Kids

[Paul Kribs]

I would love to have the facilities of BBqer, inasmuch as I would like to teach my grandchildren how things grow, preparation for food etc, but I don't have the facilities. Failing that, I know, through my son, that the girl is very keen on cooking , so when they visit I shall teach her, without pushing her.. Looking forward to it.

Regards, Paul Kribs

[saucisson]

I have a polytunnel worth of veg/salad/fruit/herbs growing in the dining room in one of those little 4 shelf 2 foot wide 1 foot deep 5 foot high mini green houses. The girls are fascinated by the plants and are anxious to help plant it all out in the garden. Just need to finish the 5m by 3m homemade polytunnel

Dave

[jenny_haddow]

Growing things and helping with the cooking is a great way of encouraging children to eat properly. It also sets the idea that you have to help with every day tasks and not just be waited on.
I can see you are going to have some fun Paul with you grand daughter. When I was three my grandfather showed me how to make wine! He kept it in the Anderson shelter (it smelled like a French wine cave down there), and I used to be given teaspoons full to try. For some reason my mother knocked it on the head, I must have had one teaspoon too many!

Jen

[Wohoki]

Hi Jen. Can I ask your thoughts on the breakfast/snacks thing you're going to do? I find this the toughest issue in feeding mine.
I leave wholemeal bread, butter and my mum's home made preserves out at night and the two eldest make toast for the rest in the morning, but the snacks thing is a contentious issue. Fruit is fine, but they start to dribble when they see their mates with crisps and biscuits. (For example "Daaaaaaaaad, Kylie takes chocolate-flavoured ready-salted extruded corn-based deep-fried Krispy-Kraps for her snack at playtime. Can I?" Familiar anyone?)

[Wohoki]

Oh, and does anyone have any thoughts on the milk story here:


http://www.dairyreporter.com/news/ng.as ... lk-schools

[jenny_haddow]

Wohoki
Here's a way to produce 'crisps' that are healthy and very tasty. Split some pitta bread in half, brush one side with a little olive oil, and cut into nacho sized triangles. Arrange on a baking tray and bake in a the oven (200c) for about 5-7 minutes until they go crisp and golden. You can sprinkle with a little grated cheese half way through cooking, or any flavour you have to hand, eg curry powder, cumin and chilli, experiment, you know what your kids like. Give them a little pot of hommus or a homemade salsa dip, or you could make them plain and give them a small foil twist of flavours to sprinkle over them just before they eat them, I'll leave you to decide how much salt, but a little would be good. Who needs Walkers?!
I've got a recipe somewhere for the extruded Indian snacks you see. I did them in a potato ricer and produced and interesting, but tasty, set of crispy worms, my step daughters loved them. I'll see if I can find it, it was mostly gram flour and millet, and if you spray a light spritz of oil over them they can be done in the oven instead of blasting them in a fryer. I use oil sprays a lot, I don't buy them I refill a spray bottle.
I'll PM you in greater detail.

As to the milk issue, I can see where they are coming from. We merry bunch probably have lithe healthy kids on a balanced diet, but the child obesity figures for the UK are becoming a concern. If a child reaches the age of 11 obese, and it looks like about 1 in 9 will, the chances are they will go through life obese (a short life obviously). A lot of 11 year olds have the body weight of a 16 year old so they don't need any extra fats, they still need the nutrients though which are there in semi skimmed milk. I think it's a question of do what you like in your own home, but the government through the schools now need to be seen to be taking this problem seriously, hence the directive.

Cheers

Jen

[Wohoki]

Many thanks Jen.

As to the milk issue, the same document allows soft drinks with "no more than 5% added sugar". What are the implications of this? Refined sugar is more of a problem than a little milk fat: it does cause obesity as well, and is indicated as a primary cause in early on-set diabetice. If a child drinks just over a liter of whatever during the school day, as they should, then they are getting through 2oz of refined sugar, more than we use as a household of eight in a week. Bring on the milk fat I say.

