Nutrition needs of granddaughters have not changed

A new baby is in our fam­ily. A few weeks ago our mid­dle son and wife wel­comed lit­tle Ella. She was a healthy 8 pounds, 9 ounces and 19 inches long. We are so proud of all three of them.

Ella increases our bless­ing to three grand­daugh­ters. Grace and Marie are older and remind us of all the fun that we will enjoy as we watch all of our grand­ba­bies grow.

While vis­it­ing with Grace and Marie, I am always sur­prised with the types of foods that their par­ents put in the refrig­er­a­tor, cheese snacks and milk boxes and frozen juice to fruit puree in tooth­paste look­ing con­tain­ers. These items were not avail­able when I was a child or even when my chil­dren were kids.

Today’s food sup­ply and how it is pack­aged has changed with our evolv­ing soci­ety. There are more con­ve­nient sources to choose from and buy. Time-saving items and kid-friendly pack­ag­ing are pop­u­lar with moms today.

I guess I shouldn’t be sur­prised. Twenty years ago when my own chil­dren were in grade school I remem­ber my son beg­ging me to make oat­meal cook­ies. He asked me to put four cook­ies in his lunch each day.

Visions of my son shar­ing cook­ies at the lunch table warmed my heart. He is a car­ing soul and feed­ing oth­ers would not sur­prise me. But…..

I learned the real truth one day when his friend revealed that my cook­ies were the best. I smiled as I offered to send more to school with my young son. The small boy replied, “Oh no, don’t do that, I only get one pack of Twinkies from my Mom a day. I have noth­ing more to trade.”

So the story is remem­bered as my son’s first entre­pre­neur­ial endeavor. He was bar­gain­ing my healthy home­made cook­ies for mul­ti­ple pack­aged treats. The same pack­aged treats that I refused to buy in lieu of a health­ier alternative.

Need­less to say, I resorted to putting one cookie in his lunch from then on. Today he is a very suc­cess­ful sales­man and busi­ness owner.

The way foods are pre­sented has changed. The con­tent of those items have changed, too. The rules con­cern­ing what a body needs to remain healthy have not changed.

Daily fruits and veg­eta­bles are nec­es­sary to obtain valu­able vit­a­mins and min­er­als. Ella, Grace and Marie all need a vari­ety of pro­duce every day to remain healthy. Well, Ella is still less than a month old but when she starts solid foods, fruits and veg­eta­bles will be important.

Grow­ing bod­ies require cal­cium and vit­a­min D. Milk is an excel­lent source of both. Although choco­late milk adds extra calo­ries and sat­is­fies the sweet tooth, the cal­cium and Vit­a­min D in choco­late milk is the same as white milk. I would rather see a child drink choco­late milk than none at all.

Of course, I will also make healthy cook­ies for my three beau­ti­ful flow­ers. I hope this story reminds my old­est son of his lunch­room tac­tics. Marie has a sim­i­lar cre­ative mind. Watch that girl, who knows what she bar­gains for at lunch.

Bob­bie Ran­dall is a cer­ti­fied dia­betes edu­ca­tor and a reg­is­tered, licensed dietit­ian. She super­vises a dia­betes self-management train­ing pro­gram at Aultman-Orrville Hos­pi­tal, Orrville. Con­tact her at bobbie.randall@aultmanorrville.org or 330–684-4776.

Posted by Bobbie Randall on Sep 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.