Do your kids deserve to be fat and unhealthy and uneducated and broke?

(originally posted somewhere else July 1, 2007)

I was just going through my coupons, tossing out the ones that expired on June 30th, and as usual, I'm astounded at the not-so-subtle but apparently extremely successful manipulation these marketers are throwing at us all of the time ... and how completely blind we seem to be.

For example, the ad for Nestle Quik chocolate milk, alongside a $.50 coupon. There was a picture of two cute kids, smiling, one holding a single serve Nestle Quik chocolate milkshake. The text of the ad said, "Don't they deserve Nestle Quik?"

Keeping in mind that a single serving of regular milk is one cup and one serving of 1% milk has 100 calories and 2 grams of fat, let's take a peek at the ingredients and nutrition information of Nestle Quik.

Ingredients: PARTLY SKIMMED MILK, SUGAR, WATER, COCOA, SKIM MILK POWDER, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, SALT, CARRAGEENAN, FLAVOUR AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOUR, VITAMN A PALMITATE, VITAMIN D3.

Mkay. That's not as horrible as it could be, although to make it a "shake" they had to add corn starch (corn is EVERYWHERE) and carrageenan, which is an emulsifier made of seaweed (which isn't necessarily bad).

Nutrition information? Well, the first thing to note is that a serving is half a bottle. That pisses me off. The coupon stated that it's for a "single serving" bottle. When I found the product on Google it was by searching for "single serving." But here we see that what parents will give their kids as a single serving is actually two servings. With that in mind, I'm doubling everything and counting one bottle as an actual single serving, which is clearly what they wanted to imply.

That means that one serving is 360 calories, contains 8 grams of fat, 240 mg sodium, 58 g carbs, 2 g fiber, 56 grams sugar, and 16 grams of protein.

Based on a 2000 calorie diet, a kid who drank one of these "single serving" drinks would be getting 18% of his daily calories, 12% of his daily fat, 10% of his sodium, 20% of his sugars, and 4% of his fiber.

Meanwhile, two cups of 1% milk (which is about what one of these single serving drinks equals, in volume) would provide 200 calories (10%), 4 g fat (8%), 214 mg sodium (8%), 24 g carbs (8%), no fiber, but still 16 grams of protein.

The only thing the shake offers that the milk doesn't is Vitamin D, but you can get Vitamin D fortified milk ... or you could go outside in the sun for 15 minutes.

This is a serious difference in nutrition and calories, especially aggregated daily. It's also a serious difference in cost and plastic packaging. But ultimately, what makes me mad the most is the word "deserve" in the ad. If