Don't Tell Me I'm Skinny

We all know we shouldn't call someone fat, and yet there's this strange phenomenon where people think it's ok to call someone skinny or say that a person doesn't eat. Out loud. In front of a person's face. Where does this privilege come from? Why is there a need to mention it, particularly in presence of said person him/herself? And, most importantly, why is this even bothersome at all?

We live in a society and culture where image is everything. Those who preach 'never judge a book by its cover' are hypocrites. It's human nature, I get it. To be human, though, is also having the ability to be civil and think before we speak as well.

There's this saying:



A person may be thin because s/he has cancer; diabetes; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); HIV; or a gastrointestinal, renal, cardiac, or neurologic disease. A person may be thin because s/he is depressed or has an eating disorder. Or, perhaps, a person may be thin because s/he just has a small frame, is more active, or just simply eats less. Less DOESN'T equal nothing, it means not as much or more, just less.

There is a shitload of reasons people may be thinner than you'd like them to be but whatever the case, you may know nothing about it, nor should you feel the sense of entitlement to act like you're in 6th grade and be rude about it to their face.

If a person is thinner than you would like them to be, ask yourself why it's bothering you. If you aren't happy with the way you look, don't criticize others. Instead, do something about it.



Because, you know...



And...



Yes, it's that easy. Maybe not as easy as making someone else feel bad but it's doable.

If you're on the other end of the stick figure (pun intended)...



And...





And finally... don't tell me I'm skinny because, hunny, you don't know what skinny is. #piecesofm

Thoughts? Leave them in the Comments below

How To Get Kids To Eat Their Vegetables

I just read this story on Reuters Flavor-Pairing May Teach Kids To Like Vegetables. And, meh.

Here are my unsolicited tips (take it or leave it):

• Cook vegetables in a way that taste good: So good that YOU like eating them yourself, too, and actually do. Forget the vegetables for a second. Kids are heavily (primarily?) influenced by their role models, which includes you (the parent). Don't overanalyze how to get to them to eat vegetables. The problem might be that you might not be eating them either.


• Really show them your eating vegetable: Ok, so say you really do like eating vegetables and eat a decent portion no less. Kids have short attention spans and get easily distracted. You are a role model, yes, but they're not necessarily watching your every single move. Eat it out— plain and clear. Just like you have to create sentences for them to say to teach them how to speak, the same could go for eating vegetables. If your kid is not eating theyr vegetables, tell them how much you love eating yours. Verbally tell them you're doing it as you are doing it. Chew. Open your mouth and show them how you do it. Swallow. Smile. Verbally tell them how 'yummy' it is.


• Eat together: Kids love doing things together. As you wrap up the above bullet point, verbally suggest, 'let's eat it together!'. As they pick up their vegetable(s), cheers your forks (or hands). Make it fun and something to celebrate. Because isn't it something to celebrate? :>


• Let it go and try again... later... and again and again: If all that doesn't work, let it go. Don't force your kid to do something s/he doesn't want to (if it isn't absolutely necessary). Kids are smart and they remember. A) It's not worth the struggle or energy. B) It might leave them with negative associations. C) As the article mentions, it does take several times of offering/tasting before kids will like a food. The number of times it takes varies and can be great [ie. up to 20 times?] but I definitely learned that one in grad school after getting it wrong on a quiz— it's stuck with me ever since. Thanks, Ellyn Satyr. But when the vegetable is available, always offer it to your kid, rather than say, 'O, s/he doesn't like it.' By doing that, you're only reinforcing that belief.


• Offer variety, offer daily: Do you love every single food that exists? Probably not. Your kids won't either. But the odds of your child not liking every vegetable is silly. Try to figure out different textures and cooking methods of a wide-variety of vegetables— they're bound to like something. Also offer vegetables daily. Be sure to make vegetables a given. Keep dinners, for example, consistent, like carb (rice, bread, pasta), protein (chicken, beef, pork, beans), and vegetable.


• Be mindful of kids' development, cook appropriately: Be sure to cook or serve vegetables that are somewhat easy (or just easy) for them to chew and swallow. Cook leafy greens soft and cut it up into kid-bite-sized pieces. Peel off the outer layer of broccoli stalks. Yes, by doing so you are losing some fiber and nutrients but this, I think, is more effective than dousing the vegetable(s) in cream cheese, for example, which has an even more canceling/negative effect. Serving vegetables by themselves, I believe, will get kids to like them for 'who' they are vs. masking them in over-poweringly flavored costumes/dress.




