Healthy Eating For Kids Essential To Your Children's Wellbeing

Teach your kids to eat healthfully and they will learn healthy eating habits that will reward them with a lifetime of good health. All kids can be taught to be healthy eaters. The best time to start is when they are infants. But even older children, with the proper encouragement and motivation, can learn to eat healthfully and enjoy healthy food. More...

McDonald's New Marketing

McDonald's is starting a new marketing campaign, emphasizing their "healthy" foods... their salads.

Let's take a look at one of their salads, the Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken and see how healthy it really is. This is a good representative example of the salads on their menu.

Ingredients:
Salad Mix, Grilled Chicken Breast Filet, Southwest Vegetable Blend, Cilantro Lime Glaze, Shredded Cheddar/Jack Cheese, Limes, Chili Lime Tortilla Strips, Liquid Margarine.

Just looking at these ingredients, you might say, not bad, except for the liquid margarine.

Let's take a little closer look at the individual ingredients:

Salad Mix. This is the best part of the salad. It contains a variety of different lettuces and greens.

Grilled Chicken Breast Filet. It's amazing that grilled chicken could have so many ingredients. It contains a variety of ingredients that are hidden sources of MSG, like maltodextrin, spices, autolyzed yeast extract, hydrolyzed proteins, chicken broth and natural flavors. It also contains the heart "unhealthy" trans fats from hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated soy and cottonseed oils. There's a few other chemical food additives, artificial flavors and preservatives too.

Southwest Vegetable Blend is good. It contains corn, black beans and a few other ingredients that are fine.

Cilantro Lime Glaze contains sugar, soy, spice (potential hidden MSG) and some nasty food additives, including propylene glycol alginate and sodium benzoate.

Shredded Cheddar/Jack Cheese has various different cheeses, un-named enzymes and natamycin, an antifungal drug to prevent mold.

Limes. Plain and simple lime wedges.

Chili Lime Tortilla Strips contain various hidden sources of MSG. They also contain two food additives, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, that are used ONLY when MSG is added to food. In addition, they contain soy.

Liquid Margarine contains both hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated soy and cottonseed oils, artificial flavors and preservatives.

The Salad dressing choices are Newman's Own. Although I think that the concept Paul Newman uses in donating the profits from the sale of his products to charity is wonderful, I don't like the ingredients he uses. They all contain soybean oil and spices (source of hidden MSG). Some varieties contain even more objectionable ingredients.

So, don't be fooled by McDonald's "healthy" marketing. Their so-called "healthy" selections are still full of MSG, trans fats from hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils, soy and other harmful food additives.

Learn what's really healthy to eat.

Find out why soy is not a healthy food.

Excerpts from HEALTHY EATING: For Extremely Busy People... #35

Snacks and Convenience Foods

What To Eat

• potato chips (infrequently)
  
  • baked
    
  • no chemical additives
  
  
• fake french fries - bake instead of frying
  
  
• carob, unsweetened
  
  
• baked goods
  
  • fruit juice sweetened
    
  • whole grain flours
    
  • no chemical additives

Get your copy of Healthy Eating now!

Note: The recommendations for healthy eating on this blog and in Healthy Eating are recommendations for foods that are generally considered healthy overall. But everyone is a unique individual and even generally accepted healthy foods may not be what your body needs to be healthy now. Find out how to feed your unique nutritional needs.

Fruit on the Label Doesn't Mean Fruit in the Package

A recent study by the Prevention Institute evaluated the fruit content of children's foods. They found that some of the foods actually contained NO real fruit at all.

Here are some of the "fruit" products with NO fruit in them:

• Berry Berry Kix
  
• Captain Crunch with Crunch Berries
  
• Froot Loops
  
• Fruity Cheerios
  
• Trix Cereal
  
• Trix Yogurt (Strawberry Kiwi)
  
• Nestle Nesquick Milk and Drink Mix (Strawberry)
  
• Yoplait Go-Gurt Yogurt (Strawberry Splash)

All of the products evaluated were relatively high to very high in sugar.

This really shows the need for reading and understanding labels before you buy. What the manufacturer says on the front of the package may be far from what's really in the products.

Read the report.

Learn more about reading labels here.

How Fresh Is Your Meat, REALLY???

If you look at color to make sure your beef is fresh, you may be deceived!

The food industry is up to their tricks again to fool the consumer into believing the food they're buying is fresher and healthier than it really is.

The majority of U.S. beef producers are injecting their beef with carbon monoxide to give it that just cut pink color. This process makes rancid meats appear fresh!

The FDA approved this procedure without any public comment.

Watch the video.

How do you make sure that the beef you eat is really fresh and not contaminated with carbonmonoxide? Buy organic.

Find more healthy eating information here.

New Food Industry Trick

What do you get when you combine sugar and caffeine?
Buzz Donuts and Buzzed Bagels.

This is the food industry's attempt to get you addicted to baked goods! Their target market is the college population specifically and Generation Y in general. Robert Bohannon, the inventor of this technology, has approached Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks to form partnerships for selling these caffeine-contaminated unhealthy foods.

Caffeine is actually a psychoactive, addictive drug. It can cause headaches, irritability, fertility problems, increase risk of miscarriage, birth defects, heart disease, depression, nervousness, behavioral changes, insomnia and more. Caffeine should NEVER be given to kids.

Get the real facts about Healthy Eating now!

Note: Everyone is a unique individual and even generally accepted healthy foods may not be what your body needs to be healthy now. Find out how to feed your unique nutritional needs.

Excerpts from HEALTHY EATING: For Extremely Busy People... #34

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HEALTHY EATING

What To Avoid

Condiments

• ketchup with
  
  • added sugar
    
  • chemical additives
  
  
• mustard with added
  
  • sugar
    
  • chemical additives
  
  
• mayonnaise with
  
  • sugar
    
  • canola oil
    
  • soybean oil
    
  • hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils
    
  • chemical additives
  
  
• jams and jellies with
  
  • added sugar
    
  • chemical additives
  
  
• sauces with
  
  • sweeteners
    
  • MSG
    
  • other chemical additives
  
  
• other condiments with
  
  • sweeteners
    
  • chemical additives

Don't wait! Get your personal copy of Healthy Eating now!

Note: The recommendations for healthy eating on this blog and in Healthy Eating are recommendations for foods that are generally considered healthy overall. But everyone is a unique individual and even generally accepted healthy foods may not be what your body needs to be healthy now. Find out how to feed your unique nutritional needs.