Friday, October 1, 2010 at 07:09 AM
Welcome to Cart Confessions, a frequent feature here on A Better Bag of Groceries, where I ‘fess up and tell you about a product that landed in my grocery cart that I might have tried to cover up if I had bumped into you in person.
Writing a blog about nutritous food choices is an interesting experience – to say the least! When I bump into ABBG followers in the “real” grocery store, they’ll either ask me questions, show me that they’re shopping with their NuVal notes, or run away from me and cover up their shopping carts. ”Don’t look in my cart!” they’ll say. It’s hilarious and I love it!
But mostly, I get a lot of questions and requests to do certain posts. One friend of mine, Bridgett - a mom of four boys – has been asking me to write about yogurt. I haven’t yet because it’s such a confusing category – and frankly, I don’t think I make the best choices for my kids in it. So, I guess that’s why I ended up making a Cart Confession out of it.
You see, there are so, so, so many varieties of yogurt. And unless I shop in a store that has NuVal (the nearest Big Y is still about 20 minutes from my house – so I don’t get there every week), I can’t remember the scores in yogurt. At least not in “Kids Yogurt”. Basically, kids yogurt is all about color, explosion, squeezing, crushing, glow-in-the-dark, mixing-in, in other words, it’s a nightmare. And when we get to that part of the supermarket, my kids inevitably want something that they saw some other kid eat in the cafeteria at school.
Now, when I was a child, we made our yogurt at home from scratch using a yogurt maker. Or we would buy non-fat plain yogurt and add our own strawberries. Things didn’t glow in the dark. That was then. Now there are Danimals Crush Cups.
Truthfully, by the time we get to the yogurt section of the supermarket, I’m a little worn down. Our shopping trip is almost over. So when my son asks if he can get Danimals Smoothies for his lunch box, I say OK.
How do they do on the NuVal scale? Below the average for yogurt. Yogurts range from 11 – 100 and these score a 37. But basically, all the kids yogurt products score below average:
- Stonyfield Farm YoKids Squeezers Organic Lowfat Strawberry: 33
- Yoplait Trix Lowfat Yogurt 3 Very Berry: 32
- Dannon Danimals Crush Cup Strawberry Banana: 29
- Yoplait Kids Strawberry Naturally Flavored: 33
So, yes, sometimes, I say OK and we get these Danimals Smoothies or the Crush Cups. But I refuse to buy anything that has cookies to mix into it or anything that glows in the dark. I just can’t. And the Trix hasn’t landed in my cart yet either – much to my daughter’s dismay. She keeps talking about the sticks that they come with – they change color – or something like that.
Most of the time, we buy the Chobani Champions, but unfortunately we do not have a NuVal score for them. The reason we do not is because they are packaged in a variety pack. And at NuVal, we are not scoring variety packs. Variety packs really complicate things when it comes to NuVal scoring because the strawberry yogurt might have one score and the banana yogurt that is is packaged with might have another score. It would be cool if Chobani would decide to package these kids yogurts monochromotically, if you will. Because, chances are, Chobani Champions might score better than the other kids yogurts. But we really don’t know until it goes through scoring.
In the meantime, I’ll be in the grocery store, bumping into my neighborhood friends who are all getting very excited about NuVal these days: reading the Family Circle article, shopping with the List of Best Kindergarten Snacks, and heading to Big Y – just up the road from us in Walpole, MA. And some of my friends will run away from me, embarassed by the the glow-in-the-dark yogurt in their shopping cart. Hey, we all can’t get A’s all the time!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cart Confessions, yogurt
Tags: Crush Cup, Danimals, yogurt, YoKids
Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 08:01 AM
Today I have a Cart Confession. That’s when I ‘fess up to all of you that if you were to bump into me in the actual grocery store you would see that not everything in my cart has a NuVal score of 100. This was one of those days.
After my daughter and I went to Flint Farm on Sunday to buy everything we needed to make ratatouille, we stopped at a local grocery store to get a few items that they did not have at the farm (herbs de provence, fennel seeds). We were in one of those “organic/healthy” aisles, when my daughter spied this box. And, well, she just had to have it.
My daughter loves peace signs. She’s five. I don’t think she really knows what a peace sign means. But she loves them. I think it has something to do with the rainbow colors. In any event, she wanted that Annie’s Organic Peace Pasta. And since she had been such a good girl, helping me buy veggies at the farm, how could I not oblige.
