Welcome! I am a mom of a busy 6 year old and an adventurous 4 year old. I also happen to work for a great new company called NuVal. NuVal is a nutritional scoring system that rates foods on a scale of 1-100, based on how nutritious they are. We are implementing NuVal in grocery stores around the country.
NuVal may not be in your area yet. But I see the scores while they are "hot off the press" and because of that I am able to make better decisions about what to feed my family.
I am not a registered dietitian. I am just a mom who happens to work for NuVal. I am also an AFAA-certified Group Exercise Instructor. NuVal is a system designed to lead customers to the most nutritious food choices. It is not a diet or weight-loss plan. Before starting a diet, you should always consult your personal physician. The opinions expressed in this blog are the opinions of the writer and not the opinions of NuVal LLC.
As a busy mom, I find grocery shopping to be the most difficult chore of the week. That truly is the reason why I started this blog. Were you here for my very first post? I wrote about what it’s like to be standing in the juice box aisle trying to figure out which one is the most nutritious, not that I have time to read any labels anyway. I don’t know about you, but I do not like to go to the grocery store any more than once a week. I like to get it all done in one trip. But to do so takes careful planning. Every Thursday night or Friday morning, I take about 15 minutes to figure out my shopping list. Here’s how I do it:
Look at the schedule for the upcoming weekend and week. Are we going to any parties over the weekend? Do I need to bring a dish? What do we have going on each weeknight? Cub Scouts? Will I have time to make a scratch meal or should I plan a Dream Dinner? I have a little weekly planner that I found at Michael’s Craft Store. I write out all the activities for the week before the week even begins so that I know what’s coming.
Make my index card of Dinners. Yup, it’s an index card. For some reason pen & paper really work for me here. So, once I know what we have going on for activities, I plan out the weekly menu. Since I keep a supply of Dream Dinners in my freezer, I use my inventory sheet to see what I have left for meals and what nights I need to use them (the busiest nights). This handy-dandy sheet that I get from the folks at Dream Dinners tells me how long the preparation is for each meal. I also use my recipe boxes here so I can plan my homemade favorites as well. I think about when I will have time to prep each meal.
Start my grocery list. Well, I really should say finish my grocery list. Because we have a list on the fridge at all times. And my husband and I are both pretty good about keeping it updated. As soon as we run out of something it goes on the list. There are exceptions of course. Like coffee filters. They never seem to make it onto the list. But I think that is because the sleepy person making the coffee (and using the last coffee filter) has not had his/her first cup of coffee yet! So, I use my recipes to figure out what ingredients I need.
Take a pantry inventory. This is a crucial step. This is the money-saving step. Have you ever stood in the Dairy section of your local supermarket trying to mentally envision how many Greek yogurts you have in your fridge at home? It doesn’t work. You will always end up under-buying, over-buying or just plain forgetting if you don’t take inventory. So, I go through the refrigerator, cupboards, basement refrigerator, both freezers and basement extra food storage to figure out if I really need butter, orange juice, juice boxes, lunch box snacks, etc. I use my list while I do the inventory to either add to it or delete items that I think I need, but I really don’t.
Whew! With all that done, it’s time to head to the grocery store. I bring my list, my reusable bags, and a pen or a highlighter (so I can cross things off as I buy them). Oh, and I bring my Strategic Weapon – my 4 1/2 year old Super Scanner!
This is my new strategy. My daughter is way too big for the cart, but she loves to sit in there. So, I heave her in and she scans items with the hand scanner. This took a little training, but once she got the hang of it, it worked great! She scans and then reads off the numbers to me. So it’s practice with number recognition too! Yes, there have been some glitches – like the time she scanned the same item 4 times – but we have learned, and it saves us time. Not only that, I can focus more on what I’m buying because I know exactly where she is (stuck in the cart!) and she’s not going anywhere.
Now, I have not tried this with two kids. Something tells me that a fight would break out. So, for now, I schedule the grocery shopping when I am just with one child. But I am thinking about a two-kid strategy. You know how I feel about Child Labor. It’s the only way to keep a mom’s sanity.
