Entries Tagged as 'sugar'

A Great Clamor for Sugar-Free Schools

June 30th, 2010 · 2 Comments · kids, school food

Jamie Oliver at his widely followed website  this week linked to our sister blog, Better D.C. School Food, and news that D.C. Public Schools will no longer serve flavored milk and sugary cereals. The result was more than 100 times the usual number of visitors at the blog  yesterday and more than 100 comments, almost unanimously [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ·

Lessons from Berkeley: The Truth About Vegetables

May 17th, 2010 · 13 Comments · Berkeley, kids, school food

Might as well say it straight up: Kids don’t like vegetables.
At least most kids don’t like most vegetables most of the time. That’s the ultimate lesson I draw after spending weeks in school kitchens from Washington, D.C., to Berkeley, CA. And that certainly challenges the idea of produce as a magic elixir for the childhood [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ··

What to do About the White Stuff: Sugar in Schools

May 3rd, 2010 · No Comments · Blog, Wellness, kids

Guest Post
By Susan Rubin, DMD 
As a dentist  fresh out of school in the late 1980’s, I was idealistic and passionate about my new profession.  I gave lots of “tooth talks” at schools and childcare centers every February, during Children’s Dental Health month. It wasn’t until I started having kids of my own that I learned [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ·

Sugar Linked to Heart Disease Risk

April 21st, 2010 · 1 Comment · food news

We’ve always known that carbohydrates–not meat or fat–are the real risk for arterial and heart disease. But a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association points directly to sugar as a risk for bad cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
The study found that sugar supresses HDL, or “good” cholesterol, and raises triglyceriedes, or [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ··

“Healthy Schools” with a Big Lump of Sugar

April 19th, 2010 · No Comments · Tales, Wellness, kids, school food

“Healthy Schools” legislation written by D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh comes up for its first committee vote today after months of deliberations and with one very conspicuous missing element: no regulation of sugar in school meals. 
Removing the astonishing amount of sugar served to D.C. school children every day is probably the quickest and cheapest way to make school meals [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ·

What’s for Breakfast at School Today: 13 Teaspoons of Sugar

February 4th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Tales, kids

 
Yesterday I stopped by the cafeteria at my daughter’s school here in the District of Columbia–H.D. Cooke Elementary–and this is what many of the kids were having for breakfast: A package of sugar-glazed cookies called Kellogg’s Crunchmania Cinnamon buns; chocolate- or strawberry-flavored milk; grape juice.
A 1.76-ounce packet of Crunchmania contains 13 grams of sugar, or [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ···

Just Say No: D.C. Needs to Man Up to Sugar and Flavored Milk in Schools

February 2nd, 2010 · 8 Comments · Tales, kids

One of the most disturbing things I saw during the week I spent in the kitchen at my daughter’s elementary school recently was all the  sugar being served to children. From the Pop Tarts and Apple Jacks on the breakfast line, to the fruit juice, the chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk on constant display, to the [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ····

Tales from a D.C. School Kitchen: Part Four

January 22nd, 2010 · 4 Comments · Tales, kids

I recently spent a week in the kitchen at H.D. Cooke Elementary School here in the District of Columbia observing how food is prepared. This is the fourth in a six-part series of posts about what I saw. You can find previous posts here, here and here.
At 7:30 a.m., the first glimmer of daybreak tints a wall of windows in [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ······

Heart Association Says Cut The Sugar

August 30th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Wellness, food news

Do Americans really consume 22 teaspoons of sugar a day? That’s 350 calories, and the American Heart Association says that’s way too much. But get this: the mean daily sugar intake among teenaged boys is more like 34 teaspoons. That’s a lot of sugar.
The AHA has issued a statement saying too much sugar is contributing to [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ··

Health Food Junk

July 3rd, 2009 · 11 Comments · Wellness, kids

The other morning as I was walking my 9-year-old daughter to summer camp at the local recreation center she begged me to stop and buy her something to eat. She was hungry, she complained. Since she had refused the smoothie of fresh berries and homemade yogurt I’d made for her that morning, I wasn’t in [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: ····