Children: They Are What They Eat….

If you want your children to have plenty of energy and be able to cope with the day to day demands of school life, after-school clubs, peer pressure, exams and the like, their diet is crucial. It’s a fact too that diet has a huge impact on behaviour, learning ability and concentration levels. So, take this time as the kids go back to school to review what your children are eating.

A lot of parents are now waking up to the idea that school dinners may not provide their children with the healthy nutritious meals their kids need. Packed lunches are a good way to take more control. However, there is a lot of peer pressure when kids take lunches that are different to what’s in their friends’ lunch boxes, so you do have to get a good balance to keep them healthy, but not make them appear too different.

A good packed lunch could include

• a wholemeal roll filled with organic chicken or good quality meat (no packet meats, please) and salad
• Or try peanut butter* (no salt or sugar variety) and mashed banana
• Tuna and mayonnaise with bits of cucumber and tomato
• As a change from sandwiches, give them a cold brown/corn pasta salad or a brown rice salad with interesting bits in that they like. You could include cherry tomatoes, small bits of broccoli, olives, gerkins, sundried tomatoes, cashew nuts, raisins etc with a little olive oil dressing on
• Their lunchbox should also include at least one piece of fruit. Try a little pot of berries, a couple of plums or a pear to vary it from the ubiquitous apple.
• Add in a few cherry tomatoes, a little pack of nuts* and raisins or, even better, a few organic nuts and a couple of unsulphured dried apricots.
• Give them a flask of filtered water, organic diluted apple or orange juice or include a good quality fruit smoothie such as the Innocent ones
• Alternatively, give them a food flask that has a good quality yogurt in it – preferably a plain live soya yogurt to which you have added some honey and berries or stirred in some pure fruit jam such as St Dalfour’s strawberry which is delicious.

 

Try to avoid rubbish foods like pre-prepared sandwiches and salads, fruit yogurts, sweets, crisps and sugary drinks. Remember, if you give them junk or money to take to school, they will always choose junk. If they have no choice, they’ll eat what they’re given and eventually their palate will start to change for the better.

If you can’t control what your kids are eating at lunchtime, try not to worry about it – do what you can, and make sure they’re eating really well, preferably organically, when they’re at home. A good breakfast and tea will go a long way to helping you nourish your kids well. If they are eating in this way most of the time, the odd bag of crisps or sugary snacks here and there won’t hurt.

If you would like more information on how to keep your children healthy this next school year, call or email me for a free Back To School Factsheet. For more in-depth issues such as recurrent infections, eczema, weight gain or behavioural difficulties, please book in for a free 15 minute chat – we can normally help.

*Note that many schools now have a no-nut policy due to children suffering from peanut allergy, so please remember to check before sending your child to school with nuts.

Celery – So Good For You

In Chinese Traditional Medicine, celery is used as a cure for high blood pressure. It is now known that celery contains phytochemical compounds called phthalides, which not only give flavour but have also been shown to lower blood pressure. Studies have shown that celery extract can lower blood cholesterol levels and reduce the formation of the arterial plaques that can result in cardiovascular disease.

Antioxidant celery compounds called coumarins are the focus of much current scientific research due to their potential as anti-cancer substances. Celery is an excellent source of vitamin C, which has anticarcinogenic properties through its role as an antioxidant, and is rich in folate, a vitamin required to make DNA and to prevent pre-cancerous changes to it. NPN August 09

Rubbish Supermarket Fruit

Is it just me or has most of the fruit you’ve bought this Summer from supermarkets been pretty tasteless or too hard to eat? It gets on my nerves. Picked too early, ‘ripened’ artificially or left to ‘ripen in the bowl’ (ha!), stored for months etc really isn’t conducive to us getting tasty, ripe nutritious fruit. In a fit of pique, I thought I’d try M&S (after all it’s not just fruit, but M&S fruit, I thank you!) and the fact that they were all half price must have helped too. What a revelation! Their fruit is actually edible, tastes yummy and, OK, even half price at M&S is still pretty expensive, but I’d rather have fruit I can eat than throw away. Now all we have to do is to encourage them to go organic and we’re away! Obviously I would prefer to get it locally, but I would say this comes a good second when you’ve got the fruit munchies.

