Kids Make Real Mac & Cheese

The kids in my "food appreciation" classes concluded their recent exploration of nutrition labeling with a comparison of macaroni and cheese.

The macaroni and cheese that comes in the little blue box from Kraft may be one of the most popular processed foods of all times. We know some college students who eat little else during their four-year studies.

But what, exactly, is in those playful orange noodles? And how would they compare with a dish made from scratch with real cheese, real milk, real pasta?

This exercise presents some interesting choices because the "real" version of macaroni and cheese actually contains more calories and fat per serving than the processed kind. In this case, Kraft's "Premium Three Cheese" product lists 360 calories per 1-cup serving, 130 from fat. There's 2.5 grams of total fat, one gram of which is saturated fat.

Meanwhile, our home-made dish, made according to our favorite recipe from Martha Stewart, has a whopping 590 calories per serving, 296 of them from fat. Martha's version contains 33 grams of fat, 23 grams saturated, and all of 102 milligrams of cholesterol, compared to 5 milligrams in the Kraft product.

Where do all these calories, the fat, the cholesterol, come from? It took a bit of research to answer that question, because our Martha Stewart macaroni and cheese is made with artisan cheeses from Whole Foods, and these do not come with "nutrition facts" labeling the way processed foods do.

Still, I made sure my handout for the kids listed the nutrition information for all the ingredients in our home-made macaroni and cheese so they could see clearly that the cheeses--lots of cheddar, and a lesser amount of Emmentaler--are dense with calories and fat. There's also butter in there, bread crumbs. The macaroni itself, though fat free, is rich with calories.

What's a body to do? We turned to the ingredient list. In the case of Kraft, it reads like a science experiment with "modified food starch" and "sodium tryployphosphate" and "cellulose gum" and at least two artificial yellow dyes to give the noodles that trademark orange glow.

Our Martha Stewart noodles, meanwhile, consist of just eight easily-recognized ingredients. It's "real" food, compared to stuff that's cooked up by food scientists.

And one other thing. Take a look at the sodium content. Processed foods, it turns out, are extremely high in sodium as a general rule and so is Kraft macaroni and cheese: 610 milligrams in each one-cup serving, or 32 percent of the daily requirement for a 2,000-calorie diet. Our made-from-scratch noodles have just 179 milligrams.

The lesson from all this? It's not enough just to look at calories and fat. Would that the world were so easy. Other ingredients matter. Dyes and additives matter. And so does serving size. When our macaroni and cheese emerged from the oven and we started to dish it out, we found that one cup was actually a huge portion. Even a half-cup was too much for a child-sized plate. We doled out 1/3-cup portions that seemed just right.


If you really like something but it has lots of calories and fat, I told the kids, that doesn't necessarily mean you should never eat it. Just don't eat it so often. Take a smaller serving. Just know what you're eating. It's about balance.

And, oh, was it good. There was enough left over for some of the teachers. By the second day of our lessons, word seemed to have spread through the entire school. The teachers were lined up with their plates and forks, begging for some of our home-made macaroni and cheese.

The foundation of this dish is a bechamel sauce made in the traditional way with butter, flour and milk. Grated cheese is added to the sauce and melted smooth. After seasoning the sauce with salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne, add cooked macaroni--we used a jumbo elbow noodle called chiocciole in Italian--and pour the mix into a casserole dish. The noodles are topped with buttered bread crumbs and baked until golden and bubbly in a 375-degree oven. You can find the complete recipe here, at Martha Stewart's website.

Kids Make Healthy White Pizza

My wife thought the work I was doing teaching nutrition labeling to the kids in my "food appreciation" classes was so important I should do more. So we designed another lesson around pizza.

Last week among the processed foods we examined was a DiGiorno "Rising Crust Supreme" pizza. We were impressed not only with the mile-long ingredient list--obviously constructed in a lab somewhere off the New Jersey Turnpike--but the fat and sodium content.

The pizza weighs in at a few ounces more than two pounds, which puts a single serving size--one-sixth of the pie--at more than five ounces. That one slice contains 370 calories--140 from fat--fully 6 grams of saturated fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol and a whopping 1,000 milligrams of sodium. These figures are even more staggering when you consider that the pizza slice in question could very well end up in the hands of a child. (Hint: you might want to cut that slice in half to make a child-sized portion.)

My mission was to construct a pizza with much lower values, write up the results and present them side-by-side with the DiGiorno figures for the kids to analyze. Then we would go right ahead and put some of the healthier pizzas in the oven for a taste test.

