Back to school – packing lunch

Packing lunch boxes is a task that parents do thousands of times. Some find it easy, others find it difficult to know what to put in there. If your child doesn’t eat the food you provide, it doesn’t mean you got it wrong.

There are many reasons that food comes back home in the lunch box: 

1. Not enough time to eat – some children are busier playing than eating. These children often eat more at afternoon tea after school than at lunch time. 
2. There is more food in the lunch box than your child was hungry for – children may eat more at lunch one day and less the next. It is hard to judge the exact amount every day. It is important to accept that your child will eat if they are hungry. Don’t get upset if they haven’t eaten everything that you packed. They can eat the rest of their lunch for afternoon tea. 
3. Your child is not particularly hungry at lunch time. They may have eaten a big breakfast and something at morning tea. If they haven’t eaten much at lunch they will make up for it over the rest of the day.

 GOLDEN RULES

1. Make sure your child has breakfast before school. Breakfast can be fast and simple such as a glass of milk with Milo®, a commercial liquid breakfast drink, a piece of fruit, a tub of yogurt. Something quick is better than nothing. 
2. Children need 2 to 3 serves of vegetables a day. Include some vegetables in their lunch box. This can include a vegetable based soup, a container of salad vegetables, a small can of baked beans or corn kernels. 
3. Pack water or milk to drink. Milk can be sent in individual serves of long life plain or flavoured milk. Choose reduced-fat milk for pre-school children and low fat milk for school-age children.|
4. Dairy foods, such as yogurt, milk, custard and rice pudding desserts can be packed in an insulated bag. There are many bags available that are effective for keeping food cold. Refrigerate the food overnight beforehand. 
5. Freeze water the night before. Pop it in the lunch box. It will gradually defrost and be nice and cold by lunchtime. It will also keep other food cold, such as cold meats, tuna and cheese. 
6. Variety is the basis of good nutrition. Vary the sandwich fillings, vegetables, dairy foods and fruit that you pack for school. There is no need to include gourmet foods to ensure variety.
    Have a supply of small plastic containers available to pack raw vegetables, yogurt, baked beans, pasta salad, tabouli, couscous salad, sushi (no raw fish for school)

Extra foods vs core foods

‘Extra’ foods are those foods that add to the amount of food we eat but don’t contribute to our nutritional needs. These foods typically contain sugars and/or fat but not many vitamins, minerals or fibre. Examples of ‘extra’ foods include cakes (including muffins, banana bread), biscuits, ice cream, chocolate, lollies, soft drinks, all types of crisps, chips. Of course we all like to eat these foods because they taste good!

Core foods, on the other hand,  are the basic foods from the five food groups: breads and cereals, vegetables and legumes, fruit, dairy and meat, fish, chicken, eggs, nuts

You may have heard me say that children know how much they need to eat. They will eat if they are hungry and stop when they are full. This is true of foods in the core food groups. However, children (and their parents!) will eat more than they need from the ‘extra’ foods if they are allowed to.  The problem is that the extra foods are going to replace ‘core’ foods which contain the nutrients they need. There are so many extra foods available and they are offered to children too often.

Very young children don’t need to be offered ‘extra’ foods. When children are socialising with other children, going to family celebrations, going to pre-school or school and are aware of extra foods from advertising, family, going to the shops etc,  I recommend that one extra food per day is enough for any child.

So if your child had biscuits for morning tea, that counts as their extra food for the day. They don’t need to fill up on ice cream or cake at another meal that day. Or if you plan to offer ice cream for dessert, they don’t need chips or cake for morning tea.

Remember that it is up to you as the parent to decide what foods are on the menu for each meal.

We all take part in celebrations and occasions where ‘extra’ foods are plentiful and accessible to our children. At these occasions you could:

1. Take a plate or bowl and let your child choose which foods they want from what is on offer. Let them know that they can have one plate or bowl only
   or
2. Let them eat what they want knowing that this is an occasional occurrence and you don’t have control over what has been offered.

Whatever strategy you adopt, you need to be consistent and apply the same ‘rules’ to all your children.

Making iron men and women

We all need iron from our food but young children need more of it than adults. Iron is found in every cell and it helps carry oxygen in the blood. Young children need iron for the development of their brain, for energy, concentration and to help the body fight against infection.