• Take it with a grain of salt: The cohort of the study— that is, the number of people participating in the study— amassed to 29 kids. Twenty-nine. That's not very many kids whatsoever. What other factors could have twisted the results? How did the kids feel about the vegetables by the time they reached adulthood? What culture/environment do these kids/families live in and are they applicable to everyone outside that bubble? These are the questions you should be asking yourself when deciding on the strength of the study and whether you want to apply the results to your own behavior.

I take pics of what I eat. For ideas on meals and portioning, check out my Instagram @mdesenna!

Have some tips of your own? Share them in the Comments below, we'd love to hear! :>

Happy Healthy Juicy Kids Eating Vegetables!

Lo-Mein, Pork Chop, Shanghai Bok Choy

This is a dinner-sized plate (~10-12"). Notice portions.

You have your lean protein from the pork chop, vegetables as as its own portion and mixed in with the noodles, brain-energy carbs from the al dente pasta, and (minimal-saturated) fat dispersed throughout.

Got questions?

Share in the Comments below, we'd love to try to answer them! :>

Happy Healthy Juicy Balanced, Proporationed Dinner!

Pork Vegetable Stir-Fry - A HealthyButJuicy Original #15minuterecipe!

If you thought 30-minute meals was fast, try 15 seconds!

HealthyButJuicy kicks off its 15-second video recipes with Pork Vegetable Stir-Fry. Follow @mdesenna on Instagram for instant video-licious gratification and check back here for the detailed recipes. Dishes will be 100% HealthyButJuicy and scrumptious!



So one of the key skills you should develop when cooking HealthyButJuicy is to be able to modify recipes to your likes, tastes, budget, and what you simply have on hand. We called this dish Pork Vegetable Stir-Fry but if you don't eat or like pork, you can simply swap it out for ground beef, chicken, or turkey, firm tofu, or even meat substitute crumbles.

As for the vegetables, we used edamame and carrots (a couple of my daughter's favorites), red bell pepper, and scallions (aka. green onions). We would have added corn, which would have been a nice additional color (and another of my daughter's favorite) but we didn't have any. No biggie.

My daughter ended up not really liking the red peppers— we don't typically eat it often— but I thought it was a great addition both in terms of color, flavor, and texture. It added a bit of sweet- and juiciness and complimented the salmon that we ate with this dish well.

Re: kids and food dislikes. I am all for offering new foods to my daughter (almost 2!). Variety is the spice of life, isn't it? :> And it's important to offer variety to your kids when they're young because as we grow older we tend to be less willing to try new things or foods we think we don't like. As Ellen Satyr (a child nutrition expert) has said, sometimes it takes as many as 15-20 times for kid try a new food before s/he likes it (I remember that because I got that question wrong on a quiz in grad school :>).

Also, offering foods your kids may not necessarily like can actually help teach them some proper table manners. Instead of throwing food on the floor or across the room, my daughter now either gives the food to me to put on my plate, puts the food she doesn't want on her own plate (farthest away from her), or puts it back on the main serving dish. (Perhaps the latter isn't very proper but it's a step up from across the room. :>)

Pork Vegetable Stir-Fry Recipe

Ingredients
3 medium Carrots, diced
1-2 cups Low-Sodium Chicken Broth/Stock (enough to cover the carrots in a small pot)
4 oz. Ground Pork
2 Scallions, finely-sliced
1 Red Bell Pepper, diced
1 cup frozen, thawed Edamame
1-2 tbsp. Oyster Sauce
Oil, as needed

1. In a small pot, cook the carrots in the broth. Carrots take longer than the other vegetables to cook. Cook them to your desired consistency. We cook them until semi-firm to-the-bite, or how my daughter likes it. Skipping this step is also an option if you don't mind your carrots crunchy.
2. In a large wok or deep pan, heat up some oil (about 1-2 tbsp). Add the pork, spreading it across the pan. We're looking for a good sear to bring out the flavor.
3. Add the scallions and toss to release some of its flavors.
4. Scoop out of pan onto serving dish.
5. Add a little more oil to the pan and let it heat up a little.
6. Add the peppers and toss to coat. Cover the pan slightly to soften.
7. Toss in the other vegetables and stir-fry until everything is warmed up.
8. Add the pork and scallion mix.
9. Add a little bit of oyster sauce and re-toss.
10. Transfer the everything back to the serving dish. Voila!

