Is this the First Lady Food PR Effect? Michelle Obama’s recently launched “Let’s Move” campaign is racking up corporate support from manufacturers and retailers. On Tuesday it was PepsiCo’s announcement, and yesterday Kraft Foods excitedly shared plans to reduce sodium in all its brands by 10% on average in the next 2 years. Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

“We are reducing sodium because it’s good for consumers, and, if done properly, it’s good for business,” said Rhonda Jordan, President, Health & Wellness, Kraft Foods. “A growing number of consumers are concerned about their sodium intake and we want to help them translate their intentions into actions.”

The company’s goals call for sodium to be lowered in a number of products up to 20 percent by the end of 2012. For example, Oscar Mayer Bologna is slated to reduce sodium by 17 percent and some flavors of Easy Mac Cups are scheduled to reduce sodium by 20 percent. read it all…

But before we all get excited, let’s take a look at that product that’s going to lose 20% of its sodium – Easy Mac Cups.

What you need to know:

This foodlike product, sorry to be so blunt, is so awful that even a reduction of salt by 100% wouldn’t make it something to be proud of. A 2 oz. microwaveable cup is a single serving.

Here is the ingredient list:

ENRICHED MACARONI PRODUCT (WHEAT FLOUR, GLYCERYL MONOSTEARATE, NIACIN, FERROUS SULFATE [IRON], THIAMIN MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], FOLIC ACID), MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, SALT, MALTODEXTRIN, POTASSIUM CHLORIDE, ACETYLATED MONOGLYCERIDES, MEDIUM CHAIN TRIGLYCERIDES, APOCAROTENAL (COLOR), CHEESE SAUCE MIX (WHEY, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, PALM OIL, MILK, MILKFAT, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SALT, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF SODIUM TRIPOLYPHOSPHATE, MEDIUM CHAIN TRIGLYCERIDES, NATURAL FLAVOR, CITRIC ACID, MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE, SODIUM PHOSPHATE, LACTIC ACID, GUAR GUM, CALCIUM PHOSPHATE, MILK, DRIED ONIONS, YELLOW 5, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, YELLOW 6, ENZYMES, CHEESE CULTURE).

This is plain Mac & Cheese. So why are there 37 ingredients in here? Pull out your dictionaries folks. Among the controversial ingredients here – MSG, Artificial food colorings, and milk protein concentrate.

The nutrition facts panel states that there are 700 milligrams of sodium here. That’s 29% of  the daily recommended maximum for healthy adults. Salt appears in the ingredient list before the cheese sauce! In 2012, when this product will be reformulated, it should have 20% less sodium, meaning 560mg or 24% of the daily max. That’s still quite a lot.

But get this, Kraft discovered that the 2 ounce cups are not filling enough for some kids. They now have 4 ounce cups, or a double dose. In this case the sodium is actually going to skyrocket to 50% of the daily max, instead of the current 29%. Interesting that there is no mention of that stat anywhere…

We’d also caution against microwaving food and water in plastic containers, lest who knows what chemicals  leach into lunch. But that’s the topic for another post.

While we realize that the 30 seconds it takes to pop a cup of easy mac into the microwave seems like the ideal solution for busy moms, just slightly more effort can reap a much better tasting meal for your family. You can prepare a huge batch on the weekend, and then heat up single serve portions during the week when you’re too tired to do anything else.

We’d love to hear from you – dear reader – how do you prepare mac n cheese for your kids?

What to do at the supermarket:

When looking at a product that’s gone through a reformulation, don’t focus just on what’s been taken out. Look at all the other ingredients as well. The longer the list, the less recommended the product.

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Marketing genius or smoke and mirrors? Triscuits, those slightly salty wheat thins,  are being sold with a small surprise inside. No, not a toy from China, rather a small bag filled with … seeds!

Kraft is encouraging its customers to connect with real, natural, local food by no less than growing it at home or at a community garden. Their  “Home Farming” website invites people to join the movement and plant herbs and veggies.

