Is fruit juice bad for kids?

This is timely. I was just thinking about writing a blog post about kids and their drink choices when I came across this article in the Ottawa Citizen about how fruit juice may be dropped from Canada’s food guide as a healthy choice. The article illustrates two sides of the argument: on one hand, fruit juice does contain certain vitamins like vitamin C, folate and potassium, which makes it perhaps a better choice than straight soda or fruit punch. On the other hand, drinking a couple of cups of juice every day could comprise a quarter or up to half of a child’s caloric requirements – with questionable nutritional benefit.

I know from my own ongoing research into the healthiest food choices for myself and the family that you should in general try to avoid drinking your calories. There’s no doubt that eating an orange is a better overall choice than drinking a 125ml box of pure orange juice. But is it reasonable to ask kids to drink mostly water? And is an apple going to quench thirst like a cup of apple juice?

4:365 Club soda

I’m not too worried about the amount of juice the kids consume. A juice box in the lunchbox (gasp! I know, but I’m picking my battles) and a half a cup of apple juice at dinner don’t seem to be too unreasonable to me, even if they will add 100 or so “empty” calories. But as the boys get older, what I’m wondering about is the choice between sugary pop and the chemicals in diet soda. We’re aiming to be an ‘all things in moderation’ sort of household, so I don’t want to ban pop entirely, and I want the boys to (a) make reasonable choices and (b) be able to choose things that they find yummy and satisfying sometimes. While I don’t love the idea of them drinking 150 calories of sugar in a can of soda, I think the aspartame and other crap in diet soda could be worse for their growing bodies. Personally, whenever I can I avoid aspartame in everything except chewing gum, which usually means I’m choosing the full fat and full sugar versions of any product over the “lite” low calorie or low fat options. Sugar may be evil, but I’m convinced that artificial sweeteners are worse.

What do you think? Given a choice between the evils of sugar and the evils of artificial sweeteners, which one do you think is more harmful, even on an occasional basis?

A delightful night out with the NAC Orchestra

When I was offered a pair of tickets to see the NAC Orchestra for their Casual Fridays series, I knew exactly whom I wanted to take. My Dad was a drummer back in the day, and taught me almost everything I know about music. He’s also forgiven me for somehow genetically bypassing every shred of musical talent I might have inherited from him.

I have to admit that as much as I am a fan of the NAC, I forget how much I love the NAC Orchestra until I see them again. It’s easy to forget we have this incredible, world-class ensemble right here in our own home town. Did you know the NAC has a new Music Director this fall? Alexander Shelley will succeed Pinchas Zukerman as Music Director in September. He was the conductor of Friday’s performance and he was a joy to watch. Aside from a welcoming and genial manner, he’s a handsome young thing. Imagine being the Music Director of Canada’s national orchestra at only 35 years old!

Friday’s performance included two very different musical pieces: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #1 and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. The guest pianist for the Beethoven performance was even younger than Shelley (so much for the NAC Orchestra being an affair for grey-hairs!), twenty-two year old Benjamin Grosvenor. He absolutely blew me away! I loved watching him play – his mastery was beyond question, but there was something delightful in just watching his body language as his fingers flew up and down the keyboard, and how he seemed to connect with Shelley and defer to him throughout the piece. He was about half way through the concerto, which runs about 40 minutes or so, when my jaw dropped open in astonishment as I realized he was playing without a score – he was playing from memory. That’s maybe 100 pages or so of sheet music. And I can’t tell you what I had for breakfast most days.

I liked the Stravinsky piece a little less than the Beethhoven, simply because I had so enjoyed watching Grosvenor play. With the Stravinsky piece they introduced an element you don’t often associate with a classical orchestral concert: a puppeteer. She used transparencies and a projector and odd bits of things like feathers and pieces of lace to interpret Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, which reminded me of a modern movie score. While I appreciated the interpretation as interesting, I actually found it detracted a bit from the performance in some spots, and I think I would have rather simply watched the musicians and the conductor. That’s my favourite part of a live musical performance: choosing one particular instrument or even one particular musician and studying them as the music flows through and around them. It was genuinely delightful to watch Alexander Shelley and the joyfulness of his body language as the Stravinsky piece barreled toward its finale. I may have a little musical crush on him now!

NAC2Two of the boys are taking music lessons right now. Had I had an inkling of Grosvenor’s performance before hand, I may have considered taking Simon instead. He’s playing a piano recital at the end of May and has also memorized his performance – all 45 seconds of it. 🙂 Tristan’s class has taken up band instruments in music class, and he has chosen the trombone, which seems like an absolutely random and yet somehow perfect instrument for him. I’m very much hoping he chooses to join the school band in a few years. I think my experience with my own school band helps me appreciate events like Friday’s concert that much more, even though I’ll be the first to admit that I never was much of a musician. I think they’d both benefit from seeing the NAC Orchestra in action, now that they have a little bit of musical experience of their own for context.

I was curious to ask my Dad’s opinion of Shelley’s performance on the drive home from the NAC. He’s played with many musical organizations over the years, including Orchestra London. He too was impressed by Shelley’s joie de vivre and mastery over the performances.

Seems like I’ve got a bit of a dilemma on my hands now. Whom shall I bring for the next NAC date night? One thing is for sure – there will be a lot more NAC Orchestra in our lives in the next little while. And if you haven’t recently gone out on a date with your Dad, I highly recommend that, too!

10-pages-in: Imaginary Things

I really need to stop accepting books for review, because when I don’t love them I feel horribly conflicted. They gave me a free book, I should give it a nice review! But when it’s a struggle to find nice things to say, I find myself in an awkward position.

