Friday, September 9, 2011 at 07:03 AM
I am a huge fan of The Boston Globe. I prefer the paper edition. We are 7-day-a week subscribers and our paper does get read, mostly thanks to my husband’s 35-minute ride on the commuter rail each day. He always makes sure to scour the “G” section each Wednesay for that is “Food” day and he always lets me know what needs my attention. The cover story this week certainly did!
Juice boxes? How bad are they really? Actually, the article, titled The Drinks Dilemma, did a thorough job of covering the challenge faced by all parents when it comes to beverages.
Basically, there are more choices in the beverage aisle than ever before. And more and more are being marketing to children. Look around and you see kids drinking juice boxes, water drinks (like Capri Sun), sports drinks, flavored milks. What are the best choices? What’s a mom to do?
I’ve blogged about his topic before. What beverage should I put in a lunchbox that is going to warm up to room temperature during the day? What should I do now that my daughter suddenly hates the taste of milk? How can I get my kids to drink more water?
One thing that I loved about this article is that it helped me to understand how a juice labeled “100 percent juice” may have added sugar. I hope the reporter won’t mind that I am going to quote her verbatim here, because these words really helped me to understand it.
Juice once seemed like a good choice for nutrition-conscious parents. But even a juice labeled “100 percent juice’’ may have added sugar. How is that possible? Look closely at a bottle of “100 percent juice’’ and you often see such ingredients as apple, white grape, and pear juice concentrate on the label, even when the juice flavor isn’t apple, grape, or pear. Those concentrates may be “stripped juices,’’ stripped of flavor, color, vitamins, minerals – everything except the sugar and water. It’s effectively sugar water, but using it allows manufacturers to label their products “100 percent juice.’’
Thank you Jane Dornbusch. I finally understand!
Another point this article makes is just how confusing the beverage aisle has become. Is it ever. Dornbusch compares these four beverages:
It would have been cool to see the NuVal scores next to those beverages, so here they are:
- Hood Premium Lowfat Chocolate Milk: NuVal score of 29
- Capri Sun 100% Juice Fruit Punch: NuVal score of 8
- Apple & Eve Fruitables Fruit Punch: NuVal score of 25
- Naked Juice Mighty Mango: NuVal score of 34
I actually buy those Fruitables weekly because a 25 is one of the highest scores you can get in the juice box aisle and my kids love them.
I love what this article had to say about Sports drinks. Remember the day I featured them for Wordless Wednesday?
Sports drinks such as Gatorade might be fine – for youngsters who are actually engaged in strenuous athletic activities. “A teenager at a soccer game or practice, that’s OK,’’ says Heidi McIndoo, a registered dietician (and mother). “But if a little kid is just riding a bike around the block, he doesn’t need a sports drink.’’
This article has so much more – and I don’t want to give it all away here -so I highly recommend that you read it. Afterwards, I thought about what I’m doing well when it comes to beverages and my kids:
- They both drink non-flavored skim milk (NuVal score of 91). At least they both do at dinner time. My daughter likes her milk super-cold, so I have not been able to send her with a milk box for lunch.
- They both drink water – although they could drink more. I got them stylish water bottles that they love. My daughter’s has dolphins on it. My son has a Star Wars water bottle.
- I limit juice boxes to 1 or 2 per day. (I really need to get to one). And I buy high-scoring juice boxes, like Fruitables.
- I water down juice with Seltzer. My kids love cranberry juice with seltzer (otherwise known as Mommy’s soda) and orange juice with seltzer (aka Daddy’s soda).
- We never buy Gatorade or energy drinks.
- Soda is a very rare and occasional treat (like my Son gets one at the Mother/Son dance).
This article inspired me to do even better in the beverage department. I like the idea of adding sliced fresh lemons to water to get your kids to drink more of it, like this mom does.
I also want to really try to get my daughter to drink milk at lunch time. Maybe I should freeze her milk boxes and let them thaw during the morning? Or let her buy milk in the cafeteria?
The Beverage Dilemma is not easy. But parents need to be aware so they can make the best choices for keeping their kids hydrated. And ultimately, we need to teach our kids to make the best choices for their health.
Question of the Day
What do you struggle with when it comes to beverages for your children (or for yourself)?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Juice, Milk
Tags: Beverages, Boston Globe
Monday, June 20, 2011 at 07:14 AM
My Goodness. Last week’s Wordless Wednesday post really got people talking. In case you missed it, I posted a photo of Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Cocktail. It gets a NuVal score of 2.
Right away, the comments started coming in. “OMG – cranberry juice only gets a 2! I thought it was healthy.” And then a commenter thought, “Well, maybe it’s because it’s cranberry juice cocktail and it’s loaded with sugar.” So, I quickly posted a comment showing a 100% cranberry juice that only scored a 3.