My best trips to the grocery store happen when I follow all four of those steps – sitting down. In my kitchen. With a cup of coffee. Sometimes I try to cheat. Like that picture at the top of this post? Can you tell that I have all my planning tools on the front seat of the car? Yes, I was trying to do my menu-planning while in Pre-School Car Line. No, it is not the same as texting and driving. The car is stopped – for long, boring periods of time while I wait for my pre-schooler to be dismissed. But you can’t take inventory from your car. It really works best if you take some quiet time to plan, without interruption.
Welcome to Cart Confessions, a new feature here on A Better Bag of Groceries, where I confess my grocery sins. Today’s topic is Frosted Flakes with Reduced Sugar.
It all started with regular Frosted Flakes. I’m really not sure how they landed in my grocery cart. My husband and I tend to buy food and hoard it. We have shelves in our basement that are loaded with canned goods and unopened boxes of crackers, pasta, and, of course, cereal. If we ever have a natural disaster or national crisis, we could probably survive a month or two with what we’ve got stored. Cereal has a pretty long shelf life, so it is quite likely that my initial Frosted Flakes purchase pre-dated my start date with NuVal. Anyway, at some point, my children (ages 4 and 6) got their first taste of Frosted Flakes and fell in love. Who wouldn’t? I remember loving them as a kid too.
Last week, on our usual shopping trip, my daughter clamored for Frosted Flakes. It was then that I spotted the Reduced Sugar variety. Cool! Now, I do not yet have NuVal scores in a grocery store in my area, so I have to shop blindly. But I figured that a product with reduced sugar must be better.
I was curious to see if my kids would prefer the regular Frosted Flakes or the Reduced Sugar. So, we held a little taste test.
So, interestingly my kids found that they taste exactly the same. My daughter was pretty adamant about it, in fact. How can a product with reduced sugar taste the same as the regular version? Simple. They need to add something else. Since I am not a dietitian (and I don’t even try to play one on my blog), I turned to Rachel Rodek, MS, RD, LDN, Manager of Nutrition Communications for NuVal to give me the answer.
Rachel says: “When manufacturers reduce an ingredient in a food to make it “more nutritious”, the taste changes. So what do they do to have people still like it and buy it? Add more of another ingredient! And in this case, the culprit is sodium. Reduced Frosted Flakes has 140 mg sodium whereas Reduced Sugar Frosted Flakes has 180 mg. Interestingly enough, the difference in sugar is only 3 grams.”
That added sodium affects the NuVal score. Reduced Sugar Frosted Flakes actually score lower than the regular version.
Regular Frosted Flakes: 24
Reduced Sugar Frosted Flakes: 22
And that is one of the many, many reasons that Dr. David Katz and his team of scientific experts founded NuVal!
Question of the Day
Do you have any cereal sins you’d like to confess?
At least two nights a week, we have Dinner Without Dad. My husband has a backlog of projects at work and so he needs to put in some evenings at the office. That means that it’s just me and the kids for dinner. Spending the time to make a “real” dinner seems a little unnecessary to me in this case, since the kids aren’t impressed by the effort. Also, this schedule means that I am Single Mom for the night, solely responsible for playtime, dinner, clean-up, homework, bathtime, reading, teethbrushing and bed-time. So, quick preparation is key – as is a meal that will be gobbled quickly without complaint.
My husband and I both grew up with Dads who worked late. On those nights, my mother-in-law packed up her 4 kids and headed out to dinner. My mom made a full dinner and put a plate in the microwave for my Dad. My husband prefers to bring dinner with him and eat it at the office – instead of eating at 10 pm. So, I cook – but it is toned down.
I polled some of my Mommy friends to see what they do when their husbands work late. I heard a lot of “chicken nuggets for the kids, salad for me” kind of answers. Hot dogs and macaroni and cheese were also popular. While I am all about speed and easy clean-up on my Single Mom nights, I also still want to hold true to two basic criteria that I have for Family Dinner:
I make one dinner. This is not a restaurant.
It must be nutritious.
