So Many Choices…How to Decide
In response to one of my pieces about the
challenges of going greener, I received a post at my blog that more or
less read "How do we decide which are the ‘right’ foods to feed our
kids?" Thanks, Jentropy, for
the idea for today's column.
The gist of the issue is this...there
are so many different factors to weigh when we are making our decisions
about our purchases, particularly our food choices.
Do I buy organic foods for my kids at the cost of not supporting
local businesses? Is it
better to support the small local farmer even if I am buying
non-organically produced foods?
Are artificial sweeteners ok if it means my kids consume less
sugar in their diets? Can
you even find a children’s vitamin on the market that does not contain
artificial sweeteners?
Should I even be giving my kid’s artificial vitamins?
My pediatrician says yes on vitamins, so I am ok with this one.
But, short of having my pediatrician on speed-dial when I am
wandering down the grocery store isles, how am I to make good choices?
It doesn’t help that products are
routinely packaged in an attempt to deceive us.
My personal pet peeve is the labeling of foods as “natural” to
convince parents that the foods are “healthy.”
My favorite example of this is children’s juice drinks that are
full of corn syrup instead of juice, and labeled as “all natural.”
Yes, it is true, corn syrup is pretty natural.
So is opium, hemlock, deadly nightshade, cyanide, and cocaine;
they’re all plant derived with little to no modification, and last I
checked those were all on the no-no list for kids.
“All natural” does not equal “all right.”
This is not just a marketing gimic of
the big, bad faceless international food companies.
I sometimes shop at the supposedly “healthier” grocery stores,
including the small local chain varieties, and find the same sort of
labeling. It is added
organic sugar in those cases, but still added sugar.
Do my kids need more sugar, organic or otherwise?
I seriously doubt it.
I also routinely find farmed salmon in their frozen fish case instead of
wild caught, sitting next to the severely threatened (and largely
pirated) Chilean sea bass and orange roughy.
And that farmed tilapia is not loaded with the healthy Omega-3’s,
it is loaded with the very unhealthy Omega-6’s, thanks to an artificial
diet.
People mistakenly assume that if they
choose the “right” store, they don’t have to be so choosy, or think so
hard, about the purchases they make inside those stores.
I wrote to one of those “right” stores, and sent them the link to
the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch List, which provides
scientifically-based categorizations of safe and unsafe seafood choices
for environmental and health reasons.
They told me that they stock what their consumers will buy –
period.
Bottom line, you still have to think
about your choices. Nobody
is looking out for you on this one.
It is not easy to figure out which are the healthiest options for
our bodies, our environments, and our local economies. All we can do is
be as conscientious as we can about ingredients, where they come from,
and what they really mean.
And we have to make the choices that work for our families and our
pocketbooks. Then, we need
to figure out a way to get our kids to eat it.
Lara
Ferry-Graham is Research Faculty at California State University’s Moss
Landing Marine Labs, a parent of two French-fry-loving green
vegetable-haters, and writes mostly opinion.
You can read more of her opinions at her Science Blog:
swimswithfishes.blogspot.com.