What I used for this experiment was our tried-and-true pizza dough recipe, calling for 2 cups each of bread flour and white whole wheat flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons fine table salt, yeast (one packet, or 2 1/4 teaspoons), 1 3/4 cups water and 2 tablespoons olive oil. This dough, which we normally mix in the Cuisinart at home, but assembled by hand at school, will make four thin-crusted, medium-sized pies.

For the topping, I prescribed for each pie about 2 cups (or a little less) of cooked broccoli spears, about 2 ounces grated fresh mozzarella, a drizzle of olive oil and a good dusting of Parmesan cheese.

It took me about an hour to tease out the nutrition values for this pizza, and these did come in a good deal lighter than DiGiorno. Granted, a slice of my pizza probably weighed less than the competition and therefore might be less filling. This is a pretty inexact comparison. But that's partly the point: When you make your own, you have complete control over the ingredients. Compared to the DiGiorno pizza, a child could probably have two slices of our pizza without overindulging.

Here were the nutrition values for one slice: 117 calories, 30 of them from fat. Three grams of fat, compared to 15, with 1.5 grams saturated, or one-fourth the DiGiorno. My pizza had somewhat less than one-fourth the cholesterol, and just 17 percent of the sodium (it's mind boggling how much salt is in the processed brand). The two pizzas had equal amounts of dietary fiber: 3 grams.

It became very clear to the kids that pizza dough is calorie-dense, no matter what kind of flour you use. And you're bound to end up with some fat if you put cheese on the pie. But they also learned that you can do without the meat and thus reduce some of the saturated fat, and that industrial pizza for some reason comes with a truckload of sodium.

Finally, our pizza had just six easily-recognized ingredients--definitely not the chemistry experiment you get in the frozen food section.

So while they pounded away on the dough, I used the batch I'd made at home to start constructing pies. Some of the kids laid on the broccoli, I grated the cheese, and within minutes we had some great pizza fresh from the oven, all warm and yeasty and made by us from scratch.

Quote of the Day

Angry 8-year-old daughter says:

"There's never anything I like to eat around here. It's always, homemade, homemade, homemade..."

Kids and Nutrition Facts

The first relevant piece of information on a nutrition label is "serving size." I don't think I've ever paid much attention before. But with the kids from one of my "food appreciation" classes gathered around, we deconstructed the nutrition facts on a bag of Tostitos corn chips piece by piece.

According to the label, the serving size for "restaurant style" chips is one ounce. But how many chips is that? Did anyone ever bother to measure, as they were diving into their bowl of guacamole?

Well, we did. I had brought my kitchen scale for the occasion. And as all the kids watched and counted along, we weighed the chips precisely. The answer: eight chips. Those eight, rather large chips, according to the Tostitos label, contain 140 calories--60 of them from fat--as well 120 milligrams of sodium, one gram of dietary fiber and two grams of protein.

Not a terrible food choice, we concluded. But hold on a minute. What do 140 calories mean, exactly to, say, and 8-year-old girl?

That, in fact, turns out to be a very interesting question. Because the nutrition values given on food labels are all based on a diet of 2,000 daily calories. That turns out to be an adult diet. Our theoretical 8-year-old girl--more than one of whom were standing right in front of me--needs something more in the area of 1,200 to 1,600 calories. That's the opinion of the American Heart Association, anyway, describing the caloric needs for various age groups of "sedantary" children.

Suddenly, those eight corn chips constitute one-tenth of the all the caloric needs of our hypothetical 8-year-old for the entire day.

There's more to these nutrition values that needs to be sorted out. Why, I wondered, would Kraft Foods hold to the 2,000-calorie standards with a kids' product like Lunchables. Yet that is the basis for the "nutrition facts" on the Lunchables label. This particular food product, with an ingredient list that looks like a recipe for an atom bomb, is already full of fat and sodium. But if you adjust for a kid's dietary needs, it's even worse.

For instance, Lunchables Ham and Cheese Cracker Stackers delivers nine grams of saturated fat, or 45 percent of the recommended daily dose. But if you adjust that to a 1,400-calorie child's diet, the saturated fat ratio grows to 64 percent. Likewise, the 930 milligrams of sodium in our Lunchables meal--39 percent of an adult dosage--constitutes 55 percent of an 8-year-old girl's daily needs. But you won't see that anywhere on the label.

