I realize that the school year is ending soon but here are some inventive ideas on how to raise money for schools! This post is also on the Super Kids Nutrition blog - it’s a great site, check it out! www.superkidsnutrition.com.

Help Schools Raise Money

I have lots of good memories of bake sales and school fundraisers at my elementary school. Every year, they had a cake walk. I played it so many times that I won cakes two years in row. But, times have changed. Recently, there was a heated battle about bake sales. New York City banned schools from selling homemade baked goods in order to prevent foodborne illnesses. School officials said it was also to fight obesity. Yet, Pop Tarts were on the list of approved products.

Schools need to raise money. This is indisputable. Instead of banning things - why don’t we come up with new ideas that are beneficial to the community AND raise money for schools? You don’t need to be a parent in order to make a difference at your local school. Perhaps you have a small business that you could promote at a school fundraisier while also providing goods or services at a discounted rate.  It’s a win-win for everyone involved.

By initiating fundraisers that do not involve selling sugary baked goods, we are sending an important nutrition message to kids as well as teaching them how to think outside the box and be creative business entrepreneurs.

Here are some inventive fundraising ideas. I included links at the bottom that include even more options.

Create a cookbook with healthy recipes from the community. With Mac computers and online publishers like Lulu.com and Blurb.com, it’s an easy and fun way to collaborate with members of the community and create a useful product to sell.

Sell items with the school logo on it. The site Vistaprint.com allows you to upload logos that can be printed on calendars, coffee mugs, or pens. It’s inexpensive, easy, and quick.

Help families go green. Sell BPA-free water bottles and eco-friendly lunch boxes.

Sell gardening kits or composting kits. Any time you make it easy for people to start a new eco-habit, you are doing a good deed!

Create T-shirts for a fundraising activity that helps the community. Start an annual school walk-a-thon or offer to build a garden at a local community center. By selling the T-shirts with an artsy logo, you’re promoting a good cause while also raising funds.

Hold your own farmer’s market. Enlist local farmer’s or grocery stores to get involved. Create your own farmer’s market at the school by having the kids build little stands with signs. Ask parents who are confident cooks to hold cooking demos.  One parent sold scripts from her local Farmers’ Markets. The market sold tokens at a 10% discount, then the parents sold them at full price. According to the Florida Fruit Association, fruit fundraisers can raise $8,000-$10,000 in as few as one to two weeks.

Sell local food products. You’ll be supporting local businesses and raising funds for the school at the same time. In 2009, schools in southern Wisconsin collectively sold more than $50,000 of local and fairly-traded products.

Cater a dinner cooked by kids. One of my colleagues runs a wonderful nutrition and cooking program within Children’s AID Society in New York City. Some of her high school students started cooking for school staff meetings and they loved the food so much that it’s now a side business where teens learn how to cook and run a catering business.

Sell flowers! You make the sales, Flower Power gets 50%, and your school gets the rest. The company will mail plants directly to each person who orders so that the parents and the school don’t have to do anything after the sale.

Hold an Iron Chef event. Find a local celebrity chef to be the judge and have different members of the community participate.  Charge each person per head and invite the press for media coverage. It’s fun, inventive and you can hold an auction - or silent auction - at the event in order to raise additional funds.

There are lots of options out there besides selling baked goods! For more ideas and information, check out the following links:

http://www.cspinet.org/schoolfundraising.pdf

Alliance for a Healthier Generation

Seattle Public Schools - scroll to PTA healthy fundraising for links

School Nutrition Association - Scroll to fundraising

When I was in New York City last week, I attended the HealthCorps Gala, a fundraiser than will ultimately finance health education for at-risk teenagers around the country. What does this have to do with breakfast?

While the government is trying to figure out how to combat childhood obesity, HealthCorps is already in schools and educating hundreds of teenagers. HealthCorps “coordinators” are recent college grads who teach nutrition and physical eduction in the same high school for two years. One of the HealthCorps coordinators, Jake Ross (who was my student last summer) recently spoke about the importance of breakfast during a segment on the Dr. Oz show with six of his high school students.

We often hear how important breakfast is but some of us (even me) still slack off sometimes. “Break” “fast” - means exactly that: we are breaking our overnight fast. By morning, it can be up to 12 hours since our last meal. In order to stoke our metabolism (which burns calories), we must eat in the morning. Otherwise, our metabolism remains sluggish from the overnight fast and will shift into “famine mode” - slowing down in order to conserve calories. We don’t ever want to do anything to slow down our metabolism! Eating actually activates the metabolism which is why I’m always telling you to EAT.