While cynical observers may play this down as a marketing trick by a company famous for processed foods (cheese “products“, anyone?), we think this is a great idea. Getting people to connect to the soil and appreciate the hard work it takes to bring forth food from the land is a wonderful idea, even if the instigator has additional motives.

As for Triscuits themselves, they’re for the most part a better than average snack option in the savory category. Take for example the BAKED WHOLE GRAIN WHEAT ORIGINAL, which has only 3 ingredients – whole wheat flour, vegetable oil, and salt. A serving is only 120 calories, with 1 gram of saturated fat (relatively low) , 3 grams of fiber (very good), and 180mg of sodium (8% of the daily max).

The problem is that a serving size is defined as 28g (one ounce), but people don’t know how many Triscuits that works out to. So how will they know when to stop?

The number, after counting, is 7 Triscuits per serving. SEVEN. That’s a mighty tiny serving, don’t you think?

This before we dress up the Triscuit, for example with some cheese (more saturated fat and calories), as shown in the product package.

What to do at the supermarket:

When looking for savory snacks, check the side panel for important information:

1. How big or tiny is the serving size? Does it represent what you’d normally consume in an “eating event”.
2. Look at the ingredient list to see that it does not contain any surprises such as partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (trans fat) or “flavorings”.
3. Read the nutrition facts panel to understand how many calories you’re getting and their breakdown protein/fat/carbs.

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1. Potato Chips date back to 1853. An unhappy customer at a restaurant in Saratoga Springs, NY kept returning his fried potatoes to the chef, requesting they be prepared much thinner. The chef sliced them so thin that they could not be eaten with a fork, and thus was born the potato chip.

2. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that potato chips expanded from restaurant food and started selling in bags.

3. Flavored chips were born in the 1950’s by a small independent manufacturer who then sold the concept to the larger corporations.

4. As junk food goes, potato chips contain only 3 ingredients (potatoes, oil, salt) and are considered by some nutritionists the lesser of savory evils.

5. Potato chips were sold for over $15B (!!!) last year worldwide. They tally up about one third of all savory snacks.

6. While we call them potato chips, our overseas friends use the word crisps.

7. A single serving of potato chips, 1 ounce, contains only 150 calories, 10 grams of fat and 180mg of salt. That’s less than 10% of the daily calories of most people, about 15% of the fat, and 8% of the maximum sodium intake.

8. Problem is that most people don’t stop at one serving. Honestly, are 11 chips enough for you? People can wolf down 5 times that amount in sitting, dip not included…

9. One of the most popular flavored potato chip varieties is Sour Cream and Onion. Compared to just 3 ingredients in the original version, this one has 20 ingredients including MSG, Palm oil, and artificial colorings.

10. Just in case you were wondering, this national holiday does not appear in congressional records. It’s just another made up holiday by snack food industry marketing geniuses.

What to do at the supermarket:

Potato chips don’t have to be a daily ritual with your lunch sandwich. However, if you do buy them, choose potato chips that have been minimally processed -  Stay with the plain, unflavored chips as they have no additives and colorings. Buy single serve 1 oz. bags of chips so that you won’t be tempted to eat more than one serving at a time.

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Chicken. The healthy alternative to beef. The original white meat. Raise your hand if you don’t have chicken at least once or twice a week, if not daily. And when you buy it unprepared, you’re getting an all natural product. NOT.

Turns out you are paying for a product with natural ingredients – Chicken, water, salt. Up to 15% salt water, injected into the chicken, and approved by the USDA! Consumer watchdog group CSPI has this to say

The practice of pumping up poultry with salt water is basically a hidden tax of up to 15 percent that extracts about $2 billion from American consumers each year. This isn’t about “enhancing” chicken, it’s about enhancing profits.

Think of it this way. You think you’re buying 7.5 pounds of chicken, if 15 percent is water weight; you’re really getting less than six and a half pounds of chicken and more than one pound of added water. read more…

What you need to know:

This is a double whammy for consumers – pay more-get less AND kill yourself with excess salt.

Raw chicken has very little sodium in it, only 50-75mg per 4 z serving. But the injected versions has as much as 550mg! That’s when the maximum recommended consumption should be 2400mg per day or 1500mg for adults over 45, certain ethnic groups, and people with high blood pressure. Most Americans are already consuming 4000mg per day, and this leads to various health complications that kill 100,000 people annually.

