Moooooooo!

I am lucky. My kids are pretty good about drinking their milk. This has come, however, after several years of trial and error (2%,1%, organic, milkman?), milk-pushing strategies (we've put chocolate chips at the bottom of the glass), and many stinky lunchboxes. At this point, when I'm sitting in the pediatrician's office and I need to check the box following the question, "Does your child drink 16 ounces of milk a day?" I can report "Yes" and not feel like I'm completely lying. Are they really getting a whole 16 ounces? Weeeelllllll, they come super-close.

Two things have helped a lot in getting close to that 16 ounces. First, we switched to buying Milk That Looks Like Juice Boxes for lunches. I was so thrilled when I finally found these in my supermarket. Woo hoo! No more smelly lunchboxes. You see, I used to put their milk in a thermos kind of container. They never really drank the whole thing, and so the leftover milk would come home from school or daycare and it always leaked. Yuck! The milk boxes that we buy are not cheap, but at least I'm not replacing lunchboxes all the time! The only downside is that because the containers get thrown out when they are done, I'm not sure if they took a few sips or if they drank the whole thing.

The second thing that has helped a lot is that we've switched to a milk delivery service. Our bottled milk comes from Munroe Dairy in Rhode Island. Our milk man, Jay, is fabulous and he has a great sense of humor. We came to be Monroe customers, when one day I happened to be working from home, and this big Cow Truck pulled onto our street. It really looked like a cow. Jay came to the door and asked if we'd like a free bottle of milk. I took one and put it on the table for dinner with my husband, kids and my parents that night. The milk was so good that between the 4 adults and 2 kids, we finished the bottle right at dinner. I am a huge fan of the glass bottles. It is amazing to hear your kid ask, "Can I have more milk please?"

Nevertheless, most nights, the kids don't drink a full 8 ounces with their dinner. I was curious to see how many ounces we are really giving them, so I filled the cups that they usually drink from with the usual amount of milk and then I measured it. It's only a half cup (4 oz in case you forgot that fun-fact from home economics). Sure they also get a little milk if they choose to have cereal for breakfast, but they don't really get another 4 ounces out of that.

My son has a new after-school habit. He's asking for a little handful of dark chocolate chips (I know where he gets that habit from!) and a glass of our skim-from-the-milkman milk. Sounds like a great habit to me - and I'll make it a big glass.

A lot of my friends ask how milk scores on the NuVal scale. Well, as you might have guessed, skim milk is best with an almost perfect score of 91. That's what my DH and I both drink. And the kids are happy with that when we are at home. On the go, my son prefers strawberry or chocolate milk and while my daughter will drink non-flavored milk, the milk boxes we buy do not have a skim option. Check out some of these milk scores:

Dean's Fat Free Skim Milk: 91
Garelick Farms 1% Milkfat Milk: 78
Horizon Organic 2% Milkfat Milk: 55
Garelick Farms Whole Milk: 50
Organic Valley Chocolate Milk 2% Milkfat: 24
Nestle Nesquik Strawberry Milk Reduced Fat 2% Milkfat: 23
Chug Milk Shake Vanilla: 12

Parade Magazine featured an article last Sunday entitled "Why You Need the Sunshine Vitamin". The author, Dr. Mark Liponis, highlighed a recent study of more than 6000 children across the U.S. which showed that 70% had low levels of vitamin D— 61% were insufficient and 9% were deficient. According to the article, "a low level of vitamin D puts kids at risk for bone problems and could be a precursor of osteoporosis later in life. Kids with low vitamin D levels also had higher blood pressure, on average, as well as lower HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels." This is a good reminder for me not to fudge it when my pediatrician asks if my kids are getting the recommended amount of milk. Instead, I need to make sure they truly are.

Child Labor

Don't you just love all those "Back To School" segments that permeate the airwaves at this time of year. My husband and I saw this short Healthy School Lunch piece on our local Boston NBC station Monday night. While I admire Molly's nutritious choices and creative presentation, I just can't see myself making a Turkey Kabob for my son's lunch box. Molly cubed the turkey, and cut up pieces of home-made bread for her kabobs. That is just not happening in our household. And then I think of what my son would do with the skewer once he was done with the kabob? Use it as a weapon? Hmmmmm. Not a workable lunch idea for me. Even the news anchors were doubting Molly's suggestion to get your children to eat roasted red peppers.

Instead of a labor-intensive lunch making plan, I decided to use one of my favorite strategies to make life easier: use child labor. My son started first grade this morning. So last night, I asked him if he'd like to make his own lunch. He enthusiastically agreed to do so. So I got him set up and he went to work. While he worked on his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I cleaned up dinner dishes. It was a win-win situation. Yes, there was jelly to clean up after, but it was worth it.

I went into the office today to see my friends who work in Scoring to see how my son's lunch fared. I was pretty excited because I thought I had found THE AMAZING BREAD THAT SCORES AN 81. I was wrong.

Nature's Pride 100% Natural 100% Whole Wheat Bread: 27
Trader Joe's Natural Peanut Butter: ?
Smucker's Strawberry Preserves: 1
Organic Baby Carrots: 99
Apple Slices: 96
Horizon Organic Reduced Fat Chocolate Milk: 27


So the bread that I bought looked really healthy. Look at all those claims - 100% Natural, 100% Whole Wheat. But it got a 27. Not bad, when you consider that the median score in Bread is a 25. But it's not THE AMAZING BREAD THAT SCORES AN 81. That would be Nature’s Own 100% Whole Wheat Bread. And this is why I really wish I had a grocery store that actually had NuVal in it. I work there and I work with scores all the time, but when faced with the completely overwhelming bread aisle, I can't remember which breads get what score.

The peanut butter that we used is from Trader Joe's and we haven't scored their store-brand products. Now, I could assume that it gets close to what Teddie Peanut Butter Smooth gets (a 36). But as I learned from my Bread experience, you really can't make those assumptions.

My son also packed a snack for school.

Fruit Falls Tropical gets a 41 (a much better score than many juice boxes)
Pepperidge Farms Goldfish get a 24
Bananas get a 91

With my own first-day jitters, I worried that he might get hungry and so I quickly packed him a second snack this morning:

Minute Maid 100% Juice Mixed Berry which scores a 13 (see what I mean about those juice boxes)
Wheat Thins which get a 23 (nope, they're not better than Goldfish)
Grapes which get a 91

Well, he's home now and he had a great first day. His lunch may not have been made on a skewer, but it was a fun project. And it included this note that you see in the picture. Now that's creative. And it only took me a minute.