Good sources of iron:

Red meat
Breakfast cereals with added iron
Legumes such as baked beans, kidney beans, lentils
Green leafy vegetables such as spinach, chinese vegetables
Wholegrain breads and cereals such as oats, multigrain breads
Milo®

There are two kinds of iron in foods:

Haem iron – found in animal foods such as meat, chicken, fish

Non-haem iron – found in plant foods such as grains, vegetables and legumes and the iron added to fortify foods

Haem iron is more easily absorbed by the body than non-haem iron. However you can increase the absorption of non-haem iron by:

• Eating foods that contain vitamin C, at the same meal as non-haem iron foods.
• Eating haem iron foods at the same meal as non-haem iron foods. For example, eating chicken on a sandwich increases the amount of iron absorbed from the bread, even though the chicken itself contains only a small amount of iron.
• Not drinking tea at meal times – tea contains tannin which decreases the amount of iron that is absorbed in the gut
• Zinc is found in the same foods as iron. So by including good sources of iron, you would also be getting good amounts of zinc..

Good sources of Vitamin C

• Fruit – particularly citrus, kiwi fruit, berries
• Vegetables – particularly capsicum, broccoli, brussel sprout, cauliflower

Familyfoodworks is run by Eve Reed, a leading paediatric dietitian based in Crows Nest and Stanmore. For more information about Eve and Familyfoodworks, please visit www.familyfoodworks.com.au

Don’t try to ‘get your child to eat’

We are born with the amazing ability to know how much we need to eat in order to grow and develop. This is part of our biological makeup. So a newborn infant feeds when he/she is hungry and takes the exact amount of breastmilk or formula that she needs to feel full and satisfied. As a parent, you can’t determine how much or how little your infant needs at each feed or over the whole day and night. in fact, for a breastfed infant you don’t know how much milk they are drinking. For a formula-fed infant, it is important to stop feeding when the infant shows that he has had enough and not to ‘try and get him to have just a bit more or to finish the little bit that is in the bottle’.

This inborn biological ability to know how much we need to eat doesn’t disappear when we start solids or even when we become toddlers. However it is something that can be overridden or diminished by trying to ‘get your child to eat’. Some of the ways that parents or carers try to ‘get a child to eat’ may be:

1. Using food as a bribe – We’ve all heard or tried to ‘get a child to eat’ by saying “if you don’t eat your veges/meat you won’t get dessert”. The real message here is that the veges or the meat are the yukky foods and the dessert is the sought after reward.
2. Using distractions such as the TV, DVD or music – the parent might spoon the food in whild the child is pre-occupied watching the screen or let the child eat in front of the screen. In both cases the child is distracted from the natural feelings of hunger or satiety (feeling satisfied). In this way the child may learn to overeat or get into the habit of eating in front of the TV.
3. Making your child sit at the table long after they have finished eating – infants and young children give us clear signs when they have had enough to eat. They might close their lips, shake their head or push the food away. Finish the meal when your child has had enough. There is no point in getting her to sit there once she has finished eating in the hope that she will eat another mouthful or two.

Rather than using the methods above, I would suggest:

1. Implement the ‘Division of Responsibility’ in feeding your child – this is a concept developed by Ellyn Satter, and American dietitian. This means that you provide the food for your child and it is up to the child to eat as much or as little as he wants.
2. Put the food in the middle of the table and let each person serve themselves. For younger children, you could show them each dish and ask them if they want some. The main thing is that you respect your child’s decision and don’t ‘try and get them to eat’ what you want them to eat.
3. Lead by example – eat with your child. You are the most important person in your child’s life, so seeing you eat the same food as you are offering her is going to be a powerful experience. You can’t expect them to eat vegetables, for example, if they rarely see you eating them, and that includes fathers too!
4. Don’t talk about eating at the mealtime – your child knows when you are ‘trying to get them to eat’ and talking about eating can have the opposite outcome to what you want. For example, when you say ‘don’t you want to try the broccoli, it’s yummy’ your child picks up that you are trying to convince them to eat broccoli. They already know that if broccoli is on the table, you want them to eat it. There is no need to try and convince them. You want them to eat broccoli because they like it, not because they have been pressured into eating it.

Happy feeding.

