"Healthy" substitutes for kids aren't necessarily better choices

Parents may find it easier to feed straight sugar to
their kids. It's cheaper and generally doesn't contain
any unexpected surprises. (Photo: Stock.xchng)

It’s hard enough to convince many kids to eat what’s good for them. It’s an exercise in frustration when the good foods you want them to eat turn out not to be any better.

A couple of interesting articles cropped up recently about two different – but related – topics: Dairyreporter.com posted a story yesterday about how sweetened beverages are reducing kids’ calcium intake and last month the Boston Globe published an interview with Alissa Hamilton, author of the upcoming book "Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice” from Yale University Press.

The Dairyreporter.com story focused on a study in this month’s Journal of the American Dietetic Association which found – surprise! – kids seem to prefer sweetened beverages over milk and that their intake of calcium appears to suffers as a result. Parents, and anyone else with kids in their lives, know this of course and will often try to mitigate the potential damage with what they hope are healthier choices.

Alissa Hamilton’s findings, however, aren’t particularly encouraging. Orange juice which, along with apple juice, is probably one of the healthier choice standbys for most parents isn’t much better. It’s not that it’s bad for you, Hamilton says, but it’s not what the orange juice industry makes it out to be, either.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably chosen juice labeled “not from concentrate” under the not-entirely-unreasonable assumption that it’s fresher than the frozen stuff. Surprise! Frankly, I hate surprises before I’ve even had my second cup of tea for the day.

Orange juice is, according to Hamilton, “a heavily processed product. It's heavily engineered as well. In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn't oxidize. Then it's put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile.”

When the time comes to put that batch of juice up for market, the flavors have to be restored. Companies like Tropicana – a division of PepsiCo – then hire specialists who devise “flavor packs” which contain chemicals derived from oranges which are then reconfigured to put the flavor back into the juice.

As for the nutritional aspects of said orange juice, Hamilton advises readers to eat a whole orange, instead. In places like public schools, that’s unlikely to happen. US News and World Report noted last year that vending machines selling sugary drinks and snacks appear in three quarters of American middle schools.