Some of these numbers definitely got the attention of my young students. For instance, a single serving (one-sixth) of a 32.7-ounce DiGiono Rising Crust Supreme Pizza contains a whopping 370 calories, 140 from fat. More than a third of that is saturated fat. Even worse, that one slice of pizza contains 1,000 milligrams of sodium. That's 42 percent of an adult's sodium requirement for the entire day, but 61 percent of what a child might need.

Sometimes the devil really is in the details. We compared two types of macaroni and cheese, both made by Kraft. They're sold in virtually identical boxes, but one is labeled "Spirals," the other "Thick 'n Creamy." The label on the "Spirals" says it contains two servings, each packing 290 calories (50 from fat), 15 milligrams of cholesterol and 580 milligrams of salt. The "Thick 'n Creamy," meanwhile, makes three servings, each with 380 calories (140 from fat), 5 milligrams of cholesterol and 580 milligrams of salt.

What's the difference? Well, the "Spirals" are made with just one tablespoon of butter and three tablespoons of fat free milk. The "Thick 'n Creamy" calls for four tablespoons of "spread" (I guess it could be margarine) and 1/2 cup "milk," which presumably could be whole milk--the instructions don't specify. (I still don't understand why the "Spirals" are so much heavier in cholesterol.)

Otherwise, both products contain a laundry list of space-age ingredients. Again, all of the nutrition values are based on an adult-sized, 2,000-calorie diet. It leaves you wondering how many moms out there ever stop to tease out all the "Nutrition Facts" on these products and the potential consequences for their kids.

One of the primary objectives of our "food appreciation" classes is to steer kids away from processed foods and expose them to the benefits of fresh foods made from whole ingredients. Still, it's impossible to avoid processed foods in this world. So I wanted to show them that even in the realm of industrially-made food there are alternatives worth considering.

For instance, we looked at some popular snack foods. Chex Mix Sweet 'n Salty lists a serving size of one-half cup. We measured it out and gave everyone a look. It's not terribly much, swishing around in the bottom of a bowl. Still, that one-half cup contains 130 calories, 35 from fat, as well as a disturbing amount of sodium: 280 milligrams. An alternative might be unsalted mini-pretzels from Snyder's of Hanover. The one-ounce serving has 110 calories and no fat. The sodium comes in at just 75 milligrams.

We also compared hot dogs. Just one Oscar Meyer Jumbo Weiner--containing beef, pork and chicken--delivers 170 calories, the vast majority--140--from fat. In fact, the saturated fat in just one dog is a whopping 16 grams or 35 percent of the allotment of our hypothetical 8-year-old girl. The Oscar Meyer dog also contains 45 milligrams of cholesterol and a scary 680 milligrams of sodium.

Meanwhile, a Ball Park Bun Size Smoked White Turkey Frank has just 45 calories, zero fat and just 10 milligrams of cholesterol. But this dog also should give parents some pause, as it does contain 420 milligrams of sodium. It doesn't take long to see that most processed foods are fairly high in sodium--not a healthy thing.

Studying food labels is not a favorite pastime for children. They'd much rather be making food and eating it. But by the end of the class, they do grasp the importance of some of the numbers and I was encouraged to hear that for most of them, processed foods are not a big factor in their diets. To end the class, we made a comforting bowl of oatmeal: 150 calories per one-cup serving (cooked), 25 from fat, no cholesterol, no sodium and 4 grams of dietary fiber. They were perfectly content.

Teaching Kids About Nutrition Labels

One of the first lessons I teach the kids in my "food appreciation" classes is about calories. What are calories, anyway? And how much of them should we eat?

To illustrate how calories work in the body, I put a torch to several different foods--broccoli, potato, marshmallow.

The marshmallow, being made entirely of sugar, immediately goes up in flames. The kids love it, and they quickly grasp the concept that while sugar provides a quick burst of energy, the calories have no nutritional value. They may actually make you more hungry.

But learning to eat well is so much more than one simple demonstration. And as we've all come to learn, it's not just about calories. Food is complicated. There are fats to consider. But which fats? Some are better than others. Carbohydrates are another broad and easily misunderstood category, dividing sharply between simple sugars and complex starches. Do kids need to know about cholesterol? Protein? Minerals and vitamins? And now more attention is being focused on the insidious role of salt in processed foods.

It's enough to make your yead spin. Yet that's not all. One of the things we've hardly begun to talk enough about is serving sizes. In preparing for this lesson, I was gripped by the realization that just one ounce--hardly a handful--of Tostitos corn chips contains 140 calories, 60 of which are from fat. And almost half of that fat is saturated fat.