Tweet or Instagram us a pic of this recipe if you try it! Tag your posts with #healthybutjuicy #15secondrecipe

We'd love to see your versions and how it turned out!

Happy Healthy Juicy Make-It-Your-Own Stir-Fry!

How To Wean Baby Off The Bottle! And Nuby Sippy Cup Review!

Babies (and parents) have a steep learning curve in the first few years in nearly every category, drinking included. Breastfeeding is best, no doubt, but even being the most 'natural' way of feeding your baby, that, too, requires a process of learning, practicing, and getting used to before it actually feels 'natural'.

The funny thing about the learning curve, it seems, like with drinking, once the child gets used to one means or method— ie. the routine is mastered— it's time to move onto the next... challenge. Good news is, the more times the child overcome a 'challenge', or stage of development, the quicker they learn and are able to adjust next time around.

Like most (if not all) topics in parenting, there is no one or right way of transitioning your child off the bottle and onto a sippy cup. The process starts around 12 to 16 months old.

To transition, some parents might just do it cold turkey. One day, they'll just take the bottle away and only offer a sippy cup. The child might refuse for a day or two but will quickly take to the sippy cup because, really, there is no other choice. It'll be a rough few days for both parties but, once passed, the tides will calm again.

Alternatively, some parents might do it gradually— perhaps provide the sippy cup only at a certain mealtime(s) and not the bottle; or perhaps offer the sippy cup at every meal and resort to the bottle if needed.

A few things to remember in either case is...

• Look for signs that the child is ready. Biting through the nipple is one example. Seeing like-age kids use sippy cups is another.
• Keep offering the sippy cup even if you 'know' your baby will likely refuse. Like introducing new foods, which sometimes might take 15-20 times (or more!) of offerings before the child will eat and maybe even like the new food, it might take a while and definitely requires repetition and persistence, not to mention patience.
• Remember: There is no right or wrong time/way to transition your child off the bottle. Weaning your baby off the bottle is the same as weaning him/her off the breast— it should depend on both you and your child.

Below is piecesofm's second episode of the mini-series From Baby Bottles To Sippy Cups, where she reviews the very first sippy cup she tried post-baby-bottle— the Nuby Sippy Cup. Have you tried it? What did you think? Or, will you try it? Share your thoughts and experiences below, we'd love to hear! :>

Enjoy and thanks for watching!



Happy Healthy Juicy Transitioning To Sippy Cups!

How To Buy HealthyButJuicy Kid's Yogurt!

What is essentially bacterial fermented milk— yogurt— has come a long way within the last five decades or so, not surprisingly along with America's tech-savvy of playing with food and its expanding waistline.

Remember Colombo Yogurt? Remember its minimal Ingredients List? Supposedly, it was one of the pioneers to introducing Americans to yogurt in the late 1920s and then was later bought out by General Mills, only to be discontinued because of Yoplait.

Yoplait! You know, the brand with that commercial where the woman is telling her friend on the phone all the delicious 'food' she's been eating while losing weight, while her husband is eaves-dropping and frantically looking in the fridge for her goodies. He missed the stacks of light yogurt right in front of him with flavor names such as: Thick & Creamy Cinnamon Roll, Black Forest Cake, Apple Turnover, Red Velvet Cake, Boston Creme Pie, Pineapple Upside Down Cake, Thick & Creamy Cherry Cobbler... Pretty much every decadent baked good you can think of in the form of yogurt.

Sigh.

According to Wikipedia:

Yogurt's popularity in the United States was enhanced in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was presented as a health food.

Sigh again. And there began the demise of yogurt. Deem anything healthy and you can count on Americans to bastardize it. (No offense, America... love you.) But now, yogurt doesn't just take a slither of an aisle but spans an entire one. So many options! Lions and tigers and flavors and sizes and prices and consistencies and packaging and nutritional profiles, o my!

But still, we'd like our kids to eat yogurt because of those originally-known benefits— live cultures, or 'good bacteria'— as well as source of calcium and protein. But how and/or which to choose??

Run down the whole yogurt aisle and watch and learn which are HealthyButJuicy's top picks and why!