Some of the usual Go To food when Moms are just feeding the kids don’t stack up nutritionally. Check out these NuVal scores:
Kayen Beef & Pork Frank: 7 (remember 100 is highest)
Oscar Mayer Beef Frank: 9
Ball Park Beef Frank: 8
Tyson Regular Chicken Nuggets score a 14
Kraft SpongeBob SquarePants Macaroni and Cheese: 4
Annie’s HomeGrown Cheddar Cheese Regular Macaroni and Cheese: 5
On these nights, I steer clear of these low-scoring Kid Foods and resort to (drum roll, please) Veggie Burgers.
I do the stove-top cooking method, which takes only 10 minutes. And I love them too – so I’m only making one dinner for the three of us. My favorite is Gardenburger Original which score a 32on the NuVal scale. A better bet would be Boca burgers, which score a 54! I used to be a Boca Girl, and then I converted to Gardenburger.
To round out this meal and make it nutritious, I add:
Country Kitchen Whole Grain Wheat Hamburg Rolls: 29
Cascadian Farms Shoe String French Fries: 81 (that’s one of my favorite surprise scores of all time!)
Sliced Cucumbers: 93
Skim Milk: 91
And then, the kids add ketchup. A lot of ketchup. It scores a 3on the NuVal scale. Not good. While we ate this veggie burger dinner, my daughter asked me how they got the plastic bottle around the tomatoes! So, I explained how food gets processed in factories. Good thing I’ve been on a few food manufacturing plant tours in my lifetime!
So, while the kids miss Dad on these long nights (and I do too!), they cheer for Veggie Burgers and Fries. Now the question is – will I give up my beloved Gardenburgers for Boca? Stay tuned….
NuVal News
Two exciting things to check out:
Annette Maggi, MS, RD, LD, FADA, and Senior Director of Nutrition for NuVal has started a blog called Nutrition Outlook. Annette’s goal through her blog is “to get you to think about nutrition as it stands today, and to think about the subject of what you eat more broadly, more comprehensively.”
Also, over the next couple of months we will be working hard to make improvements on NuVal.com. Please think about your last visit, or visit NuVal.com today, and tell us what you think. If you take the survey by February 15th, you will be entered to win a $100 gift card for a grocery store of your choice. Here is a link to the survey.
Question of the Day
What do you make for dinner when it is just you or just you & the kids?
Not to stress you out, but Christmas Eve is only two weeks from today. And Hanukkah starts tomorrow night! This coming weekend is our busiest of the holiday season, with basketball starting, 2 Christmas pageant rehearsals, tickets to the ballet, a neighbhorhood cocktail party, church & church school, and a Hanukkah get-together with friends Sunday evening. Whew! So, I’m sticking to my plan of making quick, easy, healthy and high-yield recipes to get us from here to January in one piece. One same-sized piece.
One of my Go To Recipes every December is Lentil Soup. I credit this recipe to my sister, Pilates Julie. She’s been making this for years. Interestingly, my 4 year old daughter loves to make Lentil Soup with me. I’m not sure why. Lentils are kind of gray and boring. A couple of weeks ago, my daughter had to answer the question, “What makes you happy?” in her ballet class. Her answer was “making Lentil Soup with my mom.” Awwwwwww! So, of course, we had to go home and make Lentil Soup.
I made it again this week since it’s a great lunch when an evening cocktail party is on the agenda.
Lentil Soup
Olive Oil
3 cloves garlic, minced (I do this with my Pampered Chef garlic press, which is one of 3 items I would want with me if stranded on a desert island)
Ham stock or 8 cups vegetable broth
Diced ham
1 bag dried lentils, washed and inspected for pebbles
5 carrots, peeled and sliced
4 celery stalks, chopped
1 onion, chopped
Pinch of Kosher salt
Pinch of black pepper
1 bay leaf
Heat a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add olive oil and garlic. Cook until garlic just starts to brown. Add broth, onion, bay leaf and lentils; reduce heat to low and simmer. When lentils begin to soften, add ham, carrots, celery, salt & pepper. Simmer until vegetables are tender. Add additional spices as you like.
