What I didn’t know until recently is, how bad for you processed meats really are. The World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research’s “Second Expert Report” concludes that “processed meat is a convincing cause of colorectal cancer.”

The National School Lunch program, a federally funded program that often provides the best meal a child may get in a day, currently distributes and subsidizes processed meats like hot dogs to 30+ million children. Given the link between cancer and processed meats, it’s time to eliminate these meats from the National School Lunch program.

As a concerned parent who wants to make a difference, I’ve signed the petition to the Secretary of Agriculture requesting that the government halt the distribution and subsidization of processed meats like hot dogs through the National School Lunch program. Whether you have children or not, if you’re reading this blog you’re concerned about nutrition and health, please take a moment and click on the following link to sign the petition too. Thank you.
http://support.cancerproject.org/site/PageServer?pagename=usda_national_school_lunch_program_petition

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Controlling What Our Kids Eat

Altucher makes an analogy to the value of a college education to one strategy for winning the game of Scrabble.

“You have two choices. You can read every book you can find, build an enormous vocabulary, look up the definitions of words you don’t know (that will help you remember them better) and use your advanced knowledge, painstakingly constructed over years, to defeat all opponents.

Or you can remember the following five words: “xi,” “xu,” “za,” “qi,” and “qat.” “Ka” and “ki” are not so bad either. And every now and then “aa,” “ae,” and “ai” can prove incredibly useful. These are all legal words in the last edition of the official Scrabble dictionary. What do they mean? I have no idea. You don’t need to know… Once you are OK with the fact that “xu” is a legal word, then that means you can essentially slap that “X” down on a triple-letter score with much greater ease than any of your opponents really thought possible. While they are all stuck with their Qs and Zs, you’re racking up 50-point two-letter words and winning the game.”

Altucher states that college is too expensive, there is no value in a balanced education, and “there are far better uses of time”. Instead of college, he advocates working, getting good at one thing, taking ½ the fee of a semester to start a business, and getting involved with a charity.

All college students should do what he advocates while in college! A diverse college education will give young adults the skills and confidence they need to succeed in all of these endeavors. What’s the point of learning your multiplication tables if you don’t truly understand what 2×3=6 really means. Rote memorization and shortcuts are exactly the problem with our culture. There are no instant solutions. In order to make our world a better place to live, we need to think, feel, and understand why. We need to learn to question.

A college education provides motivated students the opportunity to live on their own without their parents’ constantly looking over their shoulder, develop their own group of friends from a larger community without family to pave the way, negotiate their own social relationships, not compete with their siblings on a daily basis, take responsibility for their successes and mistakes, take care of their own meals, home(dorm room), transportation, etc., try a variety of things to discover what they’re passionate about and what they’re not, learn to think on their own and to communicate, grow up and stand on their own two feet.

If our children can learn these skills while discovering what they’re passionate about, they will be happy in whatever they choose to do – and that, is priceless.

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Return on Investment of a College Education

I discussed my personal values with my Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) Forum last night (a small group of 9 Boston entrepreneurs who meet monthly to share experiences and learn from each other – part of a worldwide organization of 9,000 members). From this I realized that if I make sure that my actions are consistent with my values, I’m happy.

Sounds simple, but this is how it works (for me). One of my values is to “make a difference”. When asked last night what this means, I replied that it’s simple. As long as I feel like I’m making a difference in someone’s life, I’m happy. It could be as simple as opening the door for someone who has too much to carry, letting someone who is obviously in a rush cut ahead of me when driving, etc.

Given the economy, I decided to apply my values to my work at Zoe Foods. This lead me to rereading emails that Zoe Foods and I have received from its customers (i.e. you!). When I read emails from people who tell me that they love Zoe’s new crunchy granolas because they taste good and have great nutrition, I can’t help but think “Score!”. There’s another person I helped make a difference for today. So… if it makes you happy to make someone else happy, please keep the emails coming and commenting on the blog.  I promise that I will pay it forward!