 

 

Giving up the bottle

The recommendations from health authorities around the world are unanimous – the optimal nutrition for the first six months of life is human milk. For those who choose not to breastfeed, an infant formula should be used. From six months of age iron-rich foods such as fortified infant cereal, meat, chicken and fish as well as fruits, vegetables and other cereal foods should be started to supplement human milk or infant formula. Dairy foods can also be offered as part of a meal, however human milk or infant formula remain the main milk drink for infants up to a year of age.

 At one year of age, toddlers can continue to be breastfed, or change from an infant formula to cow’s milk as their main milk drink. At this stage it is appropriate for toddlers to be drinking from a cup rather than a bottle. Drinking milk from a bottle after this age can lead to a number of problems. These problems particularly occur if the toddler is drinking more than 500mls of cows milk from the bottle. Drinking milk each day and/or including other dairy foods such as yogurt, cheese is important for meeting calcium requirements as well as providing a good source of protein, riboflavin and other nutrients. However, exceeding this amount of milk can lead to serious health problems. These problems include iron deficiency anaemia add tooth decay and middle ear infections if the milk is drunk from a bottle

 Toddlers who drink cows milk from bottles rather than cups, after 12 months of age, tend to drink more milk than they need. It takes much less effort for a child to drink from a bottle than a cup – and is often easier for parents as well. No mess, hunger is satisfied quickly and no food preparation is required.
Parents are often reluctant to give up the bottle as they worry that they won’t drink enough milk from a cup. It is true that children often drink less milk froma cup, however it is important to remember that children get the same nutrients from yogurt, cheese and custard. So if they are eating some of these foods they are likely to be meeting their calcium requirements.

This extra milk can fill toddlers up and therefore replace other foods in their diet, especially iron rich foods such as meat, iron – fortified breakfast cereals wholegrain foods, dried fruit and legumes. While cows milk provides important nutrients, it contains little iron. So if a child’s main food is cow’s milk, with little or no iron-rich foods they are at risk of developing iron deficiency. Iron deficiency can cause fatigue, listlessness as well as affect behaviour, cognition and motor development, physical performance and concentration.

 Other risks associated with the overuse of bottles are tooth decay and middle ear infections, especially if the child lies down while drinking or is given the bottle to go to sleep. The constant contact of the teeth with the sugar in milk or other sweet drinks given from the bottle causes tooth decay. Tooth decay is painful for children and often requires a general anaesthetic to treat it.  Recurrent middle ear infections are also painful and can have long term effects on hearing as well as requiring surgery.

So remember that:

1. Children don’t need milk from a bottle after about one year of age
2. Too much milk can replace other foods in a child’s diet and lead to iron deficiency
3. Children who drink only small amounts of milk from a cup, can get enough calcium from yogurt, cheese and custard 

Why I don’t like snacking

Many parents complain that their child doesn’t eat dinner or doesn’t eat certain foods that they would like them to eat. There may be several reasons for this:

• They are filling up on foods from a particular food group eg dairy foods or bread and crackers and therefore aren’t hungry for ther foods.
• They are snacking throughout the day and have eaten the amount of calories or kilojoules that they need before dinnertime.
• Certain foods aren’t offered often enough for the child to become familiar with those foods.

I don’t like the word ‘snack’ as to me it means eating throughout the day whenever you want to. Rather than snacking, children from about one year of age need to be offered the opportunity to eat five times a day, with nothing in between these times, apart from water. So parents need to offer breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. Morning and afternoon tea are just as important as breakfast, lunch and dinner, in ensuring your child gets the nutrition they need.

To ensure that each meal you are offering will fill them till the next meal, include foods that contain protein, fat and carbohydrate at each meal. They may not eat all of what you have offered but you have given the chance to get the nutrients they need and to satisfy their appetite. Appetite varies from meal to meal, so you can’t expect your child to eat the same amount at every meal. However, it is important they you trust that they will eat as much or as little as they want at each meal. You can always keep what they haven’t eaten for another meal rather than throwing uneaten food out.

It’s tempting to give your child food when they ask for it. However if they are ‘snacking’ between mealtimes they will not be hungry for the next meal that you have planned. Even if they haven’t aten much at the previous meal it is OK to say ‘we’ll be having afternoon tea soon’ rather than giving them a ‘snack’ such as crackers or some other ‘easy’ food. You want them to come to the next meal hungry so that they are more likely to eat the foods that you know they need such as meat, vegetables, fruit.
It’s quite remarkable that children know how much food energy (calories or kilojoules) they need. Many studies have shown that this is the case. Of course, like you and me, as they get older, they will eat more than they need from the ‘extra’ foods like biscuits, ice cream, sweets. So if they have eaten all the calories they need by afternoon tea, they are not going to want to eat much at dinner.

