It takes a village to instill a little common sense

Last week I made the rounds to several school Christmas parties for my kids.

Drew's festivities kicked off Thursday with a special pajama-clad movie day when the kindergartners watched "The Polar Express." Along with the movie they had chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate with marshmallows.

After school, Drew told Zach he wasn't feeling too well, and said that "his cheek hurt." He's had that complaint before...right before he barfed. Uh oh.

That afternoon I was supervising the faculty kids for the district Christmas party, and Drew was scheduled to join us. He dragged himself in and half-heartedly took one piece of pizza from the 15 (not exaggerating) pizza boxes to choose from. He left the cookies alone.

A bit later he told me he thought he was going to throw up, so I took him to the bathroom, and then shortly thereafter took him home. (He never threw up, thank goodness.)

"What did you eat today?" I asked on the way home. "What did you have at the movie?"

"Um, we had some cookies and hot chocolate with marshmallows."

"How many?"

"Well, I had two hot chocolates with marshmallows."

"Oh, Drew...that's a lot of sugar. And cookies too?"

"Yes."

"Well, no wonder your stomach doesn't feel good. That's too rich and too much sugar for you."

Fast forward to the next morning, when he confessed to his dad that he had THREE chocolate chip cookies with his two hot chocolates with marshmallows. He confessed the same thing to his mother on the way home from school.

"DREW!!!" I said in what I'm quite sure was a very annoying Mom voice. "You CANNOT have that much sugar in one sitting! It hurts your stomach!"

I wasn't trying to scold, but he teared up anyway.

"Drew, buddy, I'm not mad at you, but this is something that you've just got to learn. I know it's hard to say no to cookies, because they taste so good. I like them too. But you've got to realize that if you have too many, your stomach is going to hurt."

He recovered quickly, and the tears were gone before he went into the house. But I was left wondering a few things. First, how do you teach a kid not to go crazy when presented with a giant platter of cookies. Or pizza. Or chips. And also...was anybody manning that cookie/hot chocolate table? Or was it a complete free-for-all, have-as-many-cookies-as-you-want fest?

I was still contemplating those questions the next day when I attended his class party, where the menu included large doughnuts decorated like snowmen, doughnut holes, Capri Suns, apple slices, grapes, and oranges. (Thanks for the token fruit! Too bad not much got eaten since it tasted "sour" after the doughnuts were gobbled up.)

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A friend of mine told me about her nephew (also a kindergartner), who blew through 20 bucks on his meal account in one week. How'd he do it? By getting an extra chocolate milk and an ice cream every day in addition to his regular lunch.

His mom found out what he was doing when she visited the school at lunch one day. I imagine she gave him a speech kind of like the one above, and then she went and visited the lunch lady.

She asked if they monitor what the kids buy and make sure that they're not subsisting on chocolate milk and ice cream alone.

"No," was the reply. "We can't tell the kids what to get or what not to get."

Hmm. Can't tell them what to eat? Or can't resist the extra income from the six-year-old with a sweet tooth who most likely doesn't even understand what "having money in an account" means?

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I do not think it is a school's responsibility to raise children. The public schools of America are designed to educate kids and prepare them to be contributing members of society. 

I am not against treats, nor am I against special occasions or parties. But is it too much to ask for a little common sense where food is concerned? Kindergartners are five and six years old. Not old enough, in my opinion, to make intelligent food choices, particularly in the face of cookies, pizza, chocolate milk, and ice cream.

We've gotten to a point where we treat our kids so much that it's not even a treat anymore. Pizza isn't a treat...It's a Tuesday. Cookies aren't for special occasions...they're for 3:00.

We need to offer a little guidance to the smaller members of society who haven't figured out that mass quantities of liquid chocolate, chocolate chips, and chocolately super chocolate with a chocolate swirl is going to make you have a stomach ache. And after they figure that out, we need to teach them what that sugar does to them and why we shouldn't have a bunch of it.

Time will tell, but I think this lesson had an impact on Drew. I figure he's got about two months before he gets put to his knowledge to the test at Valentine's Day parties.

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Workout of the Day

P90X Plus, Total Body Plus

Lunchables, Chicken Rings, and Other School Lunch Sins

Yesterday I served lunch duty at my son's elementary school.

Lunch duty, as explained by my six-year-old, is: "Mom, all you do is show up at 11. That's early. I don't know why we eat so early, but we do. But all you do is when someone raises their hand, you go over and see what they need."

So I did. Usually what they needed was A) for me to open something, B) a spork, C) ketchup, or D) to tell me that the kid next to them was copying them. In the cases of A, B, or C, I provided the necessary service and moved on. In the case of D I told them I was there for lunch duty, not tattling duty, and to work it out amongst themselves.

The hour and a half I spent in the lunchroom really opened my eyes to something. I'm not going to be so quick to speak ill of school lunches anymore. Of course, school lunch has its problems and I certainly don't think that pizza is a vegetable. But the lunches brought from home were far more frightening than the ones served at school.

