Adult Alternatives to Kid-Friendly Foods
Completely You: Peace & Wellness: Good Food
When your kitchen is filled with sugar and fat-filled treats it's hard to pass them up. Good news: there are tasty alternatives for you -- and your kids!
By Barbara Ruhs, MS, RD for Completely You
or busy moms energy isn't always a renewable resource. And while it can be very difficult to find a free moment to catch some Z's, it's sometimes far too easy to find some not-so-healthy treats to nibble on. Unfortunately, eating the kid-friendly foods in your kitchen can be dangerous for your waistline. The key is to stock the pantry with healthy alternatives.
When heading to the grocery store, there are a few things you can keep in mind. First, look for products with less than ten percent of total calories from added sugar. Beware if one of the first couple of ingredients is glucose, fructose, honey, or sugar, as this indicates sugar is a primary component of the product. Try to increase your intake of dietary fiber and whole grains. The nutrition facts should state that the item has at least two grams of fiber. The word "whole" will be listed in the ingredients if in fact it is a whole grain. Avoid trans fats, which are listed as hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils on the ingredient label.
Here are some common child-friendly treats, followed by our favorite energy packed adult-friendly replacement options.
Instead of...Kix, Sugar Pops, Trix, Cocoa Puffs
Select...higher fiber and lower sugar alternatives such as: Multi-grain Cheerios, Multi-bran Chex, Kashi cereals, Nature's Path EnviroKidz Gorilla Munch.
Instead of...Pop-tarts
Skip...the frosted Pop-tarts and go for toaster waffles, especially whole-grain waffles such as Van's multi-grain waffles, Egg-O Nutrigrain waffles, or Amy's brand Toaster Pops.
Instead of...Granola bars, breakfast bars
Avoid...the sugarcoated and chocolate covered bars. Instead, go for Nature's Valley fruit and nut bars or crunchy granola bars; and Health Valley's organic chocolate chip, berry, or peanut butter crunch.
Instead of...Hot Dogs
Choose...a healthier alternative such as Morningstar Farms veggie dogs and Smart Dogs.
Instead of...Chicken Nuggets
Try...lower fat, nitrite-free products (some even taste like chicken but aren't): Health is Wealth Chicken-free fingers (soy), Morningstar Farms buffalo (meatless) wings, Boca Chick'n fingers.
Instead of...Sodas, fruit punch (Kool-Aid)
Do away...with soda and many other sugary drinks that pack on the calories, and offer few nutrients. Instead try fruit-flavored non-calorie water drinks such as Fruit2O or seltzer water. Lowfat milk, soy milk, and 100% juices can be consumed in moderation.
Instead of...GoGurt and yogurts marketed for kids
Sample...Stoneyfield Farms Squeezers organic low-fat yogurt and all-natural, organic lowfat yogurt for kids. Yobaby is a healthy option for toddlers and moms alike.
Instead of...Cookies like Oreo's, Chips Ahoy
Avoid...treats that contain hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. Good alternatives include Nabisco Teddy Grahams and chocolate graham crackers.
Instead of...Fruit roll-ups, Gushers, chewy fruit snacks
Go for...the real thing instead! Cut fruit into fun shapes with cookie cutters and freeze grapes as snacks. Applesauce, raisin boxes, craisins (dried cranberries), and dried blueberries also tame the sweet tooth.
Instead of...Snack chips, tortilla, potato chips, goldfish, crackers
Select...baked and "trans free" (no hydrogenated oils) chips. Try low-fat popcorn, Veggie Booty products, baked tortilla chips such as Guiltless Gourmet, or baked blue tortilla chips and whole-wheat pretzels found at Trader Joe's.
Instead of...Ice pops (with loads of sugar)
Go ahead and...freeze 100% juice in an ice cube tray with some small sticks. Frozen bananas and grapes are also yummy. Or look for low fat fudgesicles at the grocery store.
Instead of...Hot pockets, frozen burritos
Look for...Amy's brand pockets (spinach & feta, roasted vegetable). Also, both Amy's and Trader Joe's carry black bean and roasted vegetable burritos.
Instead of...Cheese dips, sour cream dips.
Go for...more bean-based dips, including hummus (traditional garlic, roasted vegetable, or roasted red pepper), black bean (Trader Joe's), roasted red pepper dip (Trader Joe's) or baba ganoush (roasted eggplant dip).