Agree or disagree with what you saw? Comment below your thoughts, opinions, and tastes! We'd love to hear! :>

Trader Joe's Bacon & Spinach Salad Review!

There's a lot of food out there. With so much to choose from, it's hard to tell what's healthy and what isn't. So HealthyButJuicy is starting a new series of food/product reviews! Want something tested and reviewed? Comment below your requests and we might just try it! :>

Salad = Healthy, right? An olio of fresh produce and unsaturated fat for dressing usually is but 'salad' has come a long way in how we classify the dish. Depending on what's in it and how much you eat, salad can actually be more unhealthy than a value meal at McDonalds! Seriously.

In this episode of HealthyButJuicy Reviews, we taste and rate Trader Joe's Bacon & Spinach Salad. We love Trader Joe's but just like Whole Foods, their products aren't always necessarily good for you. By law, ingredients are listed by weight; this product's name (unfortunately) is not much different and, well, the name says it all.

We love salads and getting pre-made ones like this is a great means of 'fast food' when grabbing a quick bite for lunch. But how does this salad rate in terms of nutrition, value, and taste? Watch and find out!



What kind of salad have you eaten lately? Comment below and tell us about it, we'd love to hear! :>

How To Lose 10 Pounds In 1 Day!

So, you've seen the ads, you've seen the infomercials, you've tried every diet, product, and service known to man to lose weight. And all you want to do is add the HealthyBut to your Juicy self. Well, just because it's fall and we have two seasons of cold weather in front of us, doesn't mean you can't start shedding the weight as you pack on the layers. Start now and by the time spring rolls around your rolls will be nowhere in sight!

In this video, I share with you how I lost 10 pounds in 1 day and kept it off (true story!) That's the clencher with these rapid weight loss gimmicks— they don't last. Hear how I did it along with some tips on how you can achieve your HealthyButJuicy goals.

...dreaming of a healthier planet...

Enjoy!

And the Saga of the Food Label Continues..

Once entrepreneurs started tampering with the food supply— that's when things started to get a little tricky.

Food stopped being simply the substance that gives us energy and the nutrients we need to survive, and [rapidly] evolved into a product to sell sell sell. Forget survival of the fittest. Industry doesn't care about health fitness. It cares about financial fitness, which translates into maximizing profits, minimizing costs, and doing whatever else it takes to do just that, including constantly keeping your attention [and wallet] open, by developing new products [note: the avg. supermarket now has about 60,000 products, up from about 20,000, just decades ago], packaging, marketing, so on and so forth.

In efforts to somehow manage and regulate this crazy food processing, which continues full-force today, the food label was born— telling us what's in an unnatural, unrecognizable, processed food and some key nutrient information, including:

• Calories
  
• Fat [unsaturated, saturated, trans]
  
• Cholesterol
  
• Sodium
  
• Potassium
  
• Carbs
  
• Fiber
  
• Sugar
  
• Protein
  
• Calcium
  
• Iron
  
• Vitamins A and C
  
• Ingredients in descending order by weight

Phew. That's a lot of really useful information on nearly every packaged food you can lay your hands on.

But forget all that. In the next few months, food makers [will] devise [their] own label plan, which consists of listing calories, saturated fat, sodium, and sugar on the front of packages, with the option to include [ahem, market] one or two more 'positive' ingredients as well, such as fiber.


Is the food industry really making genuine efforts to help consumers make healthier choices, as they claim?

And, more importantly, will consumers know how to use this new label plan any more effectively than what is on packages already?

And note: to say that the current food label is hidden, is bogus [or, complete BS]. Think for a minute: Do children have a difficult time finding games on their cereal boxes? [Case and point.]

Like an unknown foreign language, you can present the same information in a million different ways, but you still need an education or translator.

Happy Healthy Juicy $50 Million for Nutrition Education Just Might Prove More Effective Than Advertising This Initiative!

Study Finds Children Are Unhealthy For Our Diet

A recent study published in the European Review of Agricultural Economics found that 'presence of children in a household has a negative impact on dietary quality.'

This included lower intakes of fruits and vegetables, and higher intakes of dairy products, cereal, and potatoes.

It's time we stop feeding our kids like this:




And learn to feed them like this:




Because not only are they becoming like this:




But so are we.




Happy Healthy Juicy The Children Are NOT To Blame! We Must Do [Eat & Learn] Better!

