- Author: Brenda Roche
Back in January, British chef and TV personality Jamie Oliver filled an old school bus with 57 tons of white sand in a parking lot in Carson, Calif. What was the purpose of this exercise, you might ask? The sand was meant to represent the amount of sugar in flavored milk. More specifically, the amount of sugar children in the Los Angeles Unified School District consume in a week’s time from flavored milk provided in their school lunches.
There has been much talk about flavored milk in recent months, and much of this debate has been fueled by Jamie Oliver who has a popular television show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, on ABC. His goal...
- Posted By: Jeannette E. Warnert
- Written by: Norma de la Vega. Adapted from Spanish by Jeannette Warnert.
Drinking a glass of non-fat or 1% milk will help soothe the day’s tensions and make you sleep better at night, but the benefits go far beyond its calming properties, says UC Cooperative Extension nutrition educator Ellen Sandor.
“The calcium in milk reduces muscle spasms and calms stress,” Sandor said. “Plus milk and other dairy products, like cheese and yogurt, are excellent sources of calcium, potassium and vitamin D, which help maintain bone health.”
The USDA 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends three servings of non-fat or low fat dairy products per day. In...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The USDA today introduced a simple and clear visual to guide Americans when filling their plates at mealtime. The new MyPlate nutrition icon, which replaces the familiar 'MyPyramid,' shows how to build a healthy meal based on the USDA 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
"As a mom, I can already tell how much this is going to help parents across the country," said First Lady Michelle Obama in a live-streamed news conference this morning. "When mom or dad comes home from a long day of work, we're already asked to be a chef, a referee, a cleaning crew. So it's tough to be a nutritionist, too. But we do have time to take a...
- Posted By: Jeannette E. Warnert
- Written by: Norma de la Vega. Adapted from Spanish by Jeannette Warnert.
Salsa plays a much-deserved starring role in Mexican cuisine, adding not only refreshing and spicy flavors to breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner, but also conveying an ample supply of nutrients.
A blend of fruits, vegetables and seasonings, salsas are created almost entirely from the foods highly recommended by nutrition experts, says UC Cooperative Extension nutrition educator Margarita Schwarz.
“Experts recommend we eat 3 to 5 servings of vegetables and 2 to 4 servings of fruit daily and salsa is an excellent way to add these foods to our diets,” she said. “We can experiment in the kitchen with different blends, combining...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
It's important to teach children from a very early age, starting at about 9 months, to eat a wide variety of foods, but this takes time and patience, says the nutrition, family and consumer sciences advisor for UC Cooperative Extension in Tulare County, Cathi Lamp.
Lamp says children learn to like new foods by exploring them, so parents shouldn’t be concerned if youngsters make a mess touching their food, playing with it and trying to put it in their mouths. These are all forms of learning.
“The child feels a natural sense of fear in trying new foods and for that reason it is important to permit them to become familiar with them from an early age,”...