Too Much Food For Kids: Candy Canes Drive Me Mad

candy canes drive me mad

Dear School Principal

 

My son has just completed kindergarten at your school. He is not yet 6 years old. Over the past 2 weeks leading up to the end of the school year, he has recieved some lovely Christmas wishes from many of the children in his class. Most of these Christmas wishes have come in the form of a card and what many people call a “treat”. This has resulted in him receiving the equivalent of 350gms of candy canes and in excess of 120gms of chocolate.

 

And that’s just what I know about! He and his brother have an understanding with us that they will bring home any food they are given at school, and my husband and I can help them to decide if they should eat it or not, so thankfully he has not eaten all of this.

His brother who is 8 years old, whilst not receiving quite as much candy, has also had an excess of food coming from the school over these last couple of weeks, including a class party on the last day of school, just in case the children weren’t going to get enough to eat over the Christmas period.

My six year old’s haul of goodies yields the following:

 

350 gms candy cane: 1400 kilocalories (yes, kilocalories, not kilojoules)

120 gms chocolate: approx 600 kilocalories.

 

That is a total of 2000 kilocalories, well in excess of the recommended daily energy intake for an average adult female! What’s even more scary is that for the most part, if kids are eating this stuff, they are eating it over and above their other food. Let’s face it, a candy cane or two certainly doesn’t fill you up like a nutritious bowl of lentil caserole and brown rice would!

To balance out the extra energy a child would take in if they ate 2000 calories, they would have to not eat for at least a day and a half, or do the following exercise over and above their current exercise levels, during the 2 week period they were consuming the sweets:

  • 2 hrs of cycling
  • 2 hrs of running
  • 3 hrs of walking

No six year old is going to do either of the things necessary to counteract the extra calorie intake. We don’t expect our kids to stop eating for a day and a half to two days, nor do we expect them to exercise for an EXTRA 7 hours over and above what they normally do in a two week period. Mine already run/jump/cycle/surf/swim themselves ragged.

So what’s the solution?

This is a request for you to show leadership on this matter and implement a policy which greatly restricts the amount of food children are given in our wonderful school. That would mean:

  • Eliminating food to be sold as fund raising
  • Moving Australia’s biggest morning tea to actually be at morning tea time, rather than before school, meaning kids have breakfast, cake and cordial at 9am, fruit break morning tea, lunch etc
  • Celebrate childrens’ birthdays withouth bringing in cupcakes
  • Sweet free lunch boxes
  • An overhaul of the canteen menu
  • Eliminate the practice of teachers giving children food as reward for good work or good behaviour – I was totally surprised about this one

This is a very hastily written note which only touches on the surface of my concerns and ideas for what we, as a school community could do to turn things around, so I would be very pleased to discuss this further with you.

 

Wow – what an eye-opener

If you have concerns about how much food your kids get at school, add your voice below!

Gold Coast Marathon 2013

One of the major events we’ll be focusing on next year will be a trip to the Gold Coast for the Gold Coast Marathon (and half marathon, 10km, 5km, and 4km and 2km kids’ dash)

Early in the New Year you’ll be given an opportunity to join our private Gold Coast Marathon Facebook page. We’ll also be putting together some complimentary training programs for each of the distances for you, which will include fun runs in Sydney we’ll be targeting leading up to the event.

Keep your eye out for more info in the New Year.

Take a look at the Gold Coast Marathon site.

If you’re interested in any of the races, particularly the longer distances, use the next few weeks to make sure you are training consistently. Set aside 3 or 4 days of the week that you will train, and stick to that. You should be aiming for 1-2 interval training sessions/week, 1 session/ week which will be a longer run, or become a long run, and 1-2 shorter runs per week.

For anyone just starting to think about stepping up to a longer distance (which could be any distance really, depening on where you are with your training at the moment)your training up until the New Year might look something like:

 

Day one: interval training group session

Day two: 10-20 min run @ 5-6/10

Day three: 20-30 min run @ 3-410

Day four: 30 min run @ 3/10

Day four will gradually build up to a much longer run, so you need to pick a day on which you can spend up to a couple of hours training, and keep that day for your long run. Whilst it’s not a long run yet, it will be.