Whatever you do, make sure you consume protein in the morning. And try to find something that you look forward to eating for breakfast. Food should be pleasurable - even when it’s good for you. Lately, my favorite breakfast is organic vanilla yogurt, peanut butter granola, and macadamia nuts. It tastes like dessert and I don’t get hungry for hours.

I taught this granola recipe at the JCC in Manhattan and one of my students, Anne Grossman, loved it so much that she started giving it as a gift to family and friends. It’s tastier, cheaper, and healthier than most store-bought products and takes only minutes to toss together.

Homemade Golden Granola
The nice thing about cooking from scratch is that you can customize each dish exactly the way you like it. If your family can’t eat nuts, you can omit them from the recipe. For those of you who are always in a rush in the morning, prepare little baggies of granola to bring to work along with some yogurt and eat it for breakfast at your desk.

4 cups rolled oats (Quaker oats work just fine)
½ cup slivered almonds (optional)
1 cup pecans (optional)
½ cup unsweetened coconut flakes
¼ teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt
1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
2 ½ cups mixed fruit (golden raisins, currants, dried cranberries or cherries, chopped dried apricots)
½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup all-natural maple syrup (or ½ cup honey)
Optional: sunflower seeds, wheat germ, oat bran, brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350° F. In a large bowl, mix oats, nuts, coconut flakes, salt, spices, and dried fruit and stir together well. In a liquid measuring glass, whisk oil and maple syrup together. Pour it over the oats mixture and toss well to combine. Scoop entire batch onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Make sure the pieces are spread out in a thin layer. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes and then remove the pan and stir granola well so that pieces brown evenly. Repeat this process 10 minutes later.

After about 30 minutes, when the granola is golden brown and crispy, remove the pan from the oven. Pour it immediately into a bowl and break apart clumps with a wooden spoon. Serve with yogurt and fresh berries. Store granola in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks (or longer in the freezer).

Active time: 10 minutes
Total time: 40 minutes
Yields ~10 cups
Recipe by Julie Negrin and Anne Grossman © 2008

I know a lot of people are short on funds these days but if you or your company are looking for a worthwhile organization to donate to, please consider HealthCorps.

Can you believe everything you read on food products? Unfortunately, the answer is: no, not really. I keep seeing commercials claiming that their “whole grain product” will prevent heart disease. HEART DISEASE. If that were true, then, technically Americans shouldn’t have much heart disease, right? We do love our cereal….

In fact, it’s gotten so bad that the FDA recently posted a list of companies who are making false front-of-the-package claims.

We should be suspicious of any company that spends millions on a marketing budget in order to sell their “healthy” products to us. The foods that are healthiest for us usually don’t have a marketing budget at all!  Many companies are jumping on the “health halo” bandwagon right now. Buyer beware.

The truth is that it’s actually soluble fiber in the whole grain that lowers cholesterol, thereby reducing heart disease risk. Most whole grains, or vegetable, bean or fruit, contain soluble fiber which can reduce heart disease. (Foods that are highest in soluble fiber are oats, barley, beans, flax seed, and some fruits and vegetables.)

So, what is a whole grain exactly?

A whole grain has three parts: the outer, fibrous hull/bran (which is what makes brown rice chewy), the germ (which contains vitamins, minerals, and even some protein), and the endosperm (pretty much just starch). To make a long story short, some time after World War II, when manufacturers were able to use trucks and airplanes to ship products far away, they discovered that whole grain products didn’t last as long on the shelf due to the oils in the germ that would go rancid.

So, food manufacturers started yanking off the fibrous hull, and removing the nutrient-packed germ leaving only the starchy endosperm behind. This method continues today. The endosperm is then combined with refined sweeteners, additives, and preservatives. The result is “refined carbs” which is what we’ve been eating for years.

This is not a whole grain.

Cereal products made from whole grains do contain a few more nutrients and fiber than their all-white counterparts but they are still ground down and processed. If a product does not resemble brown rice, quinoa, millet, barley, oats or anything else that looks like it came directly from the ground, then it is NOT a whole grain. When organizations like the American Heart Association recommend eating more whole grains, they are referring to actual whole grains – not packaged products.  For the record, I have nothing against cereal - in fact, I love it. But, when I eat it, I’m aware that it’s not going to prevent heart disease.

This is a whole grain (brown rice).

Real whole grains contain almost everything you need including vitamins, minerals, fiber, fat (from the vitamin E) and protein. Fiber, which is linked to all kinds of disease prevention, deserves its own blog post so we’ll save that for another day.

