crackers it contains are really organic.

You can take comfort in the fact that you are not the only one with this dilemma. And the good news is that the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) has now established labeling guidelines for organic food. Still, there can be a lot of confusion. The devil, as they say, is in the details; so you need to fully understand these guidelines before you can make an informed decision about your organic food purchase.

The USDA NOP has outlined three different types of labeling requirements based on the percentage of organic ingredients in a product:

1. Agricultural products labeled “100 percent organic” and “organic”
2. Processed products labeled “made with organic ingredients”
3. Processed products that contain less than 70 percent organic ingredients

Foods in the first category contain at least 95% organically produced ingredients(excluding water and salt). You can easily recognize them by this USDA organic certification seal on the package. Any remaining product ingredients must consist of nonagricultural substances approved on the National List including specific non-organically produced agricultural products that are not commercially available. Also, the side panel will explicitly show a list of organic ingredients and other non-agricultural substances.Here is an example from Earth’s Best (we obviously like their products!). Also notice that the name of the certifying agent must be shown on the side panel.

Foods in the second category must contain at least 70% organic ingredient. They do not show the USDA organic certification seal. However, they can claim that the food is “made with organic ingredients”. They can list upto three organic ingredients or food groups on the main panel. The side panel should show a list of organic and non-organic ingredients and the name of the certifying agent. Here is another example from Earth’s Best:

Foods in the third category cannot use the term “organic” anywhere on the main display panel. However, they may identify specific ingredients that are organically produced on the side information panel. They cannot show the USDA organic certification seal anywhere on the package.
Here are a few useful links for more information:

1. How to Choose Organic Baby Products: A Knol by Erica Jones
2. Certified organic label guide: an article on Organic.org
3. Natural and organic foods: a good article on USDA.gov

What kind of questions do you face when you go shopping for organic foods? What is your experience in the aisles when you browse the various products?