The only special treatment my young children get when we walk into a restaurant are the crayons and kiddie menu to doodle on. Why in the world would we punish them with chicken nuggets, hot dog, a reheated pizza, or whatnot, when they can be enjoying the fine Italian/Thai/French/Vietnamese/Californian cuisine that the adults are having?

Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t.

There’s this belief that children can’t eat grown-up food. They won’t like it. They don’t eat veggies. They can’t handle complex tastes, yadda yadda…

Same thing happens when grocery shopping at the supermarket. Entire aisles, product lines, and companies are devoted to that beloved niche market – our kids. Granted, there are some products for babies that make sense – a jar of Gerber to keep in a diaper bag for those cases when baby’s hungry and you’re not near the kitchen. But have you had a look at your pantry and fridge to count up all the things you bought because they’re for kids?

Whether it’s Danimals, a sugary cereal, or glow in the dark Mac ‘n Cheese – think about the real reason you bought these items. Is it because your children really need them? Or because of the clever packaging that has led you to believe these are better choice for your little ones?

What you’ll discover in many cases is that you’ve gotten something with more sugar and in some cases artificial colorings. Blue is a fun color to paint with. Not to eat.

If your children are still very young and not subject to too much outside influence other than parents and close family, it should be very easy to refrain from kid branded products. Problems usually arise when a child starts preschool or learns from older friends in the surrounding social circle.

Viewing TV commercials is a contributing factor, too. It would be great if manufacturers would refrain from using kid pop icons on their packaging. But the deal is just too sweet for both Hollywood and the brand manufacturers. Unfortunately, the industry self regulation is very lax, and the government does not and cannot effectively intervene.

So it’s up to parents to figure out a game plan that works for their family. There’s no one right solution.

Whatever you decide, try  not to be too extreme. The 80 / 20 rule seems to be effective with many of our readers – if your children eat 80% of their food as healthful as you can muster, but the other 20% more leniently (including junk food and post-modern snacks), then you’re off to a good start. If you deny your children any of the treats that they see their friends consuming, you’ll be in for quite the rebellion once they hit the teenage years.

What food strategies are you implementing with your children?

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If you have young children, you probably recognize the Danimals brand of yogurt drink and may have even bought some for your children.

Was it the Hannah Montana co-marketing, The mysterious LGG,  No High Fructose Corn Syrup, or the promise of “helping kids stay healthy every day” that made you choose?

We decided to take a look inside the product, to see just what our kids are getting… Read more…

Dannon Activia

More good news for consumers. Dannon, manufacturer of 100 dairy products such as Activia, Light & Fit, DanActive and Danimals, will stop using milk from cows injected with bovine growth hormones (rBST / rGBH). The plan is to be 100% hormone free by the end of 2009.

From DairyReporter.com:

[Dannon] said the move is a result of consumer feedback. “This is a response to our market evaluation and consumer preference,” Dannon’s senior director of public relations Michael Neuwirth told DairyReporter.com.

“When General Mills make their announcement, we naturally got many questions. This is something we’ve been working on for some time but because there is no real safety issue here we’ve been quite low-key about it,” said Neuwirth.

Read the entire article…

What you need to know:

BST (bovine somatotropin) is a hormone cows naturally produce and found in their bodies. The more of this hormone a cow has, the more milk it produces. In the early 1990’s, an artificial growth hormone, rBST (a.ka. rBGH), was developed by agriculture giant Monsanto. While this seems like good news, when you mess with nature, there are always consequences.

The rBST hormone itself has no effect on humans, but the “consequences” do:
1. Cows injected with the hormone tend to be sicker due to inflammations of their much larger udders, and therefore receive more antibiotics. The antibiotics then find their way into your milk and your body.
2. rBST additionally increases the level of an insulin type growth factor in the milk (IGF-1). This, again, finds its way into the human body. Though in most cases our stomach acids digest it, sometimes IGF-1 gets into the bloodstream, and for some people this raises the risk of cancer.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the EU banned rBGH.

Dannon is an international dairy powerhouse, and owns about one third of the US yogurt market, tied with General Mill’s Yoplait. Having these two giants make the move will probably line up all of the smaller manufacturers as well.

What to do at the supermarket:

Until the end of 2009, buying organic is the sure way to avoid milk products from rBGH-free cows, albeit at a higher price.

On conventional products, you will not find a label mentioning the presence or absence of growth hormones or antibiotics.

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