Try easing into whole grains by making it just once a week to start. I’ll eat brown rice or quinoa with just about everything. I try (but don’t always succeed, I will admit it) to make some at the beginning of the week so that I always have some in the fridge. I will re-heat it and throw a green salad on top, or I’ll serve it with fish, beans, or any other protein. I usually add a few drops of water before reheating it in the microwave. If it’s really dry, I’ll make fried rice or create a dressing to marinate it so it will last longer.

Here are some suggestions on how to incorporate whole grains into your daily diet:

Kasha, oats or quinoa for breakfast – add maple syrup, cinnamon, nuts, dried or fresh fruit,  vanilla yogurt (for added protein)

Brown rice - many Asian restaurants offer both – if you and your family are used to white rice, try mixing them together. Make it easy by purchasing a rice cooker. See my notes from the Indian Recipes on how to cook brown rice on the stove.

Millet is a nutty, gluten-free grain that used just like rice or quinoa and serve with a protein like fish, check, or meat. Check out this site for recipes.

Quinoa is one of my all-time favorite grains. It cooks in 20 minutes, it’s not as chewy as other whole grains, and it’s packed with nutrients. Check out a past blog post for my Quinoa Stuffing with Caramelized Onions and Pine Nuts recipe which is always a favorite in my cooking classes.

NOTE: Many, many people are having trouble digesting gluten these days. Rather than relying entirely on expensive gluten-free products that are still somewhat processed, it’s best to eat the real deal (and of course, using the packaged products for convenience). I will share more information about gluten issues in the near future.

Gluten-free grains: rice, quinoa,  corn, millet, buckwheat, amaranth, teff - check out Gluten-Free Girl’s blog and cookbook for more information about cooking gluten-free.

Gluten-containing grains: wheat, oats, rye, barley, and spelt

I just got back from the annual Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) conference which took place in Des Moines, Iowa, or as some call it, “the belly of the beast.” Iowa grows the majority this country’s food but, strangely, Iowans import 80% of the food that lands on their dinner table.  Doesn’t make sense, right?

This is the crux of what’s happened to our food system - our farmers are super efficient at growing food but can’t use their crops of corn and soy to feed their own families. I’ve been reading about these issue for years - but let me tell you, reading about it and standing in a farmer’s field next to hogs are two entirely different experiences. My field trip entitled, “Farmers Tell It Like It is,” which took us on a tour of Iowa farms, was extremely enlightening.

A chasm has been growing between writers like Michael Pollan and farmers who work in the field. I have to admit that I didn’t quite understand why the farmers are so angry with Michael Pollan. But as I listened to Jerry Peckumn, a farmer, stand in his fields explaining how difficult it would be to shift from large, conventional farming to small, organic farming, I realized how complicated it really is. And this is the interesting part: Jerry is into eco-friendly farming practices - he raises what are essentially free-range, organic cattle. Yet, he has concluded that it just isn’t economically feasible to switch over to a more sustainable way of farming. He said he’d be more likely to try it if he had more data but he couldn’t find it. Currently, our government gives farmers only one real option: grow conventional soy, corn or wheat - or go broke. Check out this video of one of the farmer’s we visited, George Naylor, describe why big farms keep getting bigger. (This picture is from a conventional farm - you can see how huge the equipment is.)

Farmers are SMART. They can do something that most of us can’t: grow enough food to feed others. Second, they have an incredible grasp of food politics and the complicated legislation that goes along with crop subsidies. And third, they have mastered the intricate, ecological connection between land, animals, and water - I had to ask Jerry several times to explain why simply planting prairie grass improved a host of environmental problems.  And this was just in the first 2 hours of the field trip!

I could wax on about all of the issues that farmers are facing right now - but I will let someone with more expertise do that for me. Jill Richardson, who I had the pleasure of meeting while on the Farmer Field trip, writes the blog, La Vida Locavore and covers all of these topics and more. I bought one of her books, Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It, right there on the bus. (And please note, that I still think that Michael Pollan’s work is brilliant - it’s important that we see both sides of the issue.)

The best part of the whole day, of course, was being fed a home cooked meal by Chris Henning, one of our lovely tour guides, at the Wilbeck farm, aptly named Farmhouse Life. We sat down to a mouthwatering meal made from local foods: Corn Bread, Beef and Vegetables, Black Beans and Corn Salad, Jack’s Favorite Biscuits, Grandma’s Rye Bread and my all-time favorite dish, Squash Casserole - which was divine.

We then visited a dairy farm, Picket Fence Creamery where Jill Burkhart and her husband sell dairy products and other locally produced food items at their country store. I found it amazing that as her customers walked away with their food, she called out to them by name. What a concept that we have lost in this country: knowing the people who grow and prepare our food by name.