Nutritionist Barbara Ruhs, MS, RD, is a licensed registered dietitian, and owner of Neighborhood Nutrition (an education company and private-practice) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is also the campus nutritionist at Harvard Business School and University Health Services at Harvard University.
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Some disagreements
Completely You is a syndicated service that I carry, and I'm happy to have it--truly! Barbara Ruhs and I agree on a number of things, but we have some disagreements as well, and I feel that I wouldn't be doing my readers a service--nor accurately reflecting TNH's editorial stance--if I didn't register those disagreements here.
I'm not a trained nutritionist. Most nutritionists would consider me on the fringe, in fact. We eat butter. We eat lots of animal fat, coconut oil and palm oil. I avoid soy like the plague. We use 100% non-homogenized milk--yep, with the cream on top.
So here is my list of alternatives to the alternatives.
Instead of soy milk...If you can't tolerate cow or goat milk, try almond or rice milk. If you CAN tolerate dairy, by all means--eat dairy. It's good for you. (All of my objections to soy are summarized here.)
Instead of soy dogs, fake meat and so on...Try tempeh. Tempeh is a fermented soy product, and as such avoids almost all of the problems with non-fermented overly processed soy foods like tofu and fake meats. There's nothing natural about a soy dog; just read the packaging. A good rule of thumb: If you can't pronounce it, don't eat it.
Instead of granola bars and crunches of any kind...Try homemade trail mix. We use a mixture of (home-processed) nuts and dried fruit. Even the "healthiest" of these kinds of treats have a great deal of sweetener in them, and often contain things you really don't want to be eating. They're also very high in carbs, and eating too many carbs can set your children up for a lifetime of weight problems.
Instead of flavored yogurts, no matter how healthy...Try homemade or storebought plain whole milk yogurt with your own flavorings. We put a spoonful of fruit preserves or a little maple syrup and vanilla in ours. It's cheaper, has all the beneficial live cultures in it, and has less packaging.
Basically, my message is this: Kid-friendly doesn't have to mean it comes in a box ready-made. If you have a lot of food in boxes at your house, I ask you to rethink your approach to food. You can save money and your health by not buying pre-processed stuff. Sure, it's more effort, but in the long run it's so worth it. You *can* get into a rhythm of doing these things that keep kid-friendly foods convenient and accessible. And isn't the entire point of what we're doing at home to provide the best we can for our families?
Lynn Siprelle, Editor
Ummm, ok, but...
does all that anti-soy stuff also apply to basic beancurd?? Not that I eat it in huge quantities, just wondering really. And trying to figure out why more Chinese and Japanese don't *appear* to have the problems mentioned since they surely eat more soy than the average American. Or rather have been eating more soy for hundreds of years than the average American - maybe that's changed in the last 20yrs! So is it only the highly processed soy extracts, or does it apply to any soy products. Should I continue to buy the occasional litre of soya milk for my husband?? All it lists in the ingredients is soya beans and water (and cane sugar since he hates it unsweetened), but our regulations here aren't anywhere near as stringent as in North America and Europe.
mostly interested from an educational point of view. As long as I eat only in moderation I doubt whether it will be my food which kills me (unless I get a fishbone stuck!).
Kerri.
Rice Milk
Hi Lynn, I think we probably occupy some of the same nutritional fringes! We're also animal fat eaters and are a 'no box' kind of kitchen. I'm a bit confused about rice milk. I'd looked at it for DB1, who is dairy intolerant (and I'm not keen to go down the soy milk/formula route), but I couldn't really see the point, as it seemed to be just rice-starchy water (which your link seems to confirm). Does it have any value in itself, or is it just a milk look-alike?
Zillah
Soy chips are all we can handle in this house.
And they are ranch flavored.
We have tried soy milk, tofu and soy burgers and my family gave them all hands down YUCK!
I will say coming from the health food store yesterday the boys gave Sun Drops (aka, healthier M&M's) and the apple juice a round of applause. The RootBeer got one going and the other one gagging and both said "heck no" to the peanut butter (but I will use it in other ways!!). Oh and the fruit leather was a hit!
You win some you lose some.
The flavoring your own yogurt is the only way to go!!!
But I say all this as I am currently reading everything I can get my hands on about additive whilst eating (and ENJOYING) a hostess Suzy Q! For you out of towners it is basically a chocolate cake with creme in the middle and I don't even want to know what is in IT because IT is the best part! So we are pretty much a yo yo family on food. We don't eat much out of the box but we don't pass up a good Krispy Kreme either!!!
