Apples to Apples
It’s that time of year – when I find myself limping to the finish line by the end of each week. Bus stops, teacher conferences, homework, more homework, making lunches, making snacks, squeezing in playdates, another birthday party?! How many days left of school? Are we in the single digits yet? Before I was a parent, I used to wonder why Moms would be happy to see the school year come to a close. Now I know! While summer brings it’s own set of challenges, I am looking forward to a little break in the routine and some less-structured weeks.
In the meantime, I must make lunches. And snacks. Snacks that will stay fresh in a warm back-pack until the designated 2 pm Snack Time in my son’s first grade classroom. By Thursday night, my husband and I are tempted to throw shelf-stable fruit products (snack packs of applesauce, canned peaches, pears or pineapple) into our kids’ lunches in hopes that we might get to sit down and enjoy some Instant Netflix before 10 pm. The thought of pulling out a knife and cutting board to slice up a fresh apple is overwhelming.
I work for NuVal so I know that the best thing to give my kids is a fresh apple. Duh!
You are not going to find an applesauce that beats a 96!
However, on my last visit to Price Chopper, I was pretty amazed to find that there is an applesauce that scores very high:
Full Circle Organic Apple Sauce gets a 50 on the NuVal scale!
That is much higher than Mott’s Natural Apple Sauce & Vitamin C with No Sugar Added. That only scores a 26.
I checked in with Rachel Rodek, MS, RD, LDN, CSSD to find out why the Full Circle brand scores so much higher than Mott’s. She checked it out for me and it’s because the Full Circle brand has more fiber and less sugar than the Mott’s. You would never know that just looking at them, would you? I mean, you could stand there in the aisle and try to figure that out from the nutrition facts panel. But who has time for that. There’s homework to do and playdates to make! That’s why we need NuVal in every supermarket in America!
So, while nothing beats a fresh apple, sliced with love and carefully packaged up in your child’s lunch box, give yourself a break once in a while and buy some applesauce – the high-scoring kind, that is. Just be careful – there are some duds out there!
In case you can’t tell, the score on the Mott’s strawberry is a 5! Yup, a 5! Cheetos score higher. And fresh strawberries get a 100.
For more on apples and applesauce, be sure to check out one of my favorite blogposts from Dina Rose, Ph.D. who writes It’s Not About Nutrition (the art and science of teaching kids to eat right). I helped her with ths scores when she wrote this post back in August of 2009, and at that time the highest applesauce we had scored was only a 30. Good to know we have now found one that is a 50!
How ’bout them apples!
Posted by: Melissa 7 comments
Posted in: Apple Sauce, Apples
Tags: Apples, applesauce, Full Circle