Jennifer Connelly Finds Excuse to Become Garbage Disposal: Pregnancy

People.com reports Jennifer Connelly is pregnant with her third child.

In an interview with David Letterman, she talks about the 'nausea' during her early pregnancy, which, frankly, is nauseating itself.

She said,

“I have to stand in one spot in my apartment to make a phone call. It was like that with the nausea..

I had to stand in one spot, which happened to be in front of my refrigerator, which was open, with me dipping pretzels in cream cheese and stuffing them in my mouth,” she laughs. “If I did that, I was good.”

Ugh. Again, case and point, Gisele Bundchen called it: Pregnancy, for many, is synonymous with 'garbage disposal'.







I guess that's just the 'right' some of these women give themselves when growing another human being inside their bodies after slaving [or whittling] away to Hollywood diets otherwise.










Happy Healthy Juicy, My Goodness, That's Your Child In There, If Anything, You Should Be Eating Better!

Facebook has Nothing & Everything to do with Health

Check out this Businessweek article: How Facebook Sells You.

No worries, this is not one of those paranoid Facebook articles that's preaching abstinence from the world's largest social networks. So you can still keep your virtual friends, just.. beware of them.

FB is a tool, still very much in development and changing, and one that can be used in many great ways. Take, for example, me & you, together at last. [giggle]. Likewise, however, it can also be abused— or used in ways NOT intended— in equally as many ways, if not more.

The point is to UNDERSTAND how and why FB is used [not just quit it altogether].

The article is great for illustrating how hungry businesses are to wet your appetite and swallow your cash, and, with that in mind, how much media can affect our psyche, behaviors and, ultimately.. ugh, I know, but health.

When it comes to nutrition and health education, businesses really do reign supreme. Is it really any surprise, considering the amount of money that goes into advertising and healthcare?


Some food for thought and some highlighted snippets, in case you don't care to read the whole thing:

Question: How many times have you done something because someone you care about did it?

"The whole premise of the site is that everything is more valuable when you have context about what your friends are doing," says Facebook co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who started accepting ads on Facebook as a Harvard sophomore in 2004 in an attempt to cover server costs. "That's true for ads as well. An advertiser can produce the best creative ad in the world, but knowing your friends really love drinking Coke is the best endorsement for Coke you can possibly get."

Question: Are there really that many people engaged in advertising and branding?

"A year ago, Facebook was an afterthought," says Carol Kruse, vice-president, global interactive marketing, at Coca-Cola (KO), which has more than 12 million Facebook fans. "As we go into 2011, it's fully integrated into our marketing plans, with a reliance and a focus on it."

Question: How are businesses using social media?

Facebook calls its ads "engagement ads," because they ask users to take action: play a video, vote in a poll, RSVP to an event, or just comment or click a button to indicate that they "like" it. The "like" button, which Facebook has gradually attached to just about every piece of content on its site and others across the Web, is intended to convey a general recommendation to a member's friends. So while a great majority of users ignore the great majority of ads on Facebook, the numbers change when, say, an ad for a local restaurant is footnoted by friends' names: ("Jordan, Jen, and 3 other friends like this").

That social endorsement is a tiny mnemonic designed to make the ad catchier, and it works. Nielsen, which started measuring the efficacy of Facebook ads a year ago, says that if users see their friend "likes" an ad or has commented on it, they are up to 30 percent more apt to recall the ad's message.

If enough of your friends like or comment on the ad, the ad can escape its right-side quarantine and jump into your main news feed, along with the names of your friends and all the conversation around the ad. The advertiser pays nothing for this migration. In the industry, it's called "earned media." (Think of a teenager wearing a Nike T-shirt or Ellen DeGeneres enthusiastically talking about a product.)

Question: What are the consequences?

Facebook's promise to advertisers isn't to get consumers to buy their products—or really even to get them to click through to their website. Instead, it wants to subtly park the advertiser's brand in the user's consciousness and provoke a purchase down the line. More immediately, it also aims to get you to "like" the brand yourself, which then serves as a sort of all-purpose opt-in, allowing the advertiser to insert future messages into your feed.

Think about it. Amongst the advertising fiends is Big Food trying to get you to eat as much of their manufactured crap as often as possible. Diet [& activity for that matter] is about ongoing lifestyle. So essentially, it's their job to take yours over, and, with 2/3 of our population suffering from overweight/obesity, it looks like they're doing a hell of a job. Literally.

