Childhood Nutrition

Anyone who knows me well can tell you that good nutrition, especially for children, is something I really care about. I strongly believe that the smartest, most active and well developed children are those filled with healthy and delicious foods. That being said, does anybody else hate the chef boyardee commercials as much as I do? I mean its processed meat in a can. Let's be frank, there is nothing good for you about this food. Yet the commercials focus in on the fact that there is "a full serving of vegetables" in the can and that the Mother's don't want their children to find this out, because if (heaven forbid) the kid knew there was vegetables in there he wouldn't eat it. Is it just me or is there so much wrong with this message?!

First of all, we should be encouraging children to eat and explore all fruits and vegetables from an early age so that they can find which ones they like and develop a palate for more than mac and cheese. Just to brag on my own Mom a little bit, I used to bring asparagus to preschool in a baggie as part of my lunch. My brother as a child loved mushrooms. We were exposed to all kinds of things that people wouldn't think of as kid food and because of this I am so blessed because it lead me down the road to my passion for cooking and healthy eating. So these commercials obviously make me mad because why should we have to hid the fact that something has vegetables in it so a child should like it? We should trying to equate vegetables with yummyness, not trying to make kids think that everything yummy is void of nutrition.

Second, just because a processed can of animal product and enriched flour has a full serving of vegetables in no way does it make the product healthy or "secretly nutritious" as chef boyardee says. A full serving of fruit in this case means 1/2 of tomato sauce, yep 1/2 cup, real nutritious right? Along with that 1/2 of tomato sauce you also get 9 g of fat, 3.5 g saturated fat, 860 mg sodium and 8 g sugar for 1 serving of big beefaroni, and really who only eats half the can? 


Don't get me wrong, I understand that parents are busy and don't always have the time to whip up some big gourmet meal and its attractive to just open up a can and heat it in the microwave. Really though, it only takes 8 minutes to boil a pot of whole wheat penne pasta and simmer some organic store bought marinara sauce to pour over it. Toss in some frozen broccoli or spinach with the sauce and you have a much healthier meal in 10 minutes that I'm sure most kids would happily eat. There are so many quick and easy meals that would only take about an extra 5 minutes and really, when it comes to feeding a child better brain food isn't it worth it? 


Sorry about the major soapbox, but that commercial just came on again and I felt the need to vent! Chef Boyardee is in no way the only company guilty of doing this, trying to convince consumers their product is healthy, lots of other companies like general mills and the dairy association are major repeat offenders too. 


Hope everyone is having a great week and I'll post soon with some recipe reviews from a great new cookbook I got, the Babycakes bakery cookbook!! I promise a more picture filled fun post :)