In which I defend junk food

Oh yeah – I’m going there.  I know it’s not popular right now, but I am going there anyway.

Remember when I said I was contrary?

So everyone I know is on a health food kick.  A diet kick.  A Real Food kick.

This is fantastic for Jamie Oliver.  Fantastic for the authors who usher in the next big trend in eating, and the companies that peddle all the right foods.  It is even – possibly - good for America. 

I’m certainly not against healthy eating.  Bring on the apples!  I am, however, solidly against trends of pretty much any sort.  And in my very humble opinion, a lot of the food discussion we see and hear right now falls in to that trendy category.

This week alone, I have read over a dozen blog and/or Facebook posts regarding the sugar content of chocolate milk.

If you, too, have been told that chocolate milk contains more sugar than a can of soda, allow me to set the record straight.  It does not.

Does. Not.

I have compared chocolate milk from my local public school, Hershey’s, Nestle’s, Dean’s, and 2 store brands.  I’m taking the one with the highest sugar content and for an 8 ounce drink, it contains 25 grams of sugar.

Next up, the soft drinks.  Coke – 39 grams of sugar, Mt. Dew – 46 grams, Sprite – 38 grams.

To be fair, the cans of soda are 12 ounces, so let’s make it ‘even’ – or at least biased in the same way that I’m sure this study was done.  Highest sugar content milk vs. lowest sugar content soda.

8 ounce serving of chocolate milk – 25 grams of sugar

8 ounce serving of Sprite – 25 grams of sugar

Exactly the same.  Very interesting.

Oh, except the milk also has calcium, potassium, and Vitamins A, C, and D.

The soda – not so much.

Does anyone else remember a simpler time, when we didn’t panic over milk in school lunches?  Apparently that time was at least as recent as 2006, when this study was released showing that chocolate milk is actually good for you. <gasp!>

Is chocolate milk the best possible choice?  Probably not.  But equating it to soda, which contains so much phosphorus it literally sucks the calcium out of your bones, is just absurd.  Check out this WebMD article, which not only explains why soda is bad, it also explains why milk is good.  Who’d have thought that would be a novel idea?

Don’t fall for these lies, people!

I am all for watching what I eat.  I also believe that ‘everything in moderation’ are words to eat by.

In my house, I avoid artificial food colors.  They make my kids hyper and prone to meltdowns and they give me dizzy spells.  I avoid high fructose corn syrup.  I don’t buy Doritos, or ‘juice’ boxes, or candy.

My theory is that if it wasn’t a food 100 years ago, then it isn’t good for me now.  Real food, please.

And just so there’s no confusion, by that I do not mean REAL food.

But.  BUT.  I also don’t care if my kids eat cheese doodles, or cupcakes, or suckers.

Every day, day in and day out, they eat fruit.  They eat green, leafy vegetables.  They eat whole grains.  They eat fiber.  I add flax seed to my [homemade] bread.  I serve chicken more than beef. 

I make brownies with spinach in them, for Pete’s sake. 

And you know what?  They know about the spinach.  They love it, and they help me make them.

We have our own garden, and we eat the fruits and vegetables that we grow.  My daughters help me prepare our meals, so they know what they are eating.  And I tell them why carrots are good for them, so they know that what they put into their body is important.

In my house, that is enough. 

We are not an obese nation because we eat hamburgers.  We are obese because we eat double quarter pounders with super-sized fries and an extra large soda, and we do it several times a week.

Our children are not overweight because they drink chocolate milk at school.  They are overweight because we feed them cocoa puffs for breakfast, Lunchables for a snack, and park them in front of a television set or a video game until dinner.  Which is most likely more of the same high calorie, high fat, ready-to-eat junk they’ve had the rest of the day.

We are fat and unhealthy because we never tell ourselves no.

People are complaining about the nutritional content of school lunches, but let me tell you, the nutritional content of those 5 meals is government regulated.  The other 16 meals they eat every week?  Totally up to us.  And sorry to say it, but we are the ones making the bad choices here.

The bad choice isn’t drinking chocolate milk.  The bad choices are those other 16 meals a week.

A bad choice is blaming chocolate milk for our sustenance ills.

And if I dare say, another bad choice is jumping on bandwagons, nutritional or otherwise.

To put it bluntly, chocolate milk has been around for a very long time.  Thousands of years.  Far longer than we have been a fat nation full of fat children.  Somehow my parents, and grandparents, and great-great-great-grandparents were able to drink chocolate milk.  And you know what?  My children will continue the tradition.  If that’s the worst thing they pump into their little bodies, I will consider myself a smashing success.

And now I’m off.  A bowl of ice cream awaits.