The Truthful Labeling Coalition, is a lobbying group of poultry producers that don’t enhance their products. They’ve been pushing the USDA to change its policy, currently allowing up to 15% of the product sold to us as chicken to be salty water.

Manufacturers who add sodium claim that this is what consumers want. Of course, clearer labeling would help consumers better understand and decide for themselves if they want this dubious “benefit”.

What to do at the supermarket:

Read the fine print on the label. If it says “enhanced with broth / marinade” or something similar, this means it could contain up to 15% water and a whole lot of sodium you don’t need. You get punished twice – paying for chicken and getting water, and the excess sodium.

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The FDA is not pleased with Kellogg’s waffle manufacturing plant in Georgia. The federal authority sent the company a warning letter. Kellogg’s is reprimanded for the poor sanitary conditions at the factory, and requested to clean up its act. From Food Navigator:

The list of breaches included leaving uncovered rubbish just inches from raw materials, allowing potentially tainted water to drip onto food lines, and a number of unsatisfactory cleaning methods by employees. read more…

These conditions led to the discovery of Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes), a pathogenic bacterium. It can cause  mild illness (called listerial gastroenteritis) or a severe, sometimes life-threatening, illness called invasive listeriosis. Listeriosis is a major public health concern because of the severity of the disease, a high case-fatality rate, a long incubation and a predilection for individuals with underlying conditions.

What you need to know:

Life is all about trade offs. Food from factories means that every once a while there may be a safety issue. That factory can be a peanut processing plant, a CAFO (where thousands of cows are grown into steaks), or a waffle plant. While churning peanuts into butter is not something most people can do, nor raise a cow in their backyard, waffles are rather easy to prepare from scratch. And yet, Kellogg’s has an entire factory devoted to Eggo waffles.

Here’s what goes into a pre-frozen Eggo Homestyle Waffle:

Were you to make the waffles at home by yourself, you wouldn’t add artificial colors Yellow #5 and Yellow # 6 to make the waffles look better (these colors are not good for you). You wouldn’t use palm kernel oil with TBHQ and citric acid. You’d use real butter, or perhaps canola oil. And you wouldn’t fortify your waffle with vitamins and minerals in order to make it appear more healthy than it really is. And you probably wouldn’t find any surprise bacteria waiting to make your kids ill.

Hot fresh waffles are a such great treat on a weekend morning. So why settle for a pre-frozen product? It tastes so poorly compared to a fresh homemade batch. AND it contains unwanted ingredients, sometime with additional surprises…

What to do at the supermarket:

Buy some eggs, flour, and milk. Make sure your pantry is stocked with sugar, salt, baking powder, and vanilla extract. Now turn to one of many recipe websites and make your own waffles in 10 minutes. Bon apetit.

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You’re trying to shield your children from junk food advertising. Limiting TV exposure, explaining why it’s important to eat real food, teaching them to prepare simple dishes. But then you take your kids to the movies. And interwoven into the narrative are all those products and fast food establishments you’re trying so hard to stay away from. Sound familiar?

According to a new study published in Pediatrics, product placement has become a prevalent advertising form in movies and TV shows. Study author, Dr. Lisa A. Sutherland, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School, decided to research this subject after a night at the movies with her son a few years ago. Here’s what her team learned:

Sutherland and her colleagues analyzed the top 20 films at the box office in each year from 1996 to 2005. Researchers watched each film and noted brand-name references to food and beverage products plus retail food establishments, such as fast-food restaurants.

Of the 200 movies, 69 percent — 138 — featured at least one food, beverage or retail establishment…

Candy products (26 percent) and salty snacks (21 percent) were the most common foods seen in the movies, and sugary soft drinks made up three-quarters of the beverages mentioned. Fast-food restaurants, meanwhile, accounted for two-thirds of the retail establishment mentions.