Pilates Julie makes her stock with a ham bone and leftover ham from holiday dinners. When we don’t have one, we make it with canned vegetable broth and a small ham steak.
My daughter loves everything about this recipe, with the exception of the smell of the chopped onion. Her favorite part is washing the lentils.
So how does Lentil Soup Score?
Lentils get a great NuVal score: 94! And the vegetables are all incredible, of course.
Celery: 96
Onion: 93
Carrots: 99
Ham is not a superstar in the meat department. A Plumrose Boneless Ham Steak scores a 24. You could make this without meat. But the ham does add some flavor and my daughter insists that we keep it in. She likes eating little cubes of ham while we cook. As for the Vegetable Broth, we have not scored it yet. NuVal is scoring ALL products in the grocery stores of our retailer partners. That is different from any other nutritional scoring system out there – and it takes time.
But making Lentil Soup does not take time. Especially if you teach your 4-year-old how to do the lentil-rinsing part for you. The key to a Sane Mommy is Child Labor - teach them to do some chores (before they get too old and start to complain) and they will think it’s fun Mommy and Me time. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll all get through the next two weeks in a good frame of mind, body and spirit. Cheers!
Don’t those cookies look delicious? That’s what I came home with after this weekend’s cookie exchange with our Rhode Island friends. OK, I admit, I came home with a few more cookies than you actually see here. We did try a few yesterday in between Christmas Pageant rehearsals, a birthday party, cleaning out old toys and putting up the Christmas tree. We deserved a treat with the pace we kept over the weekend. But here it is, Monday again. And that means, it’s time to get rid of these cookies.
Last week, on Cyber Monday, I wrote about holiday stress and how the busy-ness of the holiday season can derail your healthy eating and exercising plan. Now that it is Monday again and I’m looking at this beautiful plate of cookies on my kitchen counter (notice that they are all chocolate in some way, shape or form - my favorite), I am reminded of the other thing that can throw you off track: all the decadent food that surrounds us at this time of year. Put the two together: stress + decadent food = holiday weight gain. We’ve all heard the statistics. It’s not pretty.
So, how do you avoid those extra pounds over the holidays?
One (very funny, actually) article suggests that you skip all the holiday parties. I do NOT advocate that strategy. The parties are exactly what you need to burn off a little stress.
Here are some thoughts:
Plan, plan, plan. I know, I know, you have other things to think about right now (Christmas card lists, finishing your shopping, the teachers, the milk man, your hairdresser) but you have to take a little time to honor yourself. So, this week, I have my work holiday party and a neighborhood cocktail party. I’m taking some time to make a good lentil soup that can be a quick, healthy lunch and dinner. And I’ll eat light breakfasts & dinners on those party days. I’ll eat a banana before I go, so that I don’t overdo it.
Get rid of the cookies. Yes, they are beautiful and Christmasy and all that. Have a couple and then share them. Do you have an elderly neighbor who can no longer bake? I bet he/she would love a little plate of cookies. And you can always leave them in the break room at work. They’ll be gone in an instant.
Get rid of the leftover appetizers. The dip I made for the party this past weekend was delicious. But I have a lot of healthy friends who enjoy some and leave the rest. So I came home with the rest of it. Today, I know it is wasteful, but it’s going in the garbage disposal. I know there are people starving in other countries and in our own country, but I can’t exactly send them the rest of my artichoke dip. Throw it out and write a check to your local Food Bank to ease your consience.
Don’t skip your workouts. Every November, I give my Pilates and Group Exercise students the same lecture. They roll their eyes and say, “Here she goes again.” And we see the numbers at the gym dwindle every year. Again, honor yourself. You will be so glad you did when January rolls in and you feel lean and strong at the New Year’s Day workout.
So, I’m wrapping up a little container of cookies for my elderly neighbor. The rest are going to the NuVal break room. After all, it’s all about sharing!
The NuVal Nutritional Scoring System gives nutritional guidance to consumers frustrated with complicated nutrition labels and misleading packaging promises. Under NuVal, all foods and beverages are rated on a scale between 1 to 100. The higher the score, the higher the overall nutrition.