 

We love the Gold Coast event because:

  • You head north for the sun in the middle of winter
  • The temperature is great for running. Not too hot, not too cold
  • It’s a pretty flat course, so if you can mentally handle the out and back nature of the course, you are likely to do a pretty slick time
  • It’s well organised
  • It’s a great opportunity for a road trip
  • There are lots of distances, so everyone can have a go. If you set your sights too high, you can always drop down a distance
  • An easy, flat course for kids in the 2km and 4km
  • Lots of theme parks (though I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing)
  • Lots of inexpensive accommodation

 

Favourite Interval Training Session

Richard, what is your favourite interval training session?

“That depends on what I’m training for, and what stage of my training I’m at. My main focus is usually a 10km race, so I like to pull out this session every so often. It’s a great speed endurance workout, and terrific for helping you to run on how you feel, rather than any set time. The key is to really take notice of how you’re feeling in your warm up”

Warm up

10 min easy jog followed by 6 * 100-200m run throughs at the desired pace for the session. The main part of the session is run at perceived current 10km pace – ie the pace you could race a 10km fun run right at the time of the training session.

You can use these run throughs to help you determine how fast you should do the main part of your session. Either use a Garmin to measure your distance and pace, or do the session on a track.

Run through a couple of 200’s at an effort that you feel you could run your 10km at. After the first few, you should have a good feel for what sort of pace you’re on for the session. Then you can assess what pace you’re running at, and apply that pace to the main part of your session.

So, to clarify (hopefully).

Easy run for 10 mins

2 -4 * 200m run throughs at a pace that you feel you could race a 10km in, based on how you feel right now, when you’re running, NOT based on previous times, PB’s, or times you’re hoping to achieve in the future. In fact, not based on time at all, just on how you’re feeling.

Once you’re comfortable that you’ve got the pace you can race 10km in, have a look at the actual pace you are going. Do another 2 or 3 * 200 and either using a Garmin or other GPS device, look at the pace you are going, or time the 200m and multiply by 5 to get your KM pace.

Core Session

10*1km @ perceived 10km pace (as assessed in warm up)

30 sec standing recovery between each 1km interval

Cool down

10 min easy jog followed by some stretching.

 

Tell us your favourite running session.

Low Fat Christmas Recipes

I thought I might get into the Christmas spirit and share a few healthy Christmas recipes with you, so I turned to that trusty source, “the internet”, and duly typed in “healthy Christmas recipes”. The entire front page of the search results was devoted to low fat Christmas recipes, which got me thinking.

Why do we still equate healthy food with low fat food? Hello people out there in Google land, fat is good for you. Yes, you heard me right. Fat is good for you. The right sort of fat of course. Generally, animal fats should be eaten sparingly, except for fish and fats found in unfarmed kangaroo, and to an extent free range beef (which is pretty much all beef farmed in Australia) which are high in omega 3 and omega 6 fats. Good fats are also found in vegetable oils such as flaxseed oil, olive oil, hemp oil, nuts and seeds, avocado, to name a few. A great book on fats is Fats That Heal, Fat’s That Kill by Udo Erasmus. There is a bit of biochemistry for you to digest, but on the whole, a pretty easy read and very informative.

Anyway, my point is, as a population, we need to stop thinking that all fat is bad for you, and that if a food is low fat, it must be good for you. There are so many other factors to take into consideration. Mostly, low fat foods are high in carbohydrates, which is not necessarily always a bad thing – look at carrots, capsicum and peaches, just to pick three foods at random.

Processed foods which have a low fat label, are generally high on processed carobhydrates. Something needs to give the food the yummy flavour which brings us back to the packet, clammering for more!

The other thing I noticed when I looked at a few of the recipes was that yes, some of them were not only low in fat but also low in calories per serve. But who can eat just one tiny midgy little shortbread, so small that it only yields 31.5 calories per biscuit? Not me, that’s for sure.