McDonald’s topped the references to food establishments with 13.1 percent of them, while Pepsi and Coca-Cola were nearly equal (at about 35 percent each) at the top of the list of beverage companies whose products appeared in the movies. Pepsi food products also topped the list of brand-name food references.

A few comments:

1. Where can one sign up to analyze the next batch of movies? Seems like a great job, watching movies all day.

2. But seriously, as someone who worked in the consumer electronics industry in the past, I can tell you that from a manufacturer perspective, placement in a motion picture is considered the Oscar of product promotion. It’s a win-win for Hollywood and for the brands. Unfortunately the largest advertising budgets will always be for the Mc-junk foods of the world.

3. There is hope though. Since you are watching the movie together with your children, use the drive back home as

an opportunity to teach them how to think critically about the images they see.

What to do at the supermarket:

If your child asks for a product as seen on TV or in a movie, you needn’t automatically say no. The 80/20 rule should work here. If most of the time they eat OK, then a rainbow colored snack here and there isn’t going to bring on Armageddon.  If your children are old enough to understand, review the nutrition facts panel and ingredient list together, have them look for alternatives that are more healthful, and empower them by letting them choose something they found and is healthy enough. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

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We’ve been blogging recently about chocolate milk.  One of our readers commented with a question about Ovaltine as an option to sweeten milk .

Ovaltine is a milk flavoring invented in Switzerland more than a hundred years ago. The original formula contained eggs, malt, and a bit of cocoa. It then reached the UK and eventually the US, with each country using a different formula adapted to national preferences.

In the US today, Ovaltine is sold in 2 flavors – Malt and Rich Chocolate. Ovaltine is owned by Nestle (makers of Nesquik) and we checked their website for product info.

Here is our analysis. Read more…

We recently wrote about chocolate milk with too much sugar being served in school lunches. We also covered a chocolate drink that’s better left on the shelf. But as parents, we can’t ignore the fact that kids LOVE sweetened milk. So what alternatives are there for breakfast, suppertime, or afternoon snack companion?

We decided to compare 3 options – ready to drink chocolate milk, powder, and syrup. For simplicity, we checked the category leader – Nesquik – which has all these options available. We only had powder at home, so we went to Nesquik’s website for more info. Unfortunately, the Nesquik website does not include ingredient information, which always means there’s something to be ashamed of… Read more…

Yogi Berra and the Yankees helped Yoo-hoo chocolate drinks become an American icon in the 40’s and 50’s. The sweet and refreshing chocolaty taste became a kids’ favorite across the nation.

When buying Yoo-hoo, many parents mistakenly think they are providing their children a healthy milk-based drink with a touch of sweetness from chocolate so to make it fun to drink. They don’t notice that Yoo-hoo is a “chocolate drink”, not a “chocolate milk”.

A look at the ingredient list shows that there is virtually no milk here, mostly water, sugars, a smidgen of milk by-products, and some chemicals. Oh, and a bit of cocoa too.

Yoo-hoo is not something to treat the kids to. Here’s why…

What you need to know:

If you are looking for nutrition and ingredient information on Yoo-hoo’s website, forget about it. When companies don’t share this information on their website, you can rest assured their product does not have much to boast on the nutrition front. Such is the case with Yoo-hoo.

Let’s begin with the ingredient list (22 items!):

Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Whey (from Milk), Sugar, Corn Syrup Solids, Cocoa (Alkali Process), Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Sodium Caseinate (from Milk), Nonfat Dry Milk, Salt, Tricalcium Phosphate, Dipotassium Phosphate, Xanthan Gum, Guar Gum, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Soy Lecithin, Mono and Diglycerides, Vitamin A Palmitate, Niacinamide (Vitamin B3), Vitamin D3, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2).

Water is the main ingredient followed by copious amounts of the highly debated High fructose corn syrup. Sugar and Corn syrup solids are also added to further sweeten this drink, just for good measure…

Notice that there is no liquid milk in here, only milk by-products such as whey (ingredient #3), sodium caseinate (#8), and non-fat dry milk(#9). Whey is the leftover liquid after milk is curdled into cheese. Together with sodium caseinate, they are a source of protein.

Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil (#7) appears ahead of the milk powder here. Why in the world do we need trans-fat in a drink?