[jenny_haddow]

No more than 2oz of refined sugar a day is the guidlines. Refined sugar is the only food in the world with no useful nutrients, no fibre, no vitamins, no minerals, it provides carbohydrate at the usual rate of 3.75 calories a gram and in itself is not particularly fattening or dangerous, but it is present in so much of our foods and is overconsumed, in many cases by default, you don't know its there unless you read the label. (I checked out frozen chicken portions in Tesco and was surpised to find they had added salt and sugar!).
However, kids have a sweet tooth because sugars help develop their brain functions among other things, so they prefer a sweeter drink. Now, should that be provided by a bit of sugar or a saccharine type chemical, saccharine being a derivative of coal tar, goodness knows what the latest sweeteners are made from. Costs probably come into it too, there are wonderful 100% fruit juices out there at a price.
Fats in food are dangerous for those already on the road to obesity whether it be in milk or a Mcrapburger. It's also a concern for diabetics. If the parents of these unfortunate children wont take heed, then at least removing this one element from what is available at school will perhaps help them a little.
Its all about balance, children who have their daily needs correctly met by good parenting wont miss that small amount of fat from the milk they have at school. For the child without this level of care we could well be doing him/her the biggest favour we can.

[Rik vonTrense]

A japanese saying of Karate origins......Refined sugar the thief that robs our bodies.........


.

[saucisson]

saccharine being a derivative of coal tar, goodness knows what the latest sweeteners are made from. .

Aspartame, safety-tested in over 200 studies and reviewed as safe by more than 100 countries, is a low calorie sweetener. It is made from two building blocks of protein just like those found naturally in many everyday foods such as meat, fish, cheese, eggs and milk. Aspartame is digested by the body in exactly the same way as these other protein foods and so does not bring anything new to the diet.

Or does it:

In 1995, FDA Epidemiology Branch Chief, Thomas Wilcox reported that aspartame complaints represented 75% of all reports of adverse reactions to substances in the food supply from 1981 to 1995. [1] Concerns about aspartame frequently revolve around symptoms and health conditions that are allegedly caused by the sweetener. The 92 health effects reported to the FDA by patients and doctors are: abdominal pain, anxiety attacks, arthritis, asthma, asthmatic reactions, bloating/edema, blood sugar control problems (hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia), brain cancer (Pre-approval studies in animals), breathing difficulties, burning eyes or throat, burning urination, inability to think clearly, chest pains, chronic cough, chronic fatigue, confusion, death, depression, diarrhea, dizziness, excessive thirst or hunger, fatigue, feeling �unreal�, flushing of face, hair loss (baldness) or thinning of hair, headaches/migraines, hearing loss, heart palpitations, hives (Urticaria), hypertension (high blood pressure), impotency and sexual problems, inability to concentrate, infection susceptibility, insomnia, irritability, itching, joint pains, laryngitis, �like thinking in a fog,� marked personality changes, memory loss, menstrual problems or changes, muscle spasms, nausea or vomiting, numbness or tingling of extremities, other allergic-like reactions, panic attacks, phobias, poor memory, rapid heartbeat, rashes, seizures and convulsions, slurring of speech, swallowing pain, tachycardia, tremors, tinnitus, vertigo, vision loss, and weight gain. [2]

Questions have been raised about brain cancer, lymphoma, and genotoxic effects such as DNA-protein crosslinks, but these questions are primarily not based on reported case histories.

Hmmmm....

Dave

[Spuddy]

There are a lot of internet rumours regarding the safety of Aspartame.
There is information however that suggests that these were started by the sugar industry when Aspartame was first introduced because they were worried.
They were worried because no other artificial sweetener before it (namely saccharin) tasted like sugar. Most people can taste the difference between saccharin and sugar but few can spot Aspartame.
The top bods at some major sugar firms decided that Aspartame should be discredited and employed some hired rumour mongerers and professional complainants in an attempt to bring the product down.
Their attempt was largely unsuccessful at the time however with the rise of the internet the original rumours have re-surfaced and have propagated plenty of fresh "negative studies" that, as saucisson suggests, have no properly documented evidence to support them (although there is plenty of VERY convincing UNdocumented (read manufactured perhaps) evidence).
These rumours have spread rapidly because generally everybody believes what they read on a website without considering that it might be fake. It's probable that even the creators of these sites believe the information to be true but the foundations of these rumours I now believe to be based on lies invented by the sugar industry.

[BBQer]

Anyone remember cyclamates? A similar sugar industry smear campaign.

The story

[Spuddy]

They tried it with saccharin once too.
Anyone remember the "cancer in mice due to saccharin" scare.
When the truth came out it seems they fed or injected them with a thousand times what a human might injest in a day without considering their smaller size so it was more like 500,000 times what a human would consume in a day each and every day for months.
Anything will kill you at that rate of consumption; even water.

[jenny_haddow]

The jury will probably always be out on this one, trading one conspiracy theory for another, and as with everything, it's down to personal choice. Here's an interesting piece from the Guardian.

http://shopping.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,1668375,00.html

[saucisson]

Interesting reading, thanks Jen. My personal take on it is that, like anything else, small amounts are probably safe.

Dave