It's easy to blame the cafeteria lady, but at least she's trying to serve vegetables and fruit. Yes, it's cuddled up next to a terrifying thing called "chicken rings," which are nuggets (the particle board of food products) shaped like doughnuts. On chicken ring day, Zach likes to ask his high schoolers, "If chicken legs come from the leg, and chicken breasts come from the breast, where do you suppose chicken rings come from?"

If that's not food for thought, I don't know what is.

 

Take a quick survey of the "cold" lunches brought into an elementary school, and you would be completely shocked at the cornucopia of sugar, dyes, artificial flavoring, sodium, and generally nutritionally void food.


Hands down the most bizarre thing I saw was a bag of pre-packaged chicken nuggets a kid brought from home. When he shook the bag real hard, they magically became "barbecued" (or so he said). I'm not sure I have the brain capacity to handle the weird science that created "edible" monstrosity.

But the average lunch included:

• A Capri Sun. 16 grams of sugar. (That's 4 teaspoons)
  Here's the ingredient list: FRUIT PUNCH: WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, PEAR AND GRAPE JUICE CONCENTRATES, CITRIC ACID, WATER, EXTRACTED ORANGE AND PINEAPPLE JUICE CONCENTRATES, NATURAL FLAVOR, VITAMIN E ACETATE.
  
•  A Lunchable. I saw a few of the pepperoni pizza version. 6 grams of sugar, 760mg sodium
  Ingredients: PIZZA CRUSTS - WHEAT FLOUR (ENRICHED BLEACHED WHEAT FLOUR [FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID], WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR), WATER, SOYBEAN OIL, GLYCERINE, SUGAR, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: YEAST, VITAL WHEAT GLUTEN, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, SALT, SOY LECITHIN, GUAR GUM, CARBOXYMETHYLCELLULOSE, DATEM, CALCIUM PROPIONATE, SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, XANTHAN GUM, ENZYME, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SORBIC ACID. CONTAINS: WHEAT, SOY. PIZZA SAUCE - WATER, TOMATO PASTE, SUGAR, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, SALT, GARLIC POWDER, ONION POWDER, SPICE, CITRIC ACID, POTASSIUM SORBATE AS A PRESERVATIVE, XANTHAN GUM, NATURAL FLAVOR. PASTEURIZED PREPARED MOZZARELLA CHEESE PRODUCT - PASTEURIZED PART-SKIM MILK, WATER, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, MILKFAT, SODIUM CITRATE, SALT, SORBIC ACID AS A PRESERVATIVE, ENZYMES, CHEESE CULTURE. CONTAINS: MILK. PEPPERONI MADE WITH PORK, CHICKEN AND BEEF - BHA, BHT AND CITRIC ACID ADDED TO HELP PROTECT FLAVOR - PORK, MECHANICALLY SEPARATED CHICKEN, BEEF, SALT, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF PORK STOCK, SPICES, DEXTROSE, LACTIC ACID STARTER CULTURE, OLEORESIN OF PAPRIKA, FLAVORING, SODIUM ASCORBATE, SODIUM NITRITE, BHA, BHT, CITRIC ACID.
  
• Go-gurt. (Have you heard of this? It's yogurt in a tube. Weird.) 10 grams sugar. One clever blogger pointed out that ounce per ounce, that's more sugar than a Coca-cola.
  Here are the ingredients: Cultured Pasteurized Grade A Milk, Sugar, Nonfat Milk, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Modified Corn Starch, Kosher Gelatin, Tricalcium Phosphate, Potassium Sorbate (preservative), Carrageenan, Natural And Artificial Flavor, Carmine (a food additive for coloring, to make it you have to boil dried insects in water to extract the carminic acid).

Let's not even talk about the litany of Frankenstein ingredients in three "simple" lunchbox staples. Let's just add up the sugar.

16 + 6 + 10 = 32 grams

There is one teaspoon of sugar in 4 grams, so that's 8 teaspoons of sugar in one lunch. Go spoon out eight teaspoons of sugar on a plate. Go on! I'll wait.

Here's a great article about what sugar does to your brain and body.

Now, let's all ponder why in the world so many kids are having difficulty concentrating. Have such a hard time sitting still. Can't seem to get enough food. Can't seem to behave.

Kid after kid after kid I saw chowing down on bags of Doritos -- one kid had the family size bag!, and candy, and sugared-up "fruit" drinks, and pudding, and on and on and on.

We have got to do better than this. I bet a lot of parents think they're doing the right thing by packing their kids' lunch, but just because it came from the loving confines of your home doesn't mean it's healthy.

And it's not to say that I pack perfect lunches, either. I have days where I rely on pre-packaged items for the "dessert" in Drew's lunch. But I try to make small changes to get more nutrients and less sugar. Things like packing water instead of a fruit drink. Pretzels or veggie straws instead of chips. Whole wheat bread or tortillas instead of white bread.

We're setting these kids up for a lifetime of battles with their weight, with their immune system, with their relationship to healthy foods. They quite possibly will never figure out why they're so tired, so sick, so down in the dumps.

First we have to learn about food for ourselves, and then we need to teach it to our children. Otherwise they'll never know where chicken ring really comes from.

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Workout of the Day

P90X One on One Vol. 3: Base and Back