STROLLERS & SIPPY CUPS
For every thing there is a season,
and a time for every purpose under heaven. ~Ecclesiastes 3:1
The plan was pretty simple, really. Begin a cooking blog to help people better their eating habits. Turn all those kitchens with cobwebs into useful members of the household, actively paying their own way rather than just as a passive repository for take-out and microwavable food products picked up on the fly in the frozen food section. Tout the advantages of cooking whole foods and follow up with simple preparations that a child can make.
Shop. Cook. Eat. Repeat.
Sigh.
Oh, were it that simple. Writing about food necessitates reading abut food. Lots of reading. I try to keep up with the writings of food movers and shakers as a way of engaging in the current discussion. Michael Pollan. Marion Nestle. David Kessler. Books, blogs, news. And there has been a lot of news. ABC’s Food Revolution reality show. The administration’s Let’s Move initiative. The White House garden. New York’s Mayor and salt.
So when you’re discussing cooking, you have to include discussion about food. And food is suddenly the hot topic of the year. Food and cooking. Food and shopping. Food and manufacturers. Food and marketing. Food and confusion. And questionable data that ultimately leads to opinion, which is good because it fuels discussion.
At Food Politics, we see that the makers of infant formula have come out with a chocolate toddler formula. It would make for side-grabbing satire were it not true. Apparently, the salt/fat/sugar treadmill that corporate food giants have us on is not enough. It is insufficient to consume greater amounts of food as we careen on the ever downward spiral of eating ourselves to death. Now they would have us feed chocolate milk to small children just old enough for solid foods.
WHAT’S IN IT?
Milk, milk solids, sugar, cocoa processed with alkali, galactooligosaccharides (prebiotic fiber), high oleic sunflower oil (fat) and maltodextrin (cornstarch). A sippy-cup size (7 oz) serving has 85 mg of sodium, the equivalent of a quarter teaspoon. Not even out of diapers and swilling sugar, fat, salt, corn and chemicals. The ingredients are not shown on the company’s consumer product website. To see that you have to to go another website and through a half dozen clicks (Healthcare Customers Resource Center/Product Information/Product/Toddler/Product/Nutrients/Composition) to finally get to the low-down about what’s actually in the product. But you wouldn’t know how to access this unless you called the company.
This is the food equivalent of pushing a healthy five-year-old in a stroller so that they won’t have to keep up with parents dashing about the obstacle course that is city sidewalks. Is this just a New York City thing, or is the country so awash in hurrying that mere children cannot be left to their own legs to travel? As if kids aren’t sedentary enough, what with the computer, tv and no gym class at school. So, is putting a toddler on a liquid supplement (the company is quick to point out) a good thing? Who wants to extend a child’s dependence on pap? Is that just until they are old enough to digest the all-popular nuggets, another pre-digested food product?
No good comes from handicapping a child’s development. Isn’t this common knowledge? That it is even tempting to some to delay the experience of solid food by maintaining a liquid diet is mind-boggling. I just don’t get it. The sooner a child learns to walk, the sooner he develops into a whole, functioning person, able to navigate through life of his own volition. The sooner he learns to eat solid food the sooner he develops into someone who can feed himself. Isn’t all development – physical, nutritional, mental, emotional – related, connected in ways that can collectively either hobble or free a human being?
Strollers and sippy cups have their place, but we outgrow them fairly quickly, leaving baby ways behind as we graduate to childish things which will be put away as we move on to adulthood.
Sigh. What do you think?
I’d give you a preparation for today, but I’m just too sickened by this chocolate toddler formula to even think about it. New products like this makes me want to stop eating in protest of such unconscionable practices.
HORRIBLE. Just like on Food Revolution… they brought the pink milk back when he left! My kids drank water or milk. Actually more water b/c of dairy intolerance. And as babies I nursed… I would not have given them chocolate milk on a BET. Stupid companies!
Katherine´s last blog ..It’s The Little Things In Life That Can Bring You Joy
And yet there are those who see nothing wrong with this kind of food product. A representative from the company called me back yesterday morning and claimed that this product was a whole food, and that salt, sugar and fat were ‘nutrients’ necessary to sustain life. They have no problem dissembling the facts, oblivious to the large body of evidence (obesity, ADHD, diabetes) that are afflicting our children at even younger ages.
She also said that this product was marketed in 60 countries world-wide. Since formula is mixed with water – and unsanitary drinking water is a big part of the problem – I wonder if it has ever occurred to them to do something to improve the drinking water in developing nations? Now that would be a good marketing tool.