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What Motivates You In A Difficult Economy?

We not only need to provide our children with healthy choices, but we need to teach them how and why we combine these healthy choices. Yet, the puzzle is still larger.

I believe we also need to teach our children to appreciate the wonderful choices that they have and the importance of not wasting food since it is a precious gift. When I was a child, my mom used to tell us that children were starving in Ethiopia and that we needed to finish the food that we had taken. As a child I don’t think I fully understood the implications of what she was saying, but it clearly made an impact on me since I recall her words 30 years later.

I am torn on this issue because I have been asked to participate in a group of concerned parents who want to improve the nutrition at my kids’ school. I would love to see my children have healthier choices with no fast or fried food. And yet spending my limited free time to help my children’s school is like tutoring a child who scored 90% on a test so that they can get 100% the next time. There are so many children who need much more help since they’ve only scored a 30%.

The National School Lunch Program provides $2.57 per lunch for over 30.5 million children, and for many of those children, that’s the best meal that they get. If I am to help my children’s school improve its nutrition, then at least I can make sure that my children learn that there are others less fortunate than themselves and that we all need to make an effort to help others less fortunate than ourselves in any way we can.

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Nutrition In Schools

In order to make a positive change in our world, I think that the singer and songwriter Jack Johnson says it best:

With My Own Two Hands by Jack Johnson, featuring Ben Harper ?(repetitive refrains are edited out for brevity’s sake)

I can change the world
With my own two hands
Make it a better place
With my own two hands
Make it a kinder place
With my own two hands
I can make peace on earth
With my own two hands
I can clean up the earth
With my own two hands
I can reach out to you
With my own two hands
I’m going to make it a brighter place
With my own two hands
I’m going to make it a safer place
With my own two hands
I’m going to help the human race
With my own two hands
I can hold you
With my own two hands
I can comfort you
With my own two hands
But you’ve got to use
Use your own two hands
With our own two hands
With my own two hands

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Yes We Can!

As a mom, your kids cannot just give you the day off. Even if your husband or helper has agreed to let you rest so that you can take care of yourself to get better – did you tell your kids that this was the plan? When they’re little, they just don’t get it. If you’re in the middle of a nap and you hear the stampede of feet followed by “mommmmyyyyyy” – so much for the nap.

Not to mention, in my house I’m the grand coordinator of everyone’s schedules and plans. Because I wasn’t feeling great, my husband took the kids when they woke up Sunday morning to have brunch with friends and then to the playground. By the time they got back it was well past noon. Since my head was feeling fuzzy, I didn’t even realize until dinner-time that one of my daughters missed a birthday party.

As for work, as a business owner, there really are no sick days either, just somewhat less productive ones. There’s only so much you can get done when your head feels like it’s filled with custard. And, if you decide to work from home because you don’t want to infect the rest of your team, your kids are thrilled. You then have the challenge of telling them that they need to let you work even though you should be in bed resting to get better. Now if that doesn’t send a confusing message! So… it’s now 4:45pm and I have not seen my kids since 1:30pm. Guess they got it after all.

Not really sure how that makes me feel, but it does let me get my work done. Now all I need to do is feel better so that I can get back to work and to my family!

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Sick Daze

Although I still had some work to get done and was exhausted, I brainstormed with my husband the best way to make a cat’s tail (try taping some crumpled up newspaper around a coat hanger and covering it with a piece of material or play scarf ) and some kitty ears (cutout from a cardboard cereal box with colored construction paper glued on and attached to a headband) given the late hour. I interspersed my late night art project with finishing up some work (easy to do while the glue was drying) and this morning - my daughter was thrilled.

Entirely worth it despite the last minute effort. Now it’s time to get ready to go trick or treating. And later tonight I expect a visit from the Halloween Fairy who I hear, will be leaving the next series of Rainbow Magic Fairy books by Daisy Meadows. Does she write anything about cats?

For more on the Halloween Fairy, see http://www.zoefoods.com/blog/hello-halloween-fairy/

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Happy Halloween!