What do you think? Do you buy it? ..oops. Not buy buy, but you know.. agree with, or Like, the argument? [grin].

Happy Healthy Juicy Powers of Social Media! For Better or For Worse.
Educators, Pay Attention!

16 Simple Ways to Decrease Quality of Life - Overweight/Obesity Edu-tainment PSA

Should Doctors Be Responsible for Nutrition Education?

New York Times 'Views' Article:
Teaching Doctors About Nutrition and Diet

HealthyButJuicy comments on the New York Times' Well Blog.

HealthyButJuicy Consultant & Personal Shopper Available!

Best of Convenience Food in the Grocery Aisles

[Click for PDF].

For many, Pregnancy can be a Bumpy Ride (don't fall off the wagon.. nom nom)

Who is Ali Larter? I've seen her name a bunch of times and since she is referred to under the assumption that people know who she is, I still don't know who she is nor would I be able to identify her if she were in a lineup of blonds. She's blond— that much I know. So, to put an end to the mystery, yet, more so to know who I'm referring to for the start of this post, I Googled her. [For those of you who are as clueless as I, she's an actress and has actually appeared in a bunch of things. oops.]

And in case you're not updated on the latest, she more than four months preggers with her first child. Speaking of pregnancy, she's been quoted as recently saying:

"I eat everything. I bake myself strawberry shortcakes and then I wake up at three in the morning and I eat them... I work out. I play certain roles where it's important for me to look a certain way. But now it's just freedom. It's like, 'Bring on the Sprinkles cupcakes, pizza, pasta.' I'm loving it!"

Too bad she didn't mention burgers, fries, and nuggets with that list— she could've added McEeDee's to her CV.

The unfortunate thing in this is that Ms. Larter is not the only woman to say, think, and act like this. Take reality star Kendra Wilkinson, for example. During her pregnancy last year, she's been quoted as saying:

"I’ve been eating a lot of breakfast - eggs, bacon and cheese sandwiches with wheat toast, a lot of waffles with peanut butter. Peanut butter is my biggest craving. I actually put bananas and syrup all over it, too. Even though I don't usually eat much meat, I've been eating a lot of ribs with barbecue sauce and steak. Also, my craving for chocolate came back. I never ate it before because it gave me migraines."

And...

“I never ate fast food before I was pregnant. But every now and then I’ll get this sudden craving for, you know, like Arby’s or Taco Bell. A lot of spicy food, too!”

And, commenting on a trip...

There were so many rides and SOOOOOO much awesome food!!!!!!!!!! I seriously couldnt stop eating! lolololol. I ate bbq ribs, baked beans, chili, and a sandwich…to name a few. Oh the perks of being pregnant hahahaha!!

That's not to meant to support the notion, though, that all blondes are, well, dumb. Contrary, supermodel Gisele Bundchen, who also had her first child the end of last year, was quoted as saying..

"I did kung fu up until two weeks before Benjamin was born, and yoga three days a week."

She also said she was "mindful" about what she ate and explained,..

"I think a lot of people get pregnant and decide they can turn into garbage disposals."

Thank you, Ms. Bundchen, case and point. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Happy Healthy Juicy, You [& Your Unborn Child] Are What You Eat!

Feeding our kids.. better, let's try.

A woman is out to lunch with her child and is ordering her meal—salad complication. When she finishes ordering, she then explains/apologizes, but her son won't be getting anything.

She uses some lame excuse— he's a picky eater [proceeded by..] he only eats these giant black&whites cookies, which she points to and which she conveniently picked up for him on the way over. [Story 1].

. . . .

Not everyone has the time, or money for that matter, to afford to eat lunch out at a sit-down restaurant. Subway dining or noshing is an alternative many in the city tend to practice, even parents...

A mom strolls her child in the subway around noon-ish and comfortably sits in the two-seater at the end of a car. There is a paper bag nestled on the top of the stroller— a convenient place many stroller parents stash their nosh while on the go. She reaches her hand in and pulls out some fries, along with a whiff of McDonald's that permeates the stagnant air. She hands a fry to her daughter and snacks on some herself— it's lunchtime. Apparently, it's also branding time. [Story 2].


(She looks hooked, doesn't she?... oops.)

. . . .