Now, I do a lot of research with the NuVal scores, and I’ve spent time looking at macaroni and cheese scores, so I pretty much knew that the best kinds to stick with are Annie’s Whole Wheat Shells and White Cheddar (NuVal score of 21) and Kraft Whole Grain Macaroni & Cheese (NuVal score of 18). I already knew that my daughter’s Peace choice meant that I was going to be able to write a Cart Confession later in the week!
We took the box home, I looked up the score. And I was right. Annie’s Peace Pasta scores a 6. It lines right up with some cartoon-character Kraft products:
- Annie’s Peace Pasta and Parmesan: NuVal score of 6
- Kraft Scooby Doo Macaroni & Cheese: NuVal score of 5
- Kraft Spider Man Macaroni & Cheese: NuVal score of 5
Just because a product is in your supermarket’s “Organic” or “Healthy” section, does not necessarily mean it is the most nutritious. ‘Nuff said.
Question of the Day
If I were to bump into you in the grocery store, what would be your Cart Confession?
Baking Season Giveaway
I don’t know about you, but I turned on my heated seats on the way to the gym this morning! Fall is in the air and my friend Tina has a Baking Season Giveaway over on her blog today. Don’t miss it!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cart Confessions, Macaroni and Cheese
Tags: Annie's, Macaroni and Cheese
Monday, August 16, 2010 at 07:18 AM
Welcome to Cart Confessions, a frequent feature here at A Better Bag of Groceries, when I ‘fess up that, hey, I’m no Super-Mom and sometimes often some less-than-nutritious products end up in my shopping cart. I have to tell you that I don’t make this stuff up. Many people in my hometown know that I write ABBG and know me as the teacher of Boot Camp and Pilates classes, so there are times when I’m covering certain products up in my shopping cart lest I bump into someone while grocery shopping! When I found out the NuVal score on these Late July cookies, I found that these were one of those products.
I blame my 7-year-old son for this one. He first spied these at Stop & Shop about a year ago – in a snack pack. He is born on the 4th of July and he just loves his July birthday and anything at all to do with the month of July, so he asked if he could get these cookies as a special treat. I looked at the label. Lots of great health claims:
- 2 g whole grain per serving
- anti-oxidants
- processed without dangerous pesticides
- no trans-fat or high fructose corn syrup
- no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives
I figured they must be at least a little bit more nutritious than a regular cookie, right? No. They score an 8 on the NuVal scale. They get the same score as a Double Stuff Oreo. A Keebler Chips Deluxe Soft and Chewy Cookie with a score of 12 would be a better choice.
Can I just add here that I paid over $4 for this box at Shaw’s? Crazy.
Bottom line. A cookie that you buy in the “Healthy” section of your grocery store is still a cookie.
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cart Confessions, Cookies, Uncategorized
Tags: Cookies, Uncategorized
Monday, July 26, 2010 at 07:06 AM
Stop. The. Presses. Do I have a Cart Confession for you! It’s almost embarrassing.
At NuVal, we are scoring just about every product that you can find in a grocery store. To date, we’ve scored over 70,000 products. It’s a huge job and it takes time. So, that means that there are still products out there that we have in our queue, but we haven’t scored yet. Honest Kids Goodness Grapeness was one of those products. Until now.
A litle history here. I have been giving my kids these watery juice drinks for about a year now. My mom introduced me to them. She found them at a Very Well-Known “Healthy” and High Priced Supermarket Where You Just Might Spend Your Whole Paycheck. And, gosh, they looked so healthy. Consider this:
- She found them at that Über-Healthy Grocery Store, where everything is healthy, right?
- It says “Low Sugar” right on the front of the package.
- It says “100% Daily Vitamin C” right there on front the package.
- It says “Organic” right there on the front of the package.
- It says “No high fructose corn syrup” right there on the front of the package.
So even though we had not scored them yet at NuVal, I thought they they would get a pretty good score once we did score them. I mean, I was really confident about it. I have been putting these in my shopping cart every week for the past year (they do carry them at the not-so-hoity-toity supermarkets too). My kids love them so much and they call them, “Thank Goodness Grapeness.” Awwww. How cute.