Such is the case with Andrea Lochen’s Imaginary Things. I was intrigued by the synopsis:
book

Watching children play and invent whimsical games of fantasy is one of life’s great joys. But what if you could actually see your child’s imagination as it unfolded? And what would you do if your child’s imagination suddenly became dark and threatening?

Burned-out and broke, twenty-two-year-old single mother Anna Jennings moves to her grandparents’ rural home for the summer with her four-year-old son, David. The sudden appearance of shadowy dinosaurs forces Anna to admit that either she’s lost her mind or she can actually see her son’s active imagination. Frightened for David’s safety, Anna struggles to learn the rules of this bizarre phenomenon and how best to protect him. But what she uncovers along the way is completely unexpected: revelations about what her son’s imaginary friends truly represent and dark secrets about her own childhood imaginary friend.

Living next door is Jamie Presswood, Anna’s childhood friend who’s grown much more handsome and hardened than the boy she once knew. But past regrets and their messy lives are making the rekindling of their complex friendship prove easier said than done. Between imaginary creatures stalking her son and a tumultuous relationship with David’s biological father, Anna may find it impossible to have room in her life or her heart for another man. But as David’s visions become more threatening, Anna must learn to differentiate between which dangers are real and which are imagined, and whom she can truly trust.

Sounds fun, right? Mothering, magic realism, maybe a little love story on the side – sounds like a great formula for a light summer read. It had great potential, but I just could not warm up to this one. To the author’s credit, I was intrigued enough by David’s experiences with the dinosaurs that I kept reading all the way through to the end to find out how it all turned out.

It was, however, a bit of a chore to endure the protagonist throughout the story. Young, self-centred and vapid, I was surprised to find myself actively disliking her, and found it nearly impossible to relate to her or her choices. When she called her son “whiny” instead of describing him as “whining” I may have actually cringed. I get that she’s supposed to be a young mother and clearly from a different generation than me, but even as a mother to a seven year old with an incredibly active imagination, I just couldn’t find anything in Anna to like. In fact, none of the characters resonated with me, not Anna’s kindly grandparents nor the imaginative little boy at the centre of the story. Only the hunky boy next door who’s “grown much more handsome and hardened” seemed to have much depth at all, and that wasn’t nearly enough to carry the story.

It’s a really neat, imaginative idea for a story, and the end was satisfying enough to make it worth the time to read, but any time I find myself actually rolling my eyes at the conventions in a story, I can’t help but give it a less-than-stellar review.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book to review. It might be the last!

Photo of the day: Lucas in the dandelions

Companion piece to yesterday’s photo of the day:

Lucas in the dandelions

Uh oh, I don’t have a third one in the series and I cut the grass. We’ll have to go find someone else’s dandelions so I can make my triptych!

It’s portrait season and the porch is open for business. I’ve got new gear, new props and new ideas – if you’re interested in fun, candid family photography, get in touch and we’ll book your family’s custom photography session today!

Photo of the day: Amateur tulips

So I’m kneeling at the edge of the tulip bed in a skirt with my iPhone, trying to frame this shot without exposing my netherbits to the spring sunshine and I’m aware of the dude who has come up behind me with a tripod and ginormous lens but I’m almost done and I’ll soon be out of his way.

A second guy comes up and asks him if he’s done yet and the first guy says quietly but clearly enough for me to hear, ‘Just waiting for amateur-hour to get out of the way.’ I shoot them an evaluative look over my shoulders and decide I’m feeling cheeky.

“You know,” I say, with a bit of a smile, “I made over three grand last year selling photos that I took with my iPhone.” Dude #1 looks somewhere between chastened and mortified but dude #2 is fascinated and we chat amiably for 10 minutes about selling stock while dude #1 sends death-glare eye daggers at his buddy.

Also? Because tulips!

(Sorry if we’re friends on Facebook and you’re seeing this story for the second time, but it was too fun not to share on the blog.)

Thoughtful eating: The Dorito Effect

From Michael Pollan to Mark Bittman to Michael Moss to Yoni Freedhoff to Michael Smith, I love being challenged to think about food in new ways. I found this Globe and Mail excerpt from a new book called The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor fascinating.

It talks about how the foods we are supposed to eat (plants, animals – things that grow) are becoming less flavourful and things we should not eat (Doritos) are subject to endless billions of research dollars to make them more flavourful.

As humans mastered growing livestock and plants, however, we changed their ecological purpose. The reason animals produced meat wasn’t so that some human could eat it. Meat is muscle, which enables movement, and fat, which stores energy. Vegetables are the plant equivalent – structure and nutrient storage. A plant grew fruit or seeds not so that a human could bake pie but so that the plant could reproduce. Today, instead of eating living things designed by nature, we started doing the designing. And we got so good at it that food became very different. It’s a difference we still don’t fully understand but one we can most certainly taste.

I wonder if this is one of the reasons why everything from our Roots and Shoots CSA farm share tastes so damn good? It’s definitely part of the reason I’m willing to pay premium prices for most of my pork, chicken and beef through a butcher that supports local ethically, sustainably grown meat.

Beets and carrots

Only a couple of more weeks until our farm share starts coming in. I can hardly wait! I put a hold on The Dorito Effect through the library – 107 holds on 10 copies. I’ll let you know what I think when I get it!

Have you read other books like the In Defense of Food or Salt Sugar Fat that have changed how you think about food?

And, does it make me a horrible person if while I am pontificated about this, there is a wee tiny corner of my brain that said, “Wait, did somebody say Doritos?”