Like many parents of young children, I have been required to do my fair share of time selling hot dogs, pickles, popcorn, candy and soda in concession stands at sporting events.  It’s required volunteer time to help defray the costs of these programs.

During these experiences, I have come to loathe a food product.  Yes, loathe it.  Despise it.  Wish it could be wiped from the face of this planet.  See absolutely no role for it.  Working concession stands has forced me to put my dietitian hat on in an environment when I’m usually wearing my mom hat. 

The product?  Sports drinks. 

Why? Nutritionally, sports drinks aren’t really any different than soda pop.  All the calories – yes, all of them – come from sugar.  Pop?  Same thing, 100% of calories from sugar. 

Why?  Sports drinks like Gatorade do such a fabulous job advertising that every young, impressionable boy and girl think it’s cool to drink Gatorade.  Pro athletes drink it, so I’m going to drink it, too.

Why?  Again, the advertising, which leads kids and their parents to believe that electrolytes (sodium is an electrolyte!) need to be replaced in kids who play sports.  Trust me (again, dietitian hat on here), I’ve read the research, and two hours of football practice or one hour of gymnastics does not require electrolyte replacement from sports drinks. 

I don’t buy sports drinks or keep it in my house, so I was floored the first time I worked concessions and saw the number of kids who will cough up $2 of their parents’ money to buy Gatorade.  Really, and can the color possibly matter all that much?

So today, if you decide to do something for your health and the health of your family, stop buying sports drinks, and drink water instead.

Visit www.nuval.com to see nutrition scores for your favorite beverages.

On Tuesday, the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans final report was released.  If you’re not familiar with these guidelines, they are updated every five years, and used to set policy around healthy eating.  In total, the full report is more than 1,000 pages.  Needless to say, I haven’t read it all yet, but in what my husband would call a “People Magazine browse,” I did find some interesting nuggets worth blogging about.

One area of the report that struck me right away is the number of calories we get from beverages.  Here’s the breakdown:

The AVERAGE ADULT (19+) gets 394 calories a day from beverages:

• 114 from soda
• 108 from alcohol (someone is getting my share on most days!)
• 80 from fluid milk
• 67 from 100% fruit juice and juice drinks
• 26 from coffee and tea

KIDS aged 2-18 get 400 calories a day from beverages:

• 162 from milk
• 121 from soda
• 112 from 100% fruit juices and fruit drinks
• In kids age 14-18, soda, sports and energy drinks are the highest contributor of calories.

Intriguing data isn’t it.  Growing up, I remember drinking milk with every meal, getting a cold glass of water when I was hot from running around with my friends all day in the summer, and having lemonade or pop (remember, I’m from the Midwest) as a treat, maybe once a month.  But clearly, these numbers tell a different story.  Skim milk has 90 calories in a cup.  With the total ranging from 80-162 calories a day from milk, no one – adults nor kids – are getting enough milk and with it the calcium and vitamin D we all need.  Kids and adults alike are getting a hit of calories from pop – and this is straight sugar.  If adults quit drinking fully sugar-loaded pops, they could save more than 41,000 calories in a year.  That’s 12 pounds of weight.  For kids, the total is more than 44,000 calories in a year, or almost 13 pounds of weight.

Bottom line?  We all need to rethink our drinks.

Visit NuVal.com to find the scores of your usual beverages.

I grew up as the child of a gardener, a cook, a canner.  To this day, my 84-year-old mother has a garden bigger than most people’s front yards, cans tomatoes, her own salsa, jams and jellies, and still cooks Sunday dinners for the family.

For Christmas one year, my mom gave me a Squeez-O strainer.  Many of you I image are saying “A what?”  Few know the magic of the Sqeezo-O.  But I do, and was thrilled with the gift.

The Squeez-O strainer is a must-have for the serious foodie, for those who can their own tomatoes or make their own apple sauce.  I used mine this past fall to make homemade applesauce.  The beauty of the Squeez-O is that you don’t have to peel or core the apples. You cut them in half, put them in a big pan with a few inches of water, and let them cook until the apples are soft.  Then you pour them into the Squeez-O.  By simply turning the crank, this magic machine separates the cores, seeds and peels from the sauce.  Truly, it is magic.

But as I watch my Squeez-O create a pile of skins, core, seeds and some pulp, I also realize that sauce – even my homemade apple sauce – can’t have the same nutritional value of whole fruit.  Even if I use the freshest, organically grown apples, the process of making sauce is taking some of the positive nutrition out of the food.

Knowing this, I’m often surprised when people think that apple juice, apple sauce, and whole apples are nutritionally equivalent.  I would say across the board, looking at it from a nutrient-density standpoint (how much nutrition am I getting for the calories), the whole fruit is always the best option.  Does this mean you should never eat sauces, canned fruit, or fruit juices?  No, but it does mean that the whole fruit should be your default fruit.

After all, there is nothing better than stepping into my mother’s garden on a hot summer day and biting into a fresh, ripe tomato.

Visit www.nuval.com to compare your favorite whole fruit to sauce to juice.