Jana
Just know that . . .
The info from the Weston Price Foundation is not uncontested when it comes to soy and other stuff. Price was a dentist in the first half of the 20th century who arrived at many of his notions about diet by studying the teeth of native peoples to extrapolate his theories about the health benefits and risks of various diets. And one of the heads of the Foundation now has also been a spokesperson and researcher for the beef industry. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it does raise the question of bias. I can find a variety of contradictory statistics about how much soy is really in the "Asian" diet, a problem compounded by the fact that "grams" may mean, grams of food, grams of protein, or grams of soy protein.
That said, I would agree with most of what they say about unprocessed foods, including soy foods, which can often be very highly processed. (The coconut oil fixation though . . .
) Weird soy-added foods fall under the same category of Frankenfoods as all the other unfortunate inventions.
You gotta make your own decisions about soy, but IMHO a lot of the Internet stuff on soy falls under Internet legend.
Shaun
Some of this article was just
Some of this article was just, duh! LOL! It's just common sense to me. I don't even go down the junk food aisle unless I need Ritz crackers for brocolli casserole. Ok, I do on occasion fall guilty to goldfish. Good for roadtrips. I buy like, 2 or 3 times a year. And once in a great while I get tortilla chips. After all, I live in New Mexico, we gotta have some chips to go with all that salsa.
I agree with Lynn, stay away from soy as much as possible! LOL! Unless you absolutely can't, eat dairy. 
This is from someone that raises some darn good hay for our local dairy industry. I can say that the thousands upon thousands of cows in my local economy of family dairymen do get the best we have to offer.
Can't quite imagine
ma po dairy though Jenny!! Sorry... couldn't quite hold back the strange image of reverse replacement between dairy and soy.
I would say most people I know here probably have beancurd at least once a week, at least as long as they eat out at a Chinese restaurant. Probably twice. People who like soya milk for breakfast or the beancurd dessert probably get a bit more. I can't stand soya milk (don't like rice milk either - so many of these mock-up milks are so sweet, including the low lactose, low fat (UHT combined) and high calcium - ick!) so I probably get beancurd a bt less, but I do like it, and have surprised myself and my parents by finding that I like it in quite a variety of different ways. When I cook it myself (often with rice porridge) I get the one with egg inside which has a nice texture and then I often put it with a strong sauce. Nothing gives flavour to beancurd like black bean sauce with garlic!
Not sure I agree with the suggestion that it's used as a condiment here. What rubbish. No it's not a replacement either. If you were ordering for a group of a half dozen people you'd probably have one chicken dish, one veg, one soup, one beancurd, one fish, one prawn and one pork or maybe an egg dish somewhere in there. It's the main part of one dish very often. It's not some kind of fancy vegetarian replacement protein, although being as Buddhists are vegetarian there's a number of mock meat dishes floating around which are largely made up of various soy products.
The comment about food not being what kills me is because my food doesn't affect my kidneys and they're currently the top contender for fatality in this particular body. Having learned the hard way with Crohn's I know all about being miserable from what I eat, but it's very often the healthy stuff which makes me miserable - I made a vow yesterday to never eat another mushroom, and I may even stick to it... if I don't smell any garlic butter for the rest of my life!
I think I'm drifting away from the nutritional/scientific side of all this, so I'll stop now!
Kerri.
Sorry
Having never had anything soy myself (that I know of), I thought it was a replacement for dairy and/or beef (but I wasn't going to go into the beef thing here. LOL!). Shows my ignorance. Now I'm thankful that so far, we are all so healthy here I don't have to think about alternatives for "the real thing".
Lynn
Is that your daughter in the picture eating the watermelon?
By the way, "D" doesn't always stand for "dear."
Response to disagreements
Lynn and others,
Thank you for your comments and constructive criticism on my article. I agree with you Lynn, whole foods are always the best way to go and "kid-friendly" does not have to come in a box ready-made. In writing this article, I was specifically asked to comment on packaged foods. You and the others have offered some additional wonderful alternatives - thank you! As for the soy products, I don't completely agree that they should be avoided in the diet. There is an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence linking the health benefits of soy to the reduction in chronic diseases. The final word on soy can be confusing -- what I can say is that infants do tolerate soy-based formulas better overall. They are usually less allergenic and cause fewer GI problems earlier in life. There is a good article on this in the Journal of Nutrition. Erdman, J.W., Badger,T.M., Lampe, J.W., Setchell, K.D.,Messina, M. (2004). Not all soy products are created equal: Caution needed in the interpretation of research results. J. Nutr. 134:1229S-1233S. Healthy regards, Barbara Ruhs, Registered Dietician, Neighborhood Nutrition.com
I was impressed too
that there was no sense of ill-will borne out of the comments and criticisms here. It's difficult to have anyone criticise your work, and I admit I kind of forgot that aspect.
and I'm completely in favour of any kind of snack... but I do limit the kids, just not me!!!