The Burkharts served us each a huge piece of homemade apple pie and their homemade ice cream. (YUM.) Ordinarily, I can’t eat ice cream - it causes me tummy problems. But the Picket Fence Creamery ice cream? I was just fine. This is something that I’m going to continue to investigate: the fact that much of our food intolerances and other health problems may not be linked to the actual food but how it was grown, produced and prepared.

The rest of the conference was incredibly informative and I met some extremely dynamic people who are doing everything that they can to make sure that the food you put on your table is of the highest quality possible.

In the mean time, I will leave you with some wonderful insight from a cookbook I bought at the Burkhart’s country store, Grandma’s Recipes - Recipes from the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. Here is advice from Grandma Horst and Grandma Hoover:

“There is one important point to remember: Do not feed a child too many cakes and cookies, so that plain foods are slighted.”

You tell it like it is, Grandma!

[THANK YOUS to the Greene County folks who coordinated our tour: Chris Henning, Jerry Peckumn, George Naylor, Chris & Kevin Wilbeck]

Over the last decade, or more, snacking has almost become it’s own meal. In an article about Dietary Trends in America, it states:

“Sixty percent of Americans eat snack food regularly, consuming about 20 percent of their  calories  from snacks. Because half of young adults skip breakfast, and one-fourth skip lunch, between-meal eating contributes significantly to the daily  nutrient  intakes of Americans. Children, in particular, require several small meals per day, as their stomachs cannot hold large amounts of food at one time. Carefully chosen snacks can add to good dietary habits. Most Americans, however, do not snack wisely.”

Ahhh, the last sentence says it all. It’s not necessarily how much snacking we are doing - it’s what we are snacking on. With that said, the question remains: how much do kids really need to snack on during the day?

It’s not such an easy question to answer - it’s a delicate balance - finding a way to keep children well-fed so that they can concentrate at school but also making sure that they don’t eat too much.  Clearly, we have not found that balance in America….

Every child is different - some kids don’t need to eat frequently while others get low-blood sugar easily and need to space their meals and snacks accordingly.

So, here are some tips for every kind of eater on how to snack wisely:

1) As kids get older, their stomachs get bigger - so, they don’t need to eat every 30 minutes like when they were infants. By the time they are toddlers and able to go to school several days a week, they will benefit from a structured eating pattern. One mid-morning snack and another in the afternoon - and that’s it.

2) While we are on the topic of structured eating patterns - I want to reiterate how important this is for small children. A random feeding schedule makes it hard for the parents to determine if the children is actually hungry. It’s much easier for the parents to assess how much food the kids really need and how much they are eating, if they are sitting down for a snack at the same time every day. I’m pretty aware of my intake but even I can’t figure out how much I’ve eaten if I graze all day   - so, it’s important to prevent kids from picking up this habit.

3) While we don’t want kids to graze all day, we want to make sure that their blood sugar stays balanced (which I wrote about in a previous post). The trick is to rely on protein to keep blood sugar even-keel.  Most kids are carb junkies - fruit, noodles, crackers - which can cause blood sugar to spike and then drop. But by adding in some protein, they will feel satiated and can go 2-3 hours in between snacks and meals. And the bonus from this strategy is that by letting them get a little hungry, you’ll have much less of a battle at dinner time since they will be than ready to gobble down their meal! And the second best bonus? Less whining, crying, and outbursts.

4) No snacks right before meal time - this includes beverages such as smoothies, sodas, and drinks. Their little tummies fill up fast - and drinks right before a meal will shut off their hunger.

5) Of course, there are many days where snacks will be served in the car and on-the-go but when possible, try to sit the kids down at a table and treat snack time as a proper meal - with no TV! Children who eat in front of the television eat more calories - it’s never too early to teach them good eating habits.

6) And the most obvious tip to snacking wisely is to provide snacks that are nutritious and beneficial to growing bodies! Just because we are eating in between meals doesn’t mean we should reach for the chips and cookies. Again, we are teaching kids how to eat for life - the earlier they learn these simple lessons, the healthier they will be.

Here are some snack ideas - remember, try to include a little bit of protein in each snack (and meal!):

High-protein foods: yogurt, cottage cheese, string cheese, cubed tofu, hard-boiled eggs, nuts or nut butters, (if they are allergic to nuts, try sunflower seed butter or soy butter), sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, tuna (just a little per week because of the mercury), kidney or black beans served as finger foods, turkey or chicken, hummus.

