Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 06:53 AM
It’s hard to believe but my blogoversary is coming up soon. In July, I will have been blogging for NuVal for one year. I have already started to think about how I’d like to celebrate here on A Better Bag of Groceries. Don’t worry – you’re all invited to the party!
So, how did it come to pass that I would be writing a Mommy Blog as part of my job? Well, it all started with this little juice box/water beverage: Minute Maid Fruit Falls.
As part of my job with NuVal, I sometimes travel to visit the awesome retailers who have decided to put NuVal scores on their shelves. It was on such a trip that I found myself in a Meijer supermarket in Michigan looking at scores in the juice aisle. I had never heard of Minute Maid Fruit Falls but I was amazed that they got a NuVal score of 41. While that might not sound like a high score (the scale is 1 – 100 and 100 is most nutritious), it is when you consider the scores of other juice boxes and water beverages:
- Capri Sun Roarin Waters: 10
- Juice Juice Apple Juice Box: 11
- Kool Aid Cherry Water Beverage: 10
- Mott’s for Tots Apple Juice Box: 20
I could not believe that score of 41. Back at home, my kids were sipping on Carpri Sun Roarin’ Waters which only got a 10! So, I flew back to Boston and immediately checked around with my Mommy friends to see who knew about these Fruit Falls. My Mommy Network answers life’s little mysteries in a matter of minutes, so I soon learned that yes, these Fruit Falls did exist in New England and that I could find them at Roche Brothers supermarkets and Target. Now, any mom will tell you (while opening a juice box with one hand because the baby is taking up the other hand) that she just can’t live without juice boxes and water beverages. They are a lifesaver. And this little nugget of information that I now had – the fact that there was a more nutritious water beverage for our kids – was burning inside me. I needed to shout it out. Loudly. So, I did.
I started by telling my friend, Hazel, while we watched our kids swimming at our community pool. She said, “Which one? No way! Write it down!” Then, I started a little email list of friends who I knew would love to have this information. Every time I had an “Ah Ha” moment at NuVal, I just had to tell my friends. They were inundated with my emails:
- Did you know that regular peanut butter scores higher than low-fat?
- Those Pepperidge Farms goldfish aren’t so bad after all!
- Celebrate! There are frozen french fries that score an 81!!
I just wanted to get up on top of a mountain and shout this new-found knowledge out to Moms and Dads alike. And to people without children as well. After all, I cared about nutrition way before I had kids.
Back at the office, we were working hard to come up with ways that we could spread the NuVal word to consumers. So, I floated the idea. “Hey, maybe we should start a Mom Blog. I’ll write it, if you want!” Permission was granted, I did some quick research, and before we knew it, Nutrition By the Numbers was launched on Blogspot. A few months later, I was tweeting, redesigning, rebranding, and moving to Wordpress.
Today, about 7,000 – 9,000 visitors per month read A Better Bag of Groceries. This blog truly chronicles my life as a mom trying to shop for, plan, and cook nutritious meals for my family, while balancing work, parenthood, home-ownership and my own health and fitness. Nothing is made up. The passion that you see in my writing is real. I am constantly thinking about my next recipe, surprising NuVal scores, the next giveaway, and new features. I love it! I now have a mountain on which I can stand and shout out all that I want you to know about choosing the most nutritious foods for your family. I am a very lucky Mommy.
Thanks so much for reading!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Juice
Tags: Minute Maid Fruit Falls
Monday, January 25, 2010 at 07:15 AM
Today, I’m introducing another new segment on A Better Bag of Groceries: Cart Confessions. I spend a lot of time telling you about the high-scoring things that I buy and feed to my kids. I even boasted that I managed to get my 4-year-old to eat collard greens (true story). While I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job in choosing nutritious foods for my family (NuVal has helped tremendously), there are still some items that make it into my cart that I’m not so proud of. There are some products that I can blame on a surrender to begging and whining, or fear of a meltown in Aisle 5. And then there are some that I can’t even explain.
This week it was Fruitables.
