This is a guest post by Lisa Cain, PhD, a.k.a Snack-Girl

Do you have a food fight with your child after school?

Is he starving because he tossed out his uneaten lunch? Was he  having too much fun in the school cafeteria and simply forgot to eat?

You’re not the only family where this happens. That’s why the after school snacks are tricky – kids are uptight, you haven’t prepared anything special, and the temptation to open up a bag of processed junk is just too high. As a result, afternoon snacks tend to fall into the treat category more than parents would like to admit. Cookies, candy, chips, along with “healthy” packaged snacks like fruit snacks are very common.

A recent study has shown that kids are eating 27% of their daily calories from snacks.  If a third of daily calories are coming from non-meals, parents need to be vigilant about the composition of those snacks.

We all want to ensure our kids don’t get too cranky before dinnertime. But, we should try to feed them something that will feed their brains (homework time!). What can we feed them without a war? Here are 5 afternoon snacks that have promise as peaceful substitutes for unhealthy treats. Replace brownies, potato chips, candy, pizza bites, and ice-cream with these suggestions:
Replace brownies with No bake brownie balls
Replace chips with Ants on a log
Replace candy with Chocolate covered raisins
Replace frozen pizza snacks with the Tiniest and Yummiest Pizzas on the Planet
Replace ice cream with DIY yogurt

Lisa Cain, Ph.D., is an avid snacker, foodie, published author, and mother of 2. An evolutionary biologist by training, she has become obsessed with how food contributes to our overall health. Check out snack girl for other healthy snack ideas.

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A big thanks to our friend Carol Harvey from Palate Works for this flowchart

Have a great weekend and Happy Valentine’s Day !!!

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Health claims on processed food packages are usually nothing more than marketing messages. So when Kellogg’s plasters the word “IMMUNITY” in quadruple font on the front of its Rice Krispies breakfast cereal, we just have to take a peek (thanks to Fooducate reader TD for the heads up).

We took a look at the product nutrition information and at the Rice Krispies website. We’re not sure if this is a new formulation or just a new marketing campaign, but this is what Kellogg’s boasts:

“Now each and every box is fortified with vitamins and nutrients that work together to help support your child’s immunity.”

“The cereal you love, invisibly better”.

Great pitch folks. Now let’s analyze the facts…

Read more…

Fresh off the recent candy expo in Chicago, we bring you a taste test and nutrition review of one of the better tasting products out there. Dove has been better known for its ice cream bars, but recently moved into the chocolate space.

Our testers loved the texture and rich flavor of this product saying  The peanut butter chocolates were delicious and very creamy. They didn’t quite look the same as the picture on the package, but then which food products do ?

Unfortunately, the taste comes at a nutritional price.

A packet contains around 30 pieces. A recommended serving size is 5 pieces (but show us the person who’ll stop there…)

Each serving will cost you 220 calories. Of those, 130 are from fat. That’s 14 grams of fat of which 8 grams are saturated. Those are 22% and 40% of your daily recommended maximum values, respectively. The label says 0 trans fat (we’ll see about that) and there are 8 grams of sugar (3.5 teaspoons).

The ingredient list includes the usual suspects (milk chocolate and peanuts) but also partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil and or partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Whenever you see a partially hydrogenated oil in the ingredient list, it means that the product DOES CONTAIN TRANS FAT.

How can this be if the nutrition panel says 0 trans fat?

Simple. There is an annoying loophole in the labeling regulations set by the FDA that lets you round off to zero anything smaller than 0.5 grams per serving. Manufacturers can then set the serving size to be just under the 0.5 grams threshold value. But as we mentioned earlier, 5 pieces of chocolate seems too little for a serving, so imaging you are sharing a bag with a friend. You’ll be consuming 3 times the servings, and possibly consuming a fair amount of this very unhealthy fat, without you even being aware!

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As children, we loved visiting The Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. Besides all the cool spacegear, a special treat awaited us at the souvenir shop – Astronaut Dessert in the form of freeze dried ice cream. Strawberry and Chocolate flavor. Melt in your mouth heaven for a 9 year old.

Fast forward to present day, Freeze Dried Partners LLC has recently introduced a line of freeze dried snacks called Funky Monkey, made from real fruit. There are 4 flavors, 3 of which are USDA Organic. From the manufacturer:

Funky Monkey Snacks contain no added sugar, preservatives, colors or flavors.  The snacks are made using a proprietary freeze-drying process on whole slices and large pieces of fruit.  The process, not used on any other snack available in the U.S., removes approximately 97 percent of the moisture content of the fruit, providing a crisp, crunchy texture, while retaining nearly all of the fruit’s nutrients.

Funky Monkey Snacks are a healthier and more natural alternative to dried fruit or fruit snacks.  Dried fruit does not preserve all the nutrients of fresh fruit, and fruit snacks often contain added sugars (including high-fructose corn syrup), colors, flavors and preservatives.

Below are the results of our taste test and nutritional analysis. Read more…

Two spring holidays that usually fall within days of each other are Easter and the Jewish Passover. As with almost all holidays, food is an important dimension of the festivities.

Easter highlights, courtesy of A.C. Nielsen:

1. America are buying over 120 million pounds, or $500 million, in candy this week.

2. 70% of the candy purchased is chocolate based, or approximately 71 million lbs.

3. That’s higher than the number for Valentine’s Day (48 million lbs.) but lower than Halloween’s tally (90 million lbs.)

4. Over 61 million eggs will be sold this week, 45% higher than on an average week.

5. On the Passover side, spending on unleavened matzo bread will reach $3.5 million dollars and $6.5 million on kosher passover wine (about 1.5 million bottles).

What you need to know:

The egg is a symbol of the rebirth of the earth in pre-Christian celebrations of spring. It was adopted by early Christians as a symbol of the resurrection. The oldest tradition is to use dyed or painted chicken eggs. In the early 19th century, egg shaped chocolates became all the rage in France and Germany, spreading to the rest of the world faster than a rabbit being chased by a hound.

The Passover matzoh is unleavend bread made from just flour and water. According to tradition, Jewish slaves, in their haste to flee ancient Egypt to freedom, did not have time to fully bake bread for the road. The matzo, unleavened flat bread, is what resulted.

Happy Festivities!

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