High-quality carbohydrate snacks: dried cherries, mangoes or pineapple, black olives, apple or banana chips, fruit smoothies, low-sugar granola or cereals, trail-mix, sliced fresh fruit, popcorn (not for tiny kids - it’s a choking hazard), vegetables with dip, apple butter on whole grain bread, honey-banana sandwiches (with peanut butter if possible), frozen grapes or blueberries.

I will end with TWO rules of thumb:

• Make sure they are not grazing all day but are sitting down for a proper snack that is actually in the middle of two meals.
• Make sure that the snack is high-quality.

It can sound like a lot of work to change the family snack habit but it will be worth it in the end - kids and adults will benefit from having healthier food in the house!

I was glad to see another article on the importance of eating a solid breakfast online the day after I posted this one:

There are a LOT of food topics I like to cover. But the importance of eating a solid protein breakfast is always at the top of the list.  And I first discovered this from a student while teaching one of my very first cooking classes.

At the end of a six week cooking class, after I’d taught for many hours, I asked each student what they got out of the class. The one answer that has stuck with me all these years was the woman who said, “I learned I should eat a protein breakfast.”

She rattled off all of the improvements she’d noticed since she started eating breakfast, “I have less headaches, I drink less coffee, I’m more productive all day long and I’m in a much better mood.” From then on, I made sure to discuss the importance of eating breakfast - especially protein.

No matter who or what I’m teaching, I always start every class with a quick review of Nutrition 101. It’s essential to understand the basics of what food does in the body in order to make smart decisions about what to eat - and also, when to eat. By eating more efficiently, you’ll be more energetic throughout the day and consume less food - which will save you money, make you more productive, and keep you trim.

This is a very broad overview but it will help you figure out what to eat without having to rely on the latest diet trends. The three “big” nutrients (otherwise known as macronutrients) our bodies need are: protein, carbohydrates and fats. So, right off the top - if there is any diet that suggests cutting out an entire macronutrient, you should be skeptical.

I won’t get too far into carbohydrates right now because they deserve their own separate post. But they are part of the protein conversation.

Many of us end up eating meals, especially breakfast, of mostly simple carbohydrates (fruit, juice, many sugary cereals, white bread/toast, a few raw vegetables, and sweets fall into this category). Once digested, a meal of only simple carbohydrates can break down into sugars very quickly. Depending on each individual’s body chemistry, this can lead to a spike in blood sugar that will suddenly drop. This can cause adults and kids to go from very energetic to grumpy in a short amount of time.

By pairing complex carbohydrates (which take longer to digest than simple carbs) with protein, you can keep your blood sugar balanced all day long. I recommend that everyone start the day with a high-protein breakfast - especially kids and those with sensitive blood sugar issues. (You know who you are - if you don’t, ask your family and co-workers - it’s easy to spot people who get super grumpy when they haven’t eaten properly). And try to eat protein for snacks and at lunch which will prevent the afternoon crash that leaves kids cranky and adults sneaking off to the coffee cart and vending machines.

This is the reason why people often felt better on that certain diet that was popular a few years ago - because people were eating more protein and  balancing their blood sugar. But the difference here is:

• QUALITY. The quality of protein is very important - shoot for plant proteins that are unprocessed (beans, nuts, seeds, soy).
• AMOUNT. If you do eat animal proteins, eat small amounts from high-quality sources (organic, free-range from a reputable farm).
• TIMING. If you’re planning on working out or if you’re kids are attending an after school activity - it’s a smart idea to eat a protein with a carbohydrate an hour or so before hitting the gym and at least 20 minutes before the kids start their event.
• THE HISTORY. When in doubt, think of indigenous diets from around the world: beans and rice have been staples for centuries.

DAIRY PROTEINS: yogurt, cottage cheese, milk, cheese
PLANT PROTEINS: soymilk, tofu, beans, seeds, nuts, nut butter
ANIMAL PROTEINS: (these balance blood sugar for the longest amount of time but have the most saturated fat) beef, turkey, chicken, fish, eggs

UNREFINED COMPLEX CARBOHYDRATES: whole grains (brown rice,  oats, barley, spelt, rye, quinoa, farro), vegetables, some fruits, whole grain breads and crackers

A few pairing ideas, the Perfect Couple - Protein with Carbohydrates:

• Peanut butter and jelly sandwich (totally underrated)
• Almonds with cranberries (one of my favorite snacks)
• Yogurt with granola
• Cottage cheese with fruit
• Tofu over quinoa
• Tuna fish wrap
• Turkey on mixed greens salad
• Egg and potatoes
• Nuts and oatmeal
• Beans with rice
• Fish over couscous
• Meat balls over whole grain pasta

So, keep an eye on your protein intake and stay tuned for more Nutrition101!