When I was reading my daily news this morning, I came across this article. Okay, so last semester I was in this class called meal management where we did all kinds of stuff (ntfs majors you get my drift). Well one of our projects was on school nutrition and how to properly plan a meal for all types of children. Let me just say, I never knew how much went into this. There are SO many guidelines those meals have to meet, and well we all know how picky we were as children. Putting what I would like (broccoli,asparagus,grapefruit,etc) doesn't really sit well with little kids. So, without a doubt a huge congrats goes out to the professionals who do this daily! Okay... So on to the article.
Last fall in Los Angeles, California, schools decided to cut back in school lunch. Cut back in the sense of eliminating flavored milk,chicken nuggets, and lots of other childhood favorites. So, let me start there-- flavored milk is pretty close to the worst thing they were handing our kids. It was like sugar water?! One 8oz carton contains up to 4 tsp of added sugar (64 calories of just sugar...)! If children drink those for breakfast and lunch, 5 days a week, for 180 days... Hmmmm according to Jaimie Oliver that equates to about 8 pounds of unnecessary sugar.
And well, I'm not sure if I want to start on the "chicken" nuggets. Well, I'm know the next couple of lines won't shock you... But the kids at LA schools were nothing short of furious with these changes. Word of a black market circulating on campus, full of candies and sodas, was in full force. Lesson here? Well kids like their refined sugar and dangit no one will take it from them.
The USDA implemented some new changes, that I'm stoked about! But, I have a feeling the kids will be upset. Eliminating 2% milk, Offering fruits and veggies at every meal, and having items such as pizza/tator tots highly restricted. The more I read in the article, the more I realized how skewed it was. The writers seem to be on the kids side. Which, yes, most of the time is the side we choose, but I'm sorry this is one time I cant do it. "Nationally, many schools have tried to demonize and ban processed foods, soft drinks, pizza and chocolate milk. Though such dramatic efforts can have rhetorical and emotional appeal, they are probably not achieving the goal of guiding children to better eating habits." WHAT!!!??? AHH!! This is what needs to happen... haha maybe not "demonize" (that sounds harsh) but SOMETHING needs to happened? Please correct me if I'm wrong? These kids are our future! What are your thoughts?
Okay... so back to the "chicken" nuggets. Gosh I used to down these things as a child. #winning.Okay, so I know that schools are not serving McDonald's nuggets... but this is an example of what we are putting in our children's mouths. The addictive ingredients that is making them start a black market in the hallways of school. If you have never read the book An Omnivores Dilemma, please do so whenever you have free time. It is such an amazing book and I have taken the next two paragraphs straight from the book. Michael Pollan is a genius!
"The ingredients listed in the flyer suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leeches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There's some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola, or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market price and availability.According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasiedible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but form a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed food possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the "leavening agents": sodium aluminum phosphate, mono-calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nugget from turning rancid. Then there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable.
But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness." According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill."
Like I always say, dont be afraid of your food! It just helps to be aware of what is going into the most precious thing we have- our body. And especially when it is a young child! I hope everyone has a wonderful Monday! Come see me at Pilates! Tonight at 5:30
Stay HAPPY and HEALTHY!
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