It's (almost) 10pm and the woman sitting next to me does know where her child is because, after a slight yawn, her little one asks, 'Mommy, where's my cheese doodles?', in the cutest of voices no less.

Mommy responds, 'I don't have any cheese doodles.'

As if Mommy did.not.just.say.that, the 3 year old calmly repeats: 'Mommy, where's my cheese doodles?' Then taps Mommy's big purse bag, in case she had a slight lapse in memory.

Mommy repeats, 'I didn't buy any cheese doodles.', opens her bag, and stands by her word. And that was that. No cheese doodles were consumed. Should Mommy have had the so-requested cheese doodles, however, another story would have resulted. [Story 3].

. . . .

With parenting, comes great responsibility. Are they safe? Are they getting what they need? Are they healthy?

The thing about parenting is that we can only do so much. In just but a few years of life, kids go off to school and playdates and whathaveyou and become subject to things outside the guidance, rules, principles, and culture of their parents/guardians. Nonetheless, however, parents and guardians still hold, for the most part, most of the accountability of how their children are raised.


The above three stories are real and in each there is value we can gain from.

Story 1: Mother eats healthy but doesn't feed her son so.
Response: Props to Mother for eating her greens but enabling cookie-monster tendencies in her son is uncalled for, nutritionally unwise, and preventable. A) Children don't have money or much means to get food on their own. B) Children need to eat. C) Children will [have to] eat what they are given when they are hungry. Share some salad, Mom.

Story 2: Mother noshes on [double] fried & flavored starch.
Response: Mother, what you eat is [to some extent] your business, but do you have to endorse the multi-billion dollar business and train your child's taste preferences with its fuel [aka. fries et al.] which will later then fuel its already ridiculous profit margin? Children need nutrients. Food [naturally] with vitamins, minerals, and fiber, they're all a good thing. O, and parents, they need nutrients too.

Story 3: Mother doesn't enable and child doesn't fuss.
Response: OMG, I know. It is actually possible to not feed your child crap and without headache too. Because the child knows about cheese doodles, though, implies Mom's bought them for her before, but hey, as always, everything in moderation.


It's not about perfection— which doesn't exist — or restriction, for that matter. It's about..


Happy Healthy Juicy Child Nutrition & Their Future!

Public Health Educators: Who are they really?

According to Wikipedia: Education, in the largest sense, is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense, education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another.

When we think of the word ‘education’, we think: academia, discipline, school, classroom, homework, tests, studying [or cramming]..

When we think ‘physical education’, we think: manly female gym teacher, locker rooms, goofing off, class without tests..

When we think ‘health education’, we think: awkward lessons about and during puberty, birth control and STDs, smoking, drugs, alcohol, peer pressure..

But what about ‘nutrition education’ [NE]? I mean, unlike the above, nutrition education is still a very new and emerging field/area/subject. After all, it’s only since about the ‘80s—that's a mere 30-some years ago—that the nutritional health of Americans has plummeted, weight sky-rocketing.

Typically, though, NE is associated with learning about healthy eating/eating healthy. Sub-consciously, that translates into die with a T, deprivation, restriction, bland, hunger, guilt, preaching, nagging, rules to break. Realistically, it often translates into type A dietician[?]; blowoff course, or a joke, but an easy A; just knowledge like anything else; lame, or worse, boring; inaction; useless; zero improvement and perhaps further decline in health.

Moreover, because of the term education and the implications of learning, NE is generally thought of/envisioned as occurring particularly on the grounds of an educational setting— ie. school, [organized, do-good] programs, etc.

But wait! What is education again? For one, it is not location-specific. School may be in the business of, but it definitely is not the monopoly. Parents, friends, celebrities, media, people around us are all teachers by their power to influence. That said, education isn’t just about facts or knowledge. What we do with that knowledge, or understanding, and how it affects us, is just as relevant, if not more.

Girls, for example, learn that they aren’t naturally beautiful and so, fueling a multi-billion $$ industry, they wear makeup, day.in.&.day.out. Kids, for example, learn what’s cool and then themselves, drink, smoke, use, wear, listen, watch, act whatever it is that they learned. What we learn affects our behavior, for better or for worse.

The premise of nutrition education lies on the same principle: its aim isn’t to look prettier or be cooler, obviously, but [rather the opposite, oops..] to live a more optimal, healthier, happier life/style and is achieved via both knowledge and ‘behavior change’.