Did you know that an Oscar Meyer "Stackers Lunchables" contains 9 grams of saturated fat, or almost half the recommended daily dose for someone ingesting 2,000 calories a day? Or how about the 930 milligrams of sodium in that product--400 calories worth of crackers, cheese, processed ham and cookies-- which translates as 39 percent of the recommended daily intake?

I'm told that many of the kids come to school with "Lunchables" for lunch. They are so quick, so easily, so conveniently and invitingly packaged. Yet I wonder if the kids--or their parents--have any idea what's in them. And this is a school where the tuition might rival your mortgage payment.

Clearly, we have our work cut out for us.

Hey Kid! Drop the Challupa and Assume the Position!

Terrel Hunter is on the lam. He lives in daily fear of the authorities.

But it's no actual crime Hunter has committed. His offense: He eats too much.

Terrel Hunter, you see, is just a teenager. Where he belongs is in school. But he'd much rather stay home and stuff his face. So he sits around his inner-city apartment here in the District of Columbia and eats in secret. The curtains are drawn. He flinches at the sound of automobiles outside. When the cops finally do show up at his door, he goes kicking and screaming, threatening to sue their asses.

Terrel thinks nothing of a 1,400-calorie lunch at Wendy's. At age 10, he stood just over 4 feet tall and weighed 210 pounds. Terrel suffered from Blount's Disease, not uncommon in obese children, which left his legs deformed. He had trouble walking. At 13, he weighed 341 pounds and lived on a diet of Big Macs, pizza, orange soda, candy bars and instant ramen noodles.

Twice, Terrel has been sent to a fat farm for children outside Richmond, VA. He's lost weight, put it back on again. This year, his mother lost custody of Terrel for failing to watch his health. A D.C. judge has ordered him back to the fat farm.

Terrel is determined to quit school and stay home. He just wants to eat in peace.

You can read the amazing story Terrel--"Heavy T"--in its entirety at The Washington City Paper. Bravo to the City Paper and writer Joe Eaton.

Teaching Kids About Healthy Food Doesn't Work

The Associated Press has conducted a review of 57 federally-fund nutritional education programs aimed at children and concluded they don't work.

The amount of funding involved is more than $1 billion. But apparently the message that fruits and vegetables are better doesn't cut it with kids. They just keep eating junk and get fatter and fatter.

"Any person looking at the published literature about these programs would have to conclude that they are generally not working," said Dr. Tom Baranowski, a pediatrics professor at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine who studies behavioral nutrition.

The AP concludes that federal programs aren't really aimed at modifying children's eating behaviors. Among the major bullets:

_Last year a major federal pilot program offering free fruits and vegetables to school children showed fifth graders became less willing to eat them than they had been at the start. Apparently they didn't like the taste.

_In Pennsylvania, researchers went so far as to give prizes to school children who ate fruits and vegetables. That worked while the prizes were offered, but when the researchers came back seven months later the kids had reverted to their original eating habits: soda and chips.

_In studies where children tell researchers they are eating better or exercising more, there is usually no change in blood pressure, body size or cholesterol measures; they want to eat better, they might even think they are, but they're not.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services is spending $696 million this year on childhood nutrition education, up from $535 million in 2003. An official with the division disputed the AP's conclusions, but said the USDA cannot afford long-term studies on whether the federal programs are actually changing children's eating behavior.

In Los Angeles, a $7 million USDA program reaches about 388,000 students a year. But, according to the Associate Press, "the most recent evaluation of the 8-year-old program was disheartening: no difference in the amount of fruits and vegetables eaten by kids participating in the program and those who weren't. Teachers who spent more hours on nutrition education had no greater impact than those who didn't. And parent behavior didn't change either."

One problem is that bad food is cheaper, so poorer children generally eat worse and suffer more from obesity. Another is all the advertising for junk food aimed at children.

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that children ages 8 to 12 see an average of 21 television ads each day for candy, snacks, cereal and fast food _ more than 7,600 a year. Not one of the 8,854 ads reviewed promoted fruits or vegetables.

There was one ad for healthy foods for every 50 for other foods.

And of course it doesn't help that schools have been cutting back on physical education programs.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has announced plans to spend $500 million over the next five years to reverse the trend of childhood obesity. It will fund programs that bring supermarkets into poor neighborhoods, studies that measure the weight of children who exercise more at school and meetings of advocates who are seeking to restrict junk food ads.