I think it was curiosity that landed this juice box in my cart. As you can see by the label, this is no ordinary fruit juice box. It is a fruit and vegetablejuice box. Whoa!!!!!! My BFF here in my hometown has waxed on about fruit/vegetable juice combinations. Her kids love them. They must be more nutritious, right??? Not! Well, maybe about 3 points higher on the NuVal scale. Three lousy points.
Fruitables Berry Berry score a 23on the NuVal scale (100 is best)
Motts for Tots Apple score a 20
Minute Maid Apple White Grape Juice, 100% Juice score a 14
Juicy Juice Apple scores an 11
Juicy Juice Berry scores a 10
Kool-Aid Jammers score a 2
Why was I even buying juice boxes??? I have no idea. It was Friday. I was feeling a little reckless. I was tired from a long week. No explanation. I’ve pretty much moved my kids to two water beverages as their backpack staples:
Minute Maid Fruit Falls which score a 41
Honest Kids Goodness Grapeness which do not have a NuVal score yet. I think hope they’re going to get a good score. The minute they get scored I will let you know!
One juice box that does very well is Minute Maid Kids Plus. It gets a 70! Unfortunately, neither of my kids like it. It’s orange. I think they are just used to juice boxes being berry or apple. So, I try to stick to the water beverages instead.
My readers who are not (yet) parents might be wondering why juice boxes are necessary in the first place. I remember thinking that I would never buy them. So ecologically irresponsible – and costly! Then, I became a mom and found “juice box” in my everyday vocabulary, along with “Diaper Genie” and “Good Job!” (While driving three of my colleagues out to New York State last week, I told all of them to “Look at the cows!” as we passed a farm. So embarrassing!) Yup, some kind of packaged beverage with a straw attached is in my household to stay. It just won’t be a Fruitable.
Question of the Day?
What is the item that made it into your cart recently that you are least proud of? Come on, be honest!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Juice
Tags: Fruitables
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 01:08 PM
Don’t you just love all those “Back To School” segments that permeate the airwaves at this time of year. My husband and I saw this short Healthy School Lunch piece on our local Boston NBC station Monday night. While I admire Molly’s nutritious choices and creative presentation, I just can’t see myself making a Turkey Kabob for my son’s lunch box. Molly cubed the turkey, and cut up pieces of home-made bread for her kabobs. That is just not happening in our household. And then I think of what my son would do with the skewer once he was done with the kabob? Use it as a weapon? Hmmmmm. Not a workable lunch idea for me. Even the news anchors were doubting Molly’s suggestion to get your children to eat roasted red peppers.
Instead of a labor-intensive lunch making plan, I decided to use one of my favorite strategies to make life easier: use child labor. My son started first grade this morning. So last night, I asked him if he’d like to make his own lunch. He enthusiastically agreed to do so. So I got him set up and he went to work. While he worked on his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I cleaned up dinner dishes. It was a win-win situation. Yes, there was jelly to clean up after, but it was worth it.
I went into the office today to see my friends who work in Scoring to see how my son’s lunch fared. I was pretty excited because I thought I had found THE AMAZING BREAD THAT SCORES AN 81. I was wrong.
Nature’s Pride 100% Natural 100% Whole Wheat Bread: 27
Trader Joe’s Natural Peanut Butter: ?
Smucker’s Strawberry Preserves: 1
Organic Baby Carrots: 99
Apple Slices: 96
Horizon Organic Reduced Fat Chocolate Milk: 27
So the bread that I bought looked really healthy. Look at all those claims – 100% Natural, 100% Whole Wheat. But it got a 27. Not bad, when you consider that the median score in Bread is a 25. But it’s not THE AMAZING BREAD THAT SCORES AN 81. That would be Nature’s Own 100% Whole Wheat Bread. And this is why I really wish I had a grocery store that actually had NuVal in it. I work there and I work with scores all the time, but when faced with the completely overwhelming bread aisle, I can’t remember which breads get what score.
The peanut butter that we used is from Trader Joe’s and we haven’t scored their store-brand products. Now, I could assume that it gets close to what Teddie Peanut Butter Smooth gets (a 36). But as I learned from my Bread experience, you really can’t make those assumptions.