So imagine my shock when, while reviewing some NuVal scores for shelf-stable juices last week, I discovered that we recently scored this product. And that Honest Kids Goodness Grapeness scores a 3. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggghhhhh! I think that the scoring team could hear me screaming all the way down on the first floor of the NuVal offices.
I checked in with Rachel Rodek, MS, RD, LDN, CSSD and Manager of Nutrition Communications at NuVal, to find out Why, Oh WHY, my beloved Thank Goodness Grapeness only scored a 3. The reason is that these juice boxes (bags, really) have more sugar than grape juice. The ingredient list reads water, sugar, grape juice concentrate. Sugar is before grape juice in the ingredient list. Sigh!! Who knew? So, we’re back to Minute Maid Fruit Falls, which score a much better 41 on the NuVal scale.
And this is why God (well, Dr. Katz and his team of scientific experts, really) created NuVal!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cart Confessions
Tags: Cart Confessions, Goodness Grapeness, Honest Kids
Friday, June 25, 2010 at 06:54 AM
Welcome to Cart Confessions, a regular feature here on A Better Bag of Groceries where I like to show you that I am only human and that yes, at times some items with low NuVal scores land in my cart.
Today’s Cart Confession really takes the cake – literally. The scores don’t get much lower than this!
Here’s the story…
My son has an amazing birthday. He is born on the 4th of July. It is such a great day to celebrate. I remember that after he was born at the hospital in Boston, my husband pulled my hospital bed over to the window so that we could watch the fireworks together – the three of us. Fast forward to seven years later and my son loves that his birthday falls on such a fun holiday. We head to the nation’s oldest 4th of July parade in Bristol, RI, come back and swim at our community pool and watch the Boston Pops at night on TV. My son even gets to stay up late. What my son doesn’t love is that because he has a summer birthday, he misses out on celebrating his actual birthday in his classroom. However, the awesome teachers at our school have all sorts of ways to handle the summer birthdays: some summer birthday kids celebrate their half-birthdays, others just pick a day (my son’s best friend chose St. Patrick’s Day), or wait ’til the end. That’s what we do – we wait until the bitter end. That meant that this week, in addition to packing up our entire house in preparation for our move, I had to make birthday cupcakes.
Now, the Healthy Mommy Blogger in me could have found a healthy recipe somewhere. But you know, The Move. I also could have just bought ready-made cupcakes. However, for two reasons, I decided to go with a store-bought mix.
- My son really wanted me to make the exact same cupcakes that I made last year – with the blue and red sprinkles and the little American flags
- The Pillsbury Mix was so cheap at Target. The cupcake mix was about $1, the frosting another $1 and the red and blue sprinkles were in the Dollar Aisle for $1 each.
So, how does the cake mix score on the NuVal scale? Do you really want to know?
- Pillsbury Moist Supreme Classic Yellow Cake Mix: 3
- Pillsbury Creamy Supreme Frosting: 1
I guess it’s a good thing we don’t eat this every day!
Before I show you my less-than-stellar photo of how these cupcakes turned out, let me explain the logistics of getting these cheap, yet special cupcakes to my son’s classroom:
The cupcakes were all set to go, I frosted and decorated them the night before and they were resting on the kitchen table. Come morning, I was teaching my 5:30 am Boot Camp at the gym and when I returned, I found that my husband had placed all of the cupcakes in the cupcake carriers (you know, the ones that I had not yet packed for The Move). That was very nice, but he had removed all of the American flags because the tops of the carriers would not fit. I had not yet taken the photo for the blog, so I thought to myself, “That’s OK. I’ll bring them into the classroom, re-insert the flags, and take a picture then.” No problem. I drove my son to school, we headed inside his classroom with the cupcakes and he helped me to put all the flags back in, just as all the children were filing into the room. I whipped out my camera to get the shot I needed for The Blog, when I saw the dreaded message, “Change the battery pack.” Oh no! So, I whipped out my Blackberry instead and got this shot. Whew!
Happy Early Birthday to my Yankee Doodle Dandy!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cart Confessions
Tags: cupcakes
Welcome to Cart Confessions, a frequent feature here on A Better Bag of Groceries, where I ‘fess up and tell you about a product that landed in my grocery cart that I might have tried to cover up if I had bumped into you in person. 
