4-H Cooking Club: The nutritional value of Kraft Dinner

Kraft-Dinner-No-NO1By Lauren Gough – Special to the Sydenham Current

Lately I have been learning about ways to find and make good food fast with a group of my friends.

We all agree there are some times in our week where it is necessary to eat fast food and convenience food. We know the advantages of fast food are the relatively low cost, easy to prepare, and short preparation time. Some of the disadvantages of convenience foods are the high sodium, fat, and additives.

How do we know which ones are the best choice?

Food manufacturers by law must add nutrition labels on food products. These labels can be very difficult to understand for adults let alone kids and teenagers.

Our 4H Cooking Club looked at a nutrition label and broke it down into simple steps. We looked at the different kinds of fat, sodium, carbohydrates, proteins, calories, and serving sizes.

Our growing bodies need all of these things but only in the correct amounts each day. Many convenience and fast foods contain all the fat and cholesterol you need in one day in one meal. These fats are the harmful kind that build up in your body over time and can lead to obesity and heart disease.

The other harmful ingredient in many prepared foods is sodium or salt. Teenagers between the ages of 9 and 13 require 1500 mg per day of sodium according to the Health Canada website. One frozen prepared macaroni and cheese entrée we cooked contained over 1000mg of sodium in a single serving meal. Carbohydrates are another word for the sugar content in foods. Naturally occurring sugars in fruits and vegetables are good for you. The sugars to look out for are the refined sugars that are in prepared foods.

On nutrition labels there is a section called the %Daily Value. This value is located on the right hand side of the nutrition label and is an easy indicator for kids to use to see if a food is a good choice. The %Daily Value is the nutritional requirement you need of that item in one day. If something has 0% Daily Value then it is probably full of empty calories and does not have nutritional value. The bottom area of the nutritional label lists the vitamin and mineral content of the food. If something lists 10-100% Daily Value then the food may be a better choice.

On occasion many members of our group enjoy Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. We are not alone as many kids and teenagers enjoy this food as a meal or after school snack. I wanted to know why there is so much sodium in it and decided to call Kraft Canada. Their responses to my questions were very scripted and contained information that I already knew.

I was told that Kraft Canada is “aware of nutritional needs and concerns of our consumers and always open for questions.” They told me that it is “your diet over time that matters the most, rather than the sodium content of any one particular food product”.

In other words don’t eat Kraft Dinner every day.

The customer service representative also said “Salt also helps with the taste, texture and preservation of many foods, especially those that stay on shelves for a long time.

Currently, there is no satisfactory replacements for sodium that will allow products to have a high quality, taste and meet customers expectations.” She recommended lower sodium choices of Kraft dinner such as Kraft Dinner Smart, with Fibre, Omega and three-cheese.

All of this information has lead me to a few simple conclusions. When grocery shopping stay to the outside areas such as fruit, vegetable, meat, bread, and dairy sections. If you do need convenience items, look for low fat/ low calorie/low sodium options and refer to %Daily values.

Wallaceburg resident Lauren Gough, who is 12-years-old, is the 4H Press Reporter for the Eberts Cooking Club.

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