My son also packed a snack for school.
Fruit Falls Tropical gets a 41 (a much better score than many juice boxes)
Pepperidge Farms Goldfish get a 24
Bananas get a 91
With my own first-day jitters, I worried that he might get hungry and so I quickly packed him a second snack this morning:
Minute Maid 100% Juice Mixed Berry which scores a 13 (see what I mean about those juice boxes)
Wheat Thins which get a 23 (nope, they’re not better than Goldfish)
Grapes which get a 91
Well, he’s home now and he had a great first day. His lunch may not have been made on a skewer, but it was a fun project. And it included this note that you see in the picture. Now that’s creative. And it only took me a minute.
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Apples, Goldfish, Juice, bread, chocolate milk, peanut butter, wheat thins
Friday, July 31, 2009 at 01:26 PM
Last week, I had the 4-Year and 6-Year Well Checks. While completing the lengthy checklists for both kids (which my amazing pediatric practice now lets you download prior to your visit so that you can actually think about your responses), I guiltily checked “yes” when asked whether my child drinks more than 4 ounces of juice per day. In her great blog, “It’s Not About Nutrition: The Art and Science of Teaching Kids to Eat Right,” Dina Rose, Ph.D., writes that you should “treat juice as a treat, not a staple.” She also adds that “regular juice consumption reinforces your child’s desire for sweet flavors.” She’s right, she’s right, I know she’s right.
So, how did I end up with my guilt-ridden checkmark on the wrong side of the right way to feed my children well? I want to keep my kids hydrated. I know that they should be drinking milk and water. Luckily, we are in good shape when it comes to milk. We recently switched to milk delivered in glass bottles and that has increased my kids’ consumption. Also, they like the Organic Milk Boxes in their lunchboxes for school and daycare. Yes, they cost a pretty penny, but they are worth it for 2 reasons: 1) it gets the kids to drink their milk and 2) they do not leak so the lunchboxes don’t get all stinky and gross.
With milk consumption in a good place, last summer I focused on increasing the amount of water my son and daughter were drinking. I went to LLBean and bought them cute Sigg aluminum water bottles (one got Happy Planes, the other, Happy Cars) to the tune of $15 a piece. The rule was only water was going in those pricey bottles. No juice, no lemonade. Water. The novelty lasted about a week and then my son lost his during the first week of kindergarten. The only time they want to drink water is when it’s Mommy’s water. They want a sip out of my icy cold Kleen Kanteen. Or even better, I’m dying of thirst as we check out at Target, decide to splurge for myself on an expensive and non-environmentally friendly bottled water and they, of course, want one too. They will get in the car with their ginormous water bottles, take one sip, and either abandon the rest or spill it.
The kids are willing to drink milk with lunch and dinner, but that leaves breakfast, two snacks and everything in between. And that is how I ended up going over the 4 ounces of juice. My son went to full day kindergarten this past year after drinking 4 ounces of apple juice with breakfast, a 6.75 oz Motts for Tots for morning snack, and a Capri Sun Roarin Waters with his afternoon snack. Hydrated? Yes. Healthy? Not so much.
Check out the NuVal scores for last year’s plan:
Breakfast: Motts 100% Apple Juice 10
Morning Snack: Motts for Tots Apple 20
Afternoon Snack: Capri Sun Roarin Water Cherry 10
So, what can I do differently? Grocery stores in my area do not have NuVal scores yet, so I had to research this one, write down some products, shop in a few different stores and conduct home taste tests, but it was worth it. Check it out:
Breakfast: Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice with Calcium and Vitamin D 51
Morning Snack: Minute Maid Kids with Vitamins and Calcium 70
Afternoon Snack: Minute Maid Fruit Falls Water 41
We’re still over the 4 ounce juice limit, but at least we’ve traded up for better NuVal scores. If we can switch one serving of juice to water, I can have guilt-free 5-Year and 7-Year Well Checks. We’ll get there.
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Guilt, Hydration, Juice, Water
