Whenever I do my grocery shopping, James is most often with me. It is a great opportunity to talk about food and what's in it. It all started with buying cereal. If you have a kid, and they are with you and you need to buy cereal then you need to have a game plan BEFORE you arrive. My plan was this: James could pick any cereal he wanted as long as it contained less than 10 grams of sugar per serving. James started looking at each box for the "sugars". Now you know a young boy is looking for cereal that is exciting! colorful! has a cool mascot or character! And then reality hits. Despite reality, James has had a plethora of cereals to choose from. They all haven't been MY favorite but if they have "less than 10 sugars" then its acceptable. Here's a sample of a favorite cereal:
Nowadays, food makers put all the pertinent information on the front of the box so it's easy to see. James now knows where to find that information. It has also lead him to read the other information there. As he sits and eats his cereal, he reads the box. He will make an announcement about how proteins are in it. And he'll tell me about the saturated fats and carbohydrates too. He equates too many sugars with "bad" and proteins with "good". He knows that his yogurt has a lot of protein especially if it's Greek yogurt. That is good.
Today we had a very productive discovery about real sugars and fake sugars. I was picking out the Capri-Sun Super V juice pouches when we both noticed these really cool-looking new bigger juice pouches that are resealable, also made by Capri-Sun. James wanted it. Bad. I picked one up and looked at the ingredients. The second ingredient was high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). I said no. He wanted to know why of course so we did a quick comparison. His Capri-Sun Super V does not contain HFCS. So Super V wins. I told James that HFCS is not real sugar. It's fake. It's made from corn and that is certainly not sugar. Then we moved over to the aisle with all the colorful water flavorings. He wanted the Kool-Aid liquid water enhancers. Sooooo, we looked at the ingredients. There we found sucralose. If we are going to get something with sugar, it has to be the real thing. Most of those water enhancers contain sucralose. We couldn't find one in that store but I know they exist.
Ingredients: Water, Grape, Apple and Sweet
Potato Juice Concentrates, Soluable corn fiber,
Carrot Juice concentrate, citric acid,
cherry juice concentrate, ascorbic acid (vitamin c),
natural flavor, vitamin e acetate, beta-carotene.
And these little conversations amount to a lot. James now has a clear understanding about how I make decisions about what foods I will and will not buy. I'm not just being a mean Mommy by saying no without a good reason. He also understands that if we ARE going to eat something sugary, we will buy (or make it) with real sugar. And we will eat full-fat foods. No "fat-free" foods in our house. So if I buy salad dressing, for example, I buy the full-fat kind. Because fat-free means "full of chemicals to make it taste good since there's no fat in it anymore". We talked about acceptable sugars like pure sugar, honey and stevia today. And we talked about good fats like olive oil.
We haven't talked much about food dyes much. But lately it keeps coming up in conversations with other moms so I am listening and paying close attention. We needed good wholesome snack foods so I let James pick out some Goldfish (they are very low in "sugars"). I thought he was going to grab a bag of the Goldfish Colors and told him No before he thought to touch the bag. Then I decided to read the ingredients. Lo and behold, the colors made with real food like beets and watermelon and turmeric. No Red 30 or whatever. None of that.
We also buy a lot of local food through Carolina Grown. We started doing that when James was about 2. He loved the milk the most. I had to buy milk from the grocery store once because I ran out and when he tasted it he said, "This not good mommy.". Wow. A two-year-old could taste the difference. I get 95% of our meats locally. Grass-fed beef. Free-range chicken. Eggs too. All sorts of vegetables and fruits. Salsa and pickles. Goat cheese. Even soap and dog treats. And goodies like chocolate chip cookies. You better believe it has real butter and real sugar in them. James helps me order online sometimes. He does it to make sure I order the cookies.
One caveat here, I do buy candy for James. But it's not meant to be healthy so I relax my rules. It's called junk food for a reason. But healthy food HAS to be healthy; the food we eat for nutrients has to be good.