OJ Worst For Teeth Enamel

Orange juice is just about the worst drink for your teeth.  Its high levels of acid destroy enamel, and eventually will erode the entire tooth. People who drink fizzy stuff or fruit juices every day should consider changing their diet, say researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center, who discovered the harm the drinks can cause. 

“The acid is so strong that the tooth is literally washed away.  The orange juice decreased enamel hardness by 84 per cent,” said research team leader YanFang Ren.  His team found that the juices caused the most damage when they were sipped slowly over a 20-minute period.  So if you can’t give up the juice, at least drink it quickly – and brush your teeth twice a day, although leave a good half an hour before doing so as the enamel will still be so soft, you could damage it even more.

(Source:  Journal of Dentistry, 2009; 37: 424-31). WDDTY June 09

New Easy Snack Delivery Company

Thanks to Pam who told me about this great new snack delivery system; I thought I’d pass it on for the rest of you to consider – anything that makes it easier to eat healthily gets my vote! Called ‘Graze’ to encourage people to graze through the day eating healthy foods, this company offers a list of different snack foods which they then put into a box for £2.99 including delivery. You can choose from fresh fruit, dried fruit, nut and seed mixes, crackers, ‘natural’ sweet treats and olives. The box fits through the normal letterbox and you simply take it to work with you the next day. Simple. Have to say for those of you who are less than organised, it could be a winner, but in reality, it’s much cheaper to buy the stuff yourself and make your own box. Use the site for ideas or for when you’re feeling like you need a bit of help! www.graze.com.

The End Of The Line For Tuna?

This is a useful bit of advice on the tuna stories doing the rounds at the moment, from the makers of Fish 4 Ever, the only tinned fish company we recommend. (I have edited this a bit as it didn’t really make sense, but hopefully I’ve kept the general gist!)

“The film The End of the Line is receiving a lot of publicity.  Author Charles Clover is a noted and respected environmental expert.  He has endorsed our product – his comment is on our website.  So have Greenpeace, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and many other noted environmentalists.  In seafood circles we are a well respected authority on tuna.

BUT the media gets it wrong very easily so you there is a lot of confusion from shops and consumers. For example, apparently on Radio 4, one interviewee said “just don’t eat tuna” and the other said “skipjack is the rat of the sea, there’s plenty of it.”    Both are wrong, the “don’t eat tuna”  applies to bluefin tuna which is posh sushi tuna you will not find in most places unless you go to £100 sushi restaurants – it’s like caviar, it is very endangered and you should not eat it – but probably don’t anyway.

All other tunas are in a “be careful about what you choose” category. There are critical conservation and social issues with yellowfin (used in tinned, fresh steaks and sushi), skipjack (tins) and big-eye (sushi mostly). With Skipjack, there may be plenty of it, but it’s not okay because the main skipjack fishing method heavily damages the stocks of other tuna and causes many other problems. All these facts are on our website www.fish4ever.co.uk and also in the ‘hidden cost of canned tuna’ brochure we published last year.”

New Foods On The Block

Thank you to those of you who keep me informed about lovely new foods for those avoiding the ubiquitous wheat and dairy. First, Genius Bread is a new free-from bread that can be used untoasted and tasted ‘fab’. Foods Matter magazine also think it passes muster: “Excellent bready texture, light good flavour, really remarkable for a gluten-free bread, it does not need refreshing and keeps well.” It is made from potato, corn, tapioca, brown rice, egg, rice bran, cellulose fibre, sugar, salt, sunflower oil and fresh yeast. Available initially just from Tesco, although it should be on wider distribution by Autumn. For more info, go to www.geniusglutenfree.com.

 Next, Debbie & Andrew’s 97% Pork Harrogate Sausages. I know I always advise against sausages, but these are an exception as they are almost 100% meat, are gluten and dairy free and contain nothing other than the pork, herbs, spices and some balsamic vinegar. I often cook the whole pack and munch them as a high protein snack as they’re very filling. Try them as a sausage casserole, to make a healthier cooked breakfast, chopped into pasta or rice or simply with sweet potato mash or barley couscous. Yum.