Tricalcium Phosphate is a source of calcium, while Dipotassium Phosphate is an additive that is used to prevent coagulation. The Guar and Xantham gums serve as thickeners, providing a richer creamier mouthfeel despite the fact that this is a water based product. You can read more about soy lecithin, an emulsifier, here.

The nutrition facts:
Each 15.5 oz bottle contains two servings, but many people gulp the entire bottle down. Here’s the info per 8oz serving:
130 calories, with only 10 from fat and almost all the rest from sugars! 27 grams of sugar, the equivalent of just under 7 teaspoons!

There’s also 210 mg of sodium in here, almost 10% of the daily maximum value. This is something you wouldn’t expect in a sweet drink.
Trans-fat appears as zero because of a labeling loophole that allows 0.5 grams or less per serving to be rounded down to zero. But remember, if you see a partially hydrogenated oil in the ingredient list, expect trans-fat. And no amount is good for you.

All the vitamins and minerals have been tacked on to this drink, and do not appear naturally in the main ingredients.

What to do at the supermarket:

Ideally you should have your children drinking milk with their cookies, not a sugary concoction. But at some point after infancy, our kids tend to forget the pure milk flavor and demand a sweet flavor. So drinking plain milk is a challenge for many families.

Adding a teaspoon of instant cocoa powder is also fine because you control the sugar level. Another option is to buy chocolate milk and mix it half and half with regular milk to drive down the sugar levels.

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Should we be adding nutrition to New York’s list of leadership roles in addition to finance, tourism, and entertainment?

After paving the path with calorie labeling in fast food restaurants, banning trans-fat, shocking us with anti-soda pop ads, and then suggesting a tax on sugary drinks, the city’s department of health circa January 2010 is all about salt reduction.

In a press release yesterday, the health department announced a plan for voluntary reduction of salt from packaged foods and in restaurants of 25% over the next 5 years. The National Salt Reduction Initiative, is a New York City-led partnership of cities, states and national health organizations, that plans to work with the industry to achieve this goal. Precedents exist on national levels, most notably in Finland, which nearly halved sodium consumption over several decades starting in the 1970’s.

What you need to know:

A bit of salt is good, both for our body and our food enjoyment. The problem for many Americans is that the bit-of-salt has become too-much-salt, almost twice as much as we need to consume. And the excess is not doing us any good:

• Diets high in salt increase blood pressure, a leading risk factor for heart attacks and stroke.
• These conditions cause 23,000 deaths in New York City alone each year – more than 800,000 nationwide – and cost Americans billions in healthcare expenses
• Most Americans eat almost twice the recommended limit of salt each day.
• Even people with normal blood pressure benefit from lowering their salt intake.

Over 70% of the salt we consume comes from processed foods, whose manufacturers have been under a certain pressure to reduce their salt content for several years. Their big problem is who’ll jump into the cold water first. You see, our collective taste buds are currently wired to extra-salty. If one manufacturer decides to dramatically decrease the salt value in its foods while the others don’t , it stands a chance of falling out of f(l)avor with consumers and losing market share.

That’s why a coordinated effort where all manufacturers are required to reduce sodium gradually over time may be a good idea.

Incidentally, in the food industry’s praise (which is not something Fooducate often doles out) some manufacturers have been reducing sodium content gradually and quietly over the last few years. It’s interesting to note the stark difference in approach in canned soup, a notoriously sodium laden product, between Campbell’s and Progresso. Both are reducing their salt content but while the former proudly boasts the sodium reduction on its products and marketing materials, the latter is keeping mum.

What to do at the supermarket:

While we wait for salt values to enter orbit, let’s not fool ourselves into complacency. Salt is still a big issue and even after the proposed reduction values will be higher than necessary. The fastest way to lose the salt is to eat less processed foods. If you do buy prepared foods, look at the sodium values and compare.

A good number to remember is 600mg per serving. Lower is better, higher is not.

PS – enjoy the video of Alicia Keys singing about NY. Not directly related to nutrition or nutrition, but probably one of the best thing in music in a long while…

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