Ack, behavior change: I vividly remember my professor preaching this in my intro class to nutrition education. I remember [vocally, oops] only partially agreeing. As an educator, I thought it would be my job to empower others to make better decisions/choices—whether they actually would, though, would be up to them and not within my control.

I mean, it’s not my job to force feed people [here doesn't come the choo choo of broccoli..] but just be convincing enough that they’ll do it themselves, on their own. *Like*, you could be the best parent in the world but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee your kid won’t turn out to be a criminal. Over the years I guess I’ve come to accept it as true, though: my actions/purpose as an educator is geared toward [un-forceful, yes, but nonetheless] behavior change [for the better].

But wait! [sorry, again]. These non-optimal [aka. unhealthful] behaviors, who/what are exacerbating them, fueling the fire? Exactly—the real educators.

In the realm of nutrition, this translates into:

Marketers—think ads/commercials, product placements etc.

Designers—think product packaging, food styling etc.

Writers—think articles, posts, blurbs [newspapers, magazines, websites].

Producers—think tv shows [news, cooking shows, reality tv, morning tv etc.]

Business(wo/)men—think $$$. They do. And look at the results they get..

Entertainers—think anything remotely interesting enough to catch someone’s attention and good enough to have it stick and play into action.


These are the folks who really have a handle on education— nutrition, health, and all. Currently and unfortunately, those with the actual titles do not.


Public health has to change if the goal is for the health of the public to. Period.

Bodies Can Support Image, Just Not Life.

It’s been reported (reliability of source, unknown) that Posh Spice, aka. Victoria Beckham, is trying to beef up, sans beef, but with starchy carbs because she’s trying to get preggers. They’re supposedly trying for a girl this time. Her and her soccer player husband, David, have three boys at the moment.

This post has been looming in the back of my mind for a while and it seems like this is as appropriate a time as ever to bring up the issue, which is… housing. ..of babies-to-be.

I started noticing a somewhat dramatic trend in Hollywood a while back— an increasing number of celebrities were giving birth to multiples. And I’m not talking about Octomom or Kate Gosselin. But consider Angelina Jolie and Marcia Cross, amongst others, both are mothers of twins.


And then there’s Giuliana Rancic—do you know her? In case you don’t, she’s the co-host of E! News with Ryan Seacrest, ‘reporter’ for celeb events, and, as of recent, star of (yet another) reality show. Because of her latest role, she’s made it public that she’s trying to get preggers. She even went on The View to talk about it:

"[The doctor] said [I should gain] 5-10 pounds, which I know isn't a big deal and if you want to have a baby you should do whatever it takes… I had to bite that bullet. You have to understand something. I work out everyday of my life, I love feeling good, waking up, working out. I finally did gain the 5 pounds. We're working on more."

So how do you think she’s doing?             [comment box is below].
(The pic on the left is from June ’09. The pic on the right is from March ’10.)






It’s been about a year [?] since she’s been trying and still no ‘luck’ (nor excess calories, it seems). Her stint on The View apparently also didn’t turn out so well. The day after...

Whoopie said: "It's not like she's an actress; she's on the red carpet, so she should gain the weight."
Giuliana’s retort? "Because I'm a reporter, I'm held to a different standard than an actress? It's almost like she puts actresses on a pedestal. I thought that was the most ridiculous statement I've heard on that show in a very long time."

In other words: 'It’s not fair! Why are they allowed to be skinny and I’m not??’


Please, tell me now what’s really ridiculous..

..in the meanwhile, I’ll tell you what’s not fair:

• 1 in 5 women struggle with an eating disorder or disordered eating.
• Eating disorders affect up to 24 million Americans.
• At least 50,000 individuals will die as a direct result of an eating disorder.
• The diet and diet related industry is a 50 billion dollar a year enterprise.
• One study found that over 1/2 the females between the ages of 18-25 would prefer to be run over by a truck than be fat, and 2/3 surveyed would rather be mean or stupid.
• If today's mannequins were actual human women, based on theoretical body fat percentages, they would probably cease to menstruate.
The Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness, (2010 Apr 06).


…o, and one last one:

Everyday men, women, children, and adolescents are bombarded with images of women like Angelina, Posh, and 'G', (who may or may not be menstruating), and duped into believing that that is healthy and beautiful.