Sweet Freedom is my next choice. This is a liquid sweetener made from extracts of apple, grapes and carob, comes in mild or rich flavours and in a handy squeezy bottle. Ideal for weight management as it has a low GI (Glycaemic Index) and GL (Glycaemic Load) and 25% fewer calories than sugar. It is also suitable for diabetics and vegans. I’ve checked and nutritionally-speaking, it’s almost identical to agave syrup. It’s available in most supermarkets and can be used on toast, porridge, drinks and cooking.

For a treat, here are a couple of recipes suggested by Sweet Freedom, which I’ve adapted to make slightly healthier. Of course, you could use SF or agave to get a similar result:

No added sugar Apple Crumble

This recipe is also wheat free! Ready In: 45 minutes or less Serves: 4

• 2 large cooking apples
• 1 tbsp SWEET FREEDOM
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• zest & juice of half a lemon

Crumble topping:

• 100g porridge oats
• 50g medium oatmeal or
• 50g ground almonds
• 1 1/2 tbsp SWEET FREEDOM
• 50g Pure spread

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180°C / 350°F / Gas Mark 4.
2. Wash and peel the apples, remove the core and chop into small slices.
3. Put into an oven proof dish, and stir in the SWEET FREEDOM, cinnamon, lemon zest and juice.
4. Put all the crumble topping ingredients into your blender and pulse until well mixed. If you don’t have a blender, rub the spread into the oat and almond mix first and then stir in the SWEET FREEDOM.
5. Sprinkle evenly over the top of the apples.
6. Place in the pre-heated oven and bake for about 30 minutes or until the top is golden.

No added sugar Nutty Flapjacks

This recipe is also wheat free! Ingredients

• 80g Pure spread 
• 110g SWEET FREEDOM
• 50g peanut or other nut butter (no added sugar version)
• 175g porridge oats
• 50g ground almonds
• 55g desiccated coconut (no added sugar)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180°C / 350°F / Gas mark 4.
2. Grease a medium-sized square baking tray.
3. Melt the spread in a large saucepan with the SWEET FREEDOM
4. Stir over a low heat until melted then stir in all the other ingredients and mix together well.
5. Turn the mix into the baking tray and spread out evenly.
6. Bake for 15 minutes, then remove from the oven and cut into squares.
7. Leave in the tin until completely cool and then turn out.

Arsenic in Rice Milk – Is This True?

Thank you to those of you who pointed out the recent media story about arsenic being in rice milk. It seems the Food Standards Agency has issued a new guideline that babies and toddlers under four years old shouldn’t be given rice milk as it contains too much arsenic. Shocked, I have looked into it for you. First, a quick summary and then I have included the press release from the FSA, and finally a response from the makers of Rice Dream. Hope it helps.

 

My summary: It seems a lot of foods contain a natural level of arsenic and rice has an ability to store it slightly more from what I read. Most experts are saying there is no real danger as it is endemic in our environment and foods, but that because babies and toddlers tend to drink a lot of it per body weight, the possibility of having too much should be recognised. The  best approach seems to be to not to have too much and to vary different milks around ie. not be too reliant on rice generally at that age. Another example of saying what’s wrong with something, but not really much help to those little ones who can’t drink cow’s milk (or soya)! Don’t forget too that the body is very efficient at getting rid of metals like this as it is a normal part of our environment. That said, it should be limited and we always need to ensure the right vitamins and minerals are in place to achieve the detox process in the body. It’s just a problem when a little one has to have a lot of it. Perhaps we need to think of alternatives such as oat and a little soya milk if little ones can’t have cow’s milk and are too young for nut milk, and always buy organic rice products.

 

From the FSA Press Release: The Agency has today published results from two studies: arsenic levels in rice drinks and one on cooking methods to reduce arsenic levels in rice. As a result of the rice drink study, the Agency recommends that toddlers and young children should not have rice drinks, often known as rice milk, as a replacement for cows’ milk, breast milk or infant formula.The rice drink study followed concerns about results from a study published last year that measured arsenic levels in these types of drinks. The research published today examined 60 samples of rice drinks and found low levels of arsenic in all of them (see The science behind the story section below).

The level of total arsenic ranged from 0.010 – 0.034 milligram/kilogram and the levels of inorganic – the more harmful – form of arsenic ranged from 0.005 – 0.020 milligram/kilogram. The proportion of inorganic arsenic in the rice drink samples ranged from 48 – 63%. None of the results were over the current legal limit (but see the Current regulations section below).