My plan for eating healthily at Christmas time is simple.

Eat what I like on Christmas day.

Eat too much of all the wrong things.

Eat chocolate money and ham on toast for breakfast.

Piles of Christmas pudding with brandy butter and my mum’s excellent coffee icecream, all the turkey I can look at.

It’s just one day of the year, and honestly, if you’re worried about putting on weight, or in fact taking it off, one day of the year is not going to make or break you. But that’s the key. If you’re going to overindulge, it needs to be just one day. And that’s where many people fall down. I’ve been fasting 1-2 days a week for the last 4 weeks now, so I know I can do it. And yes, I do get hungry. If you’re planning on it, be aware it’s not for the faint hearted. (Quite literally – don’t even consider fasting if you have any type of medical condition, or if you are pregnant).

If you know that you find it almost impossible not to eat when you start feeling really hungry, you’re better off just to eat small portions of your favourite food, and don’t risk getting to the end of Boxing Day and reaching for the leftovers in a half crazed manner.

I don’t plan to be eating and picking at bits and pieces for the weeks leading up to Christmas (well not much anyway), and I do plan to fast on Boxing Day, and possibly the next day as well-ready for New Year’s Eve. I’ll be more than doubling my daily caloric intake on Christmas day-more than enough to see me through till the end of the week I should think!

I’ll throw in a decent run as well, and voila, there you have it. Reasonably healthy Christmas eating. And I really don’t have to think about it.

 

What are your plans for avoiding excess energy intake over the Christmas period?

Running With The Kenyans

Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn, is a great read, and is now one of my ‘Top Shelf’ books.

Despite his rather “un-anglo” name, the author is an anglo-saxon English guy who felt he never quite reached his potential as a runner and is keen to find out ‘the Kenyan secret’. Even though he’s not what you would call a top runner (38 min for 10K), he and his family move to the town of Iten, in Kenya, to live and train with some of the fastest distance runners on earth, Finn’s keen to see if he can work out exactly what makes the Kenyan’s so good. As you’d expect, it’s not a simple answer.

One of the keys to the success of Kenyan running, is Brother Colm, who Finn spends some time with. Brother Colm is an Irish priest, who came to Kenya in the 1970’s to teach at a local school. He inherited the athletics coaching position, even though he knew absolutely nothing about the topic, but he has since produced dozens of Olympic Gold medallists, World Champions, and World Record holders from 800m to the Marathon. You could say he has an abundance of ‘fairly’ good talent to choose from, however he’s obviously used it wisely.

There are plenty of great anecdotes throughout the book. A favourite of mine is when the author is trying to phone a 2hr 4min marathoner..He happens to call the wrong number, but not to worry, the person who picks up the phone is a 2 hr 5 min marathoner, so he’ll do. In most parts of the world, 2 hr anything marathoners are fairly hard to come by! Talk about a concentration of champions. Of the 4000 people living in and around the town of Iten, 1000 are full time athletes!

I found this book very easy to read. It flowed along nicely without getting bogged down in the detail of his daily life. Throughout the story the author gradually builds the relationships he is developing with his ‘team’ of Kenyans who are training for the Lewa Marathon with him, Finn’s first. Running your first marathon is intimidating enough, but add to it the hazards of running through the open African savanah (read: LIONS!), and you’ve got a real challenge on your hands.

Finn’s descriptions of his early morning runs evoke wonderful images of runners making their way to the meeting spot in the pre-dawn African light. Nothing needs to be pre-arranged. Everyone knows where to meet. You just show up at 6am, and (if you’re a white guy), hope you can keep up the pace.

Anyone interested in running and/or wishing to improve their running will get a great deal from the book, through inspiration, some technical advice, and finding out the secret to what makes these Kenyans so good.

Happy Reading

You can grab a copy of Running With The Kenyans from the Book Depository. Right now the soft cover edition is 40% off, at $18.71. And you receive free shipping worldwide.