So, by the time I got to my Thursday morning 5:45 am outdoor bootcamp class, that’s all anyone wanted to talk about. “The juice scores are so low! What about apple juice? What about grape juice? What about orange juice or grapefruit juice?” So, I realized that I needed to write an actual post about juice. You know – one with words in it.
At NuVal, we have a library of Category Facts that have been researched and written by our dietitians. So, I went to work and researched Juice Category Facts to learn what there was to know about Juice. Here’s what I found out:
Juice. You find it in many areas of your grocery store. You’ve got juice on the shelf (we call it shelf-stable), you’ve got some in the refrigerated section and you’ve got some that is frozen. Most juice scores fall below 30 because many nutrients are removed when you process whole fruit to make juice. Sometimes manufacturers add vitamins and minerals back in (and that typically raises the NuVal score). When they add a lot of sugar, it lowers the NuVal score. Some juices contain up to 53 grams of added sugar (that’s more than a regular 12 oz can of soda.)
Fortification means that nutrients have been added, such as Vitamin D and Calcium – and that boosts the NuVal scores. However, fortified nutrients are “capped” in the algorithm that powers NuVal to help prevent them from over-influencing the score. (So, it’s not like manufacturers can just put in tons of vitamins to get a score of 100.)
So why does 100% juice score so low? 100% juice means that the juice is made with only the fruit; there are no added sugars. But, because the juice is the processed form of a fruit, some nutrients are lost during manufacturing. For this reason, juices score much lower than whole, fresh fruit. For example, a whole apple scores a 96 while Welch’s apple juice scores an 10. The other thing that lowers the score is energy density (calories per gram). It is higher in an 8 oz serving of juice than in 1 piece of whole fresh fruit. That is because the sugars in the fruit are concentrated during processing.
Are you still with me?
Do you still want to drink juice? Or serve it to your kids?
So, back to my BootCamp discussion. We were deep in a lunge, when the girls started asking how the different kinds of juice scored. Apple vs. cranberry vs. grape vs. orange. “Have ever eaten a raw cranberry?” I asked. “Good point,” answered my friend Lesley. “I mean, orange juice must score the highest because if you think about it, you squeeze an orange, and the juice that comes out tastes pretty good already.”
We’ve scored a ton of different juices. Sooooooo many. To give you a flavor (pun intended) of how the different kinds of juices score, I picked a couple of the highest and a couple of the lowest of each variety:
Cranberry Juice
- Langers Zero Sugar Added Cranberry Cocktail with Vitamin C & Calcium: NuVal score of 34
- Langers All Cranberry 100% Pure Cranberry: NuVal score of 24
- Ocean Spray Light Cran Grape: NuVal score of 23
- Langer;s Pomegranate Cranberry Cocktail Blend: NuVal score of 1
Apple Juice
- Langer’s Apple Juice Cocktail with Vitamin C & Calcium Zero Sugar Added: NuVal score of 34
- Mott’s Hand-Picked Goodness Plus Light Apple Juice: NuVal score of 30
- Mott’s 100% Apple Juice: NuVal score of 10
- Snapple Apple Juice: NuVal score of 1
Grape Juice
- Lakewood Organic Concord Grape Juice 100% Fresh Pressed Juice: NuVal score of 30
- Welch’s 100% Grape Juice: NuVal score of 25
- Langer’s 100% Pure Grape Juice: NuVal score of 7
- Kedem 100% White Grape Juice: NuVal score of 6
Grapefruit Juice
- Tropicana Pure Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice with Calcium and Vitamin D: NuVal score of 82
- Tropicana Pure Grapefruit Juice: NuVal score of 48
- Old Orchard Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice: NuVal score of 4
- Ocean Spray Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice: NuVal score of 3
Orange Juice
- Trop 50 50% Less Sugar with Calcium and Vitamin D: NuVal score of 81
- Minute Maid Kids Plus 100% Orange Juice (Juice Box): NuVal score of 69
- Minute Maid Premium Kids Plus Vitamin A, B1, C (Carton): NuVal score of 52
- Tropicana 100% Pure & Natural Orange Juice: NuVal score of 30
- Minute Maid 100% Pure Orange Juice: NuVal score of 23
So, there you have it. The skinny on juice. I know my pediatrician says “no more than 4 ounces per day.” I keep to that regimen for my own diet – but it’s harder with the kids. I know that sometimes they only take a sip or two at breakfast for some weird reason, but instead of making them finish it, I dump it down the drain. I know they’ll have a juice box later in the day and who needs all that sugar?
Question of the Day
Now that you have some NuVal scores for juice, will you
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Juice
Tags: Juice