So, if it’s just that easy, here’s another goal… I’d like Zoe Foods to make a difference in people’s lives with great tasting natural products that are packed with nutrition. Zoe’s Granolas and Bars are distributed across the country and is a major player in the food industry!

The Secret is out - we’re working toward this goal and appreciate your helping to spread the word about Zoe’s so that we can make it happen.

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If You Build It, He Will Come

Perhaps it’s akin to the seventh awning stretch in a baseball game. Maybe it’s not really an itch at all, but rather a time to stretch and reflect upon all the wonderful things that have happened, and a time to come up with a game plan for all of the exciting things we have to look forward to.

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Seven Years of Marriage And Not a Single Itch

“A serving of 11 popular cereals, including Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, carries as much sugar as a glazed doughnut, the consumer group found. Post Golden Crisp made by Kraft Foods Inc and Kellogg’s Honey Smacks are more than 50 percent sugar by weight, the group said, while nine brands are at least 40 percent sugar.” Hmmm, makes you think.

The article stated that Kellogg’s is in the process of “making its foods more nutritious.”

Unfortunately, it cannot happen too soon because Consumer Reports found that “91 children aged 6 to 16 poured their cereal and found they served themselves about 50 to 65 percent more on average than the suggested serving size for three of the four tested cereals.”

So what does all this really mean? It means that you must read the suggested serving size, nutrition facts, and ingredient label. Many of the cereals targeting children are what I’d call empty calories – calories that provide little to no nutrition because they consist primarily of sugar, white flower, food coloring, and some vitamins which are typically sprayed on right before the cereal goes into the colorful box.

Don’t lose hope because there is a lot of research that states that cereal can be really good for you (and delicious). Next time you’re at the market, consider these tips when reading the serving size, nutrition facts and ingredient list:

1. Total calories per serving only gives you a clue as to whether a product is good or not. Beware of small serving sizes! If you would typically eat twice as much as the recommended serving, remember that all the nutrition facts need to be doubled.

2. Look at the fat and make sure that there are zero trans fats. These are the really bad fats that most manufacturers have tried to eliminate from their foods. There is fat in food, and that’s not necessarily bad because we need certain types of fats in our diet. For example, your body needs Omega-3s which is an essential fatty acids that your body cannot produce but needs to be healthy. More on this topic next time.

3. Sodium – try to select a product that has relatively low sodium versus your alternatives. However, if there is something you love where the sodium is higher, try to pick other foods that are low in sodium and then don’t add salt to your food. It’s all about balance and moderation over the course of a day, week, and lifetime.

4. With the Atkins diet, people thought all carbohydrates were bad. However, our bodies need carbohydrates because they give us energy. However, look for complex carbohydrates because they contain fiber. Fiber helps promote healthy digestion and can help reduce the risk of heart disease. From less technical perspective, fiber keeps our digestive system moving which helps with weight management as part of an active lifestyle. Drink lots of water to keep from getting constipated, especially as you increase the fiber in your diet and your body adjusts.

5. Try to select products with a lower sugar content. Sugar, although also a carbohydrate, is one of those empty calories because it provides no nutritional value. If you have more sugar in one meal, make an effort to have less in the next. Remember, sugar turns to fat. So even if a product is low in fat, it may have a higher sugar content, so you’re not necessarily better off.

6. Protein is important for all ages. Although you don’t need to be consuming 20g per serving if you’re not trying to build some serious muscle mass, look for products with 4-8g protein per serving.

In summary, it is better to have your calories come from fiber, protein, and even the good fats, rather than sugar or foods with little nutritional value. If you cannot pronounce something on the label, think again before consuming it. As the founder of a natural foods company, of course I am biased, but these are some solid guidelines that can help you and your family to eat more healthfully.

To see original article: http://health.yahoo.com/news/reuters/us_cereal_sugar.html

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Some Cereals Have As Much Sugar As A Glazed Doughnut!