Here are some suggestions to try for morning and afternoon tea

• pikelets and yogurt
• fruit smoothie
• melted cheese on toast
• vegetable sticks and houmos or cottage
  cheese
• crackers and cheese
• fresh or canned fruit and custard
• rasin toast and milk
• fruit and yogurt
• celery filled with peanut butter or cream
  cheese and milk
• pizza sauce and cheese on English muffins
• scones and a glass of milk with Milo
• crackers with dip such as homus, cottage cheese,
  avocado mashed with lemon juice and yogurt
• bowl of soup and bread
• fried rice and a glass of milk
• leftover pasta with cheese
• baked beans on toast

Each of these meals includes protein, fat and carbohydrate.
Remember that children have small tummies, so offer small amounts – you can always add more if they want more.

Full cream or low-fat milk for children?

Today we’re looking at the recommendations about milk for children –it’s a topic that comes up in many of my talks and consultations with parents.

Let’s face it – parents want to make sure their children are eating a healthy diet and learning healthy eating habits. One of the questions we often get asked is whether you should be giving your children full cream or low-fat milk.

Milk and dairy foods are important in children’s diet. They are one of the main sources of fat as well as calcium, protein and other essential nutrients. Now, everybody needs fat in their diet especially young children. Fats in food provide children with :

• a concentrated source of calories/kilojoules
• essential fats that our bodies can’t make
•  one of the building blocks of every cell in the body.

However, the main kind of fat in dairy foods is saturated fat. Saturated fat is the kind of fat that can, over time, lead to high cholesterol levels in the blood which in turn can lead to blocked arteries, stroke and heart attack later in life.

So the question is ‘Should toddlers and preschoolers be on low fat diets to protect them from later heart disease?’

Young children are growing rapidly. Not as rapidly as in their first year but fast enough to need lots of food energy (kilojoules or calories) for growth. Their stomachs are small so they can’t eat big quantities at one sitting. At least, most of them can’t – there’s always an exception to every rule!

So each meal or snack needs to include at least some food that contains fat, so that they can fill up on a smaller quantity of food than if they were having only foods that are low in fat. For example, at morning tea offer fruit (no fat) and crackers spread with margarine, cream cheese or avocado (sources of fat)  After the period of rapid growth, we want children to cut down on saturated fat and eat oods with better fats – mono and poly-unsaturated fats, such as peanut butter, avocado, vegetable oils In answer to the question about low-fat milk: the recommendations of the health authorities are that until 2 years of age, between 2 and 5 years, children drink full cream milk reduced fat milk and low fat milk from five years onwards. Reduced fat milks usually have some fat but less than
full cream eg light white, low fat milks have no fat eg skim, Shape,Tone

In summary:

-  Dairy foods are a significant source of saturated fats in all our diets

- The basis of these recommendations is to reduce the intake of saturated fats in the diet.

-      Saturated fats contribute to increased cholesterol levels and blocked arteries which can increase the risk of heart disease and some cancers in  the long term.

-      There are plenty of foods that contain ‘good’ fats (mono and poly-unsaturated) that are good to include in children’s diets eg peanut butter, avocado, margarine, oils, mayonnaise.

A little bit (more) sunshine

It’s winter and it’s cold and raining. Our children are out in the sun much less than in the warmer months. Levels of vitamin D go down in winter becuase the ultra violet radiation from the sun is weaker. Vitamin D forms in the skin when it is exposed to the sun. . We need Vitamin D to absorb calcium and keep bones and muscles healthy. There has been some recent research linking low levels of Vitamin D with an increase in the risk of allergies in children.

We can’t rely of food for an adequate amount of Vitamin D and sunscreen blocks the ultra violet rays that we need to form vitamin D. So children need more time in the sun on those sunny winter days than in the heat of summer. In the northern parts of Australia (Brisbane and Darwin) a few minutes each day without sunscreen is enough. In the southern states including Sydney, children need 2-3 hours per week of sun exposure to the skin in winter compared to a few minutes each day in summer.