In the second study, researchers looked at the effect of cooking methods on arsenic content of rice. The Agency is not advising anyone to change the way they cook rice as a result of this study as the impact on the overall dietary intake of arsenic from different cooking methods is minimal.

What the Agency advises

As a precaution, toddlers and young children between 1 and 4.5 years old should not have rice drinks as a replacement for cows’ milk, breast milk, or infant formula. This is because they will then drink a relatively large amount of it, and their intake of arsenic will be greater than that of older children and adults relative to their bodyweight. This is both on nutritional grounds and because such substitution can increase their intake of inorganic arsenic, which should be kept as low as possible. A daily half pint or 280 millilitres of rice drink could double the amount of the more harmful form of arsenic they consume each day.

There is no immediate risk to children who have been consuming rice drinks and it is unlikely that there would have been any long-term harmful effects but to reduce further exposure to arsenic parents should stop giving these drinks to toddlers and young children. If your child is allergic to cows’ milk, you are strongly advised to seek advice from your health professional or dietitian on suitable replacements. Other groups of people do not need to change their diet because their exposure to inorganic arsenic from rice drinks is lower relative to their bodyweight. Children under a year old should drink breast milk or infant formula milk. Cows’ milk or alternatives are not suitable as a drink until an infant is 12 months old.

The research published today does not affect the Agency’s advice on any other weaning foods. Advice from a survey in 2007, which included baby rice and other rice products, concluded that these foods did not have levels of inorganic arsenic that caused concern.

Further information:

For further information on this survey, please contact: arsenic_enquiries@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk.

The science behind the story

Arsenic is widely distributed in the environment. It occurs in soil, water – both sea and fresh – and in almost all plants and animal tissues. As a result, arsenic occurs naturally at very low levels in many foods and it is not possible to avoid it completely. How harmful the arsenic is depends on the chemical form in which it is present. The organic form is less harmful than the inorganic form which can cause cancer by harming our genetic material (DNA). Rice and rice products have higher levels of the inorganic form of arsenic compared with other food. The Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COT) (an independent scientific committee that provides advice to the Food Standards Agency) has concluded that people should consume as little of this form of arsenic as reasonably practicable.

Related links

Survey of metals in weaning foods and formulae for infants Read the Food Survey Information Sheet

Survey of total and inorganic arsenic in rice drinks Food Survey Information Sheet 02/09

See more background at http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/fsis0209arsenicinrice.pdf

 

Rice Dream response:

“All Rice Dream and Lima products are significantly below the legal maximum limit for levels of arsenic in food products….They pose no risk to customers and this has been confirmed by tests conducted by the FSA and an independent laboratory.”

I shall keep you updated if anything else comes to light.

Healthy Snacks

  A few healthy snack ideas for you. How about reaching for…

• Fresh veg crudités – I often snack on a whole carrot
• Hummus and oat or rice cakes
• A bowl of fruit with soya yogurt and golden linseeds sprinkled over
• Oat or rice cakes with some salmon mashed with a tiddly bit of olive oil

Cereals or confectionery? It’s difficult to tell says Which?

Just 8% of 100 breakfast cereals tested recently by Which? received a green light for healthy sugar levels. Some were so sugary they were indistinguishable from confectionery, said the consumer body.

31 cereals out of the 100 compared in Going Against the Grain contained more than four teaspoons of sugar per recommended serving and only one of the 28 cereals specifically marketed to children was found not to be high in sugar (but was still high in salt).

Morrisons Choco Crackles topped the sweet mountain with more sugar per serving than a Cadbury’s Chocolate Flake, followed closely by Kellogg’s Coco Pops Moons and Stars, Frosties and Ricicles which were over a third (37 per cent) pure sugar.  

Many brands positioned as healthy, such as Kellogg’s All Bran, Bran Flakes and Special K did little to bowl over Which? researchers. Starting the day with Special K, it says, would be almost the sugar equivalent to waking up to a bowl of Tesco’s Dark Chocolate Fudge Cake Ice Cream. (Ed’s note – haven’t I always said that!!) NPN May 09

Unsurprisingly, porridge comes out top. To read the full report on the Which? Website, click http://www.which.co.uk/static/html/pdfs/cereals_report.pdf