Kerri.
coconut oil
Is, as far as I can sort out from research, pretty much universally acknowledged to be an improvement health-wise on hydrogenated oil (such as Crisco, or margarine) or butter. There is disagreement on whether it is better than olive oil. Lynn would say yes, while most sources say olive oil is better. In any case, coconut oil is delicious and I wish I had a cheap nearby source for it because it's a pain to get to the nearest place that sells it.
Jenny, you've never had soy sauce? I thought you sometimes ate at Chinese restaurants.
Oops!
I didn't notice that Lynn had mentioned coconut oil at all in her post, or I might have taken a slightly less glib tone. I have an acquaintance who is a big coconut oil devotee, and the co-ops and Whole Foods here are featuring it. I guess I see it as a big trend/fad in certain circles (of which I am a member!) in my neck of the woods.
So no offense on the coconut oil I hope, Lynn. I was thinking of a particular person who is not you!
Becky, I could ship you cases of the stuff.
Shaun
"Home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure; it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks."
-- G. K. Chesterton
again, no offense taken
I personally find coconut oil superior for frying and get it whenever I can. Makes the BEST fried fish. I have friends who've had amazing health benefits from it, so I do try to get various coconut products into our diet regularly. In fact I have a coconut in the other room I need to bust open before it dries out. Young coconuts are really interesting; they contain a LOT of coconut water, and the flesh instead of being the hard, chewy stuff you're familiar with is more like jelly. I like it, the girls do not. It's supposed to be terrific for you, best of all the coconut products.
Lynn Siprelle, Editor
drool....
I love young coconut. My parents had a coconut tree in their backyard when I was a baby, and my mom practically lived on young coconut when she was pregnant and nursing me.
Yes
This includes beancurd (tofu). From the WAPF website:
And that last figure includes fermented soy foods. I eat a little tofu in my dashi miso soup when I go eat sushi once every couple of months and I don't think I'm going to die from it (by "a little" I mean there's maybe five small cubes in the bowl). But I don't make tofu a regular part of my diet. I do drink miso soup and use soy sauce, but they're both fermented.
And soy milk is very bad.
Food can harm you, Kerri. I know Jenny always says you gotta die of something, but as someone who's had a lot of health problems from poor diet, I say why be miserable while you're alive?
Lynn Siprelle, Editor
rice milk
I really can't speak to the nutritional value of rice or almond milk, though I would suspect the latter of having more value.
Lynn Siprelle, Editor
nope
That came with the article; it's probably stock photography. A cutie though, isn't she?
Lynn Siprelle, Editor
Barbara, thanks for checking in!
And I DO hope you didn't take this thread as personal or professional criticism. You're very good-natured for responding in the same spirit, and I thank you. You're the first Studio One author to check in!
I do realize that the packaged foods angle was probably what was asked of you, and should have probably noted that to be fair to you. As for soy, we get a small amount in our diet from miso and tamari, and I want to start eating tempeh again, but "veggie dogs" and other overprocessed stuff will never cross our lips.
Thanks again for coming by!
Lynn Siprelle, Editor
not JUST Lynn though
I realize that Lynn is following an established form of eating which others also follow. I didn't mean she made up the coconut oil thing.
Soy Sauce
Don't like it. I'm probably the most awful person in a Chinese Restaurant. Mind you, all we have here is a couple of cheap buffet places, it's not REAL chinese I'm sure. Still, I don't eat anything spicy, and I don't use sauce. Any sauce. I don't even use sweet and sour sauce. I take it how it comes out and is sitting on that big bar. Fried Rice (or as Mel Gibson says, Flied Lice), chicken and mushrooms, sweet n sour shrimp, chicken and pork (without the sauce), egg roll, and a couple of other things. Ok, I'm sure some soy sauce has been added during cooking. Just don't tell me about it, ok? LOL!
no worries!
I knew what you meant.
Lynn Siprelle, Editor
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