You can see the Cancer Council’s advice about sun exposure and Vitamin D at http://www.cancer.org.au/File/Cancersmartlifestyle/Howmuchsunisenough.pdf.

Picture from photostock /FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Packing Lunch

Packing lunch boxes is a task that parents do thousands of times. Some find it easy, others find it difficult to know what to put in there. If your child doesn’t eat the food you pack, it doesn’t mean you got it wrong. There are many reasons that food comes back home in the lunch box:

1. Not enough time to eat – some children are busier playing than eating. These children often eat more at afternoon tea after school than at lunch time.
2. There is more food in the lunch box than your child has room for – children may eat more at lunch one day and less the next. It is hard to judge the exact amount every day. It is important to accept that your child will eat if they are hungry. Don’t get upset if they haven’t eaten everything that you packed. They can eat the rest of their lunch for afternoon tea.
3. Your child is not particularly hungry at lunch time. They may have eaten a big breakfast and something at morning tea. If they haven’t eaten much at lunch they will make up for it over the rest of the day.

 GOLDEN RULES

• Make sure your child has breakfast before school. Breakfast can be fast and simple such as a glass of milk with Milo®, a commercial liquid breakfast drink, a piece of fruit, a tub of yogurt. Something quick is better than nothing.
• Children need 2 to 3 serves of vegetables a day. Include some vegetables in their lunch box. This can include a vegetable based soup, a container of salad vegetables, a small can of baked beans or corn kernels.
• Pack water or milk to drink. Milk can be sent in individual serves of long life plain or flavoured milk. Choose reduced-fat milk for pre-school children and low fat milk for school-age children.
• Dairy foods, such as yogurt, milk, custard and rice pudding desserts can be packed in an insulated bag. There are many bags available that are effective for keeping food cold. Refrigerate the food overnight.
• Freeze water the night before. Pop it in the lunch box. It will gradually defrost and be nice and cold by lunchtime. It will also keep other food cold, such as cold meats, tuna and cheese.
• Variety is the basis of good nutrition. Vary the sandwich fillings, vegetables, dairy foods and fruit that you pack for school. There is no need to include gourmet foods to ensure variety.
• Have a supply of small plastic containers available to pack raw vegetables, yogurt, baked beans, pasta salad, tabouli, couscous salad, sushi (no raw fish for school)

Children’s junk food ads ‘made for adults’

The following article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on November 1st 2010. What do you think?

ADVERTISERS are bypassing rules aimed at curbing junk food marketing to children by claiming their ads are targeting adults, an analysis claims.The industry ad watchdog dismissed complaints about ads for Oreo, Smarties and LCMs rice bars after accepting manufacturers’ claims that their ads were aimed at adults, despite the presence of children in the television commercials. Ads for chips, sweets or fizzy drinks are covered by industry guidelines only if their content is “directed primarily at children”. Health campaigners such as the Obesity Policy Coalition say the rulings by the board of the Advertising Standards Bureau have made it uncertain what constitutes an ad for children. The coalition’s senior legal adviser, Sarah MacKay, said the lack of definition in the rules had allowed a loophole for advertisers to emerge. The Oreo and Smarties ads were pulled after they were found to have been aired during children’s programs, thereby breaching the industry rule that says only ads for healthy foods can be shown in children’s programs. “It seems an absurd outcome that an ad that only features children playing a childlike game [as in the Oreo ad] that is shown in Dora the Explorer is not captured by the code,” Ms MacKay said. “We are worried that it’s going to set a precedent. If these aren’t ads directed at children then I don’t know what is.” A complaint about a Smarties website was also rejected by the bureau’s board after it agreed with Nestle that the content of the website, which included a colouring competition for three- to 10-year-olds, was not directed at children but rather to mothers as an aid for craft ideas for children. There are four industry codes governing the advertising of junk food to children, but not all agree on a single definition of a child or a children’s program. Health campaigners have consistently argued the industry’s narrow definition of where junk food ads cannot appear – namely in children’s programs – is meaningless because more children are watching popular early evening shows. An Australian Communications and Media Authority review in 2006 found that the average television audience of under-12s leaps from 80,000 between 4pm and 5pm – when children’s programs are aired – to 500,000 between 7pm and 8pm. No one at the bureau or the Oreo manufacturer, Kraft, was able to comment. Nestle apologised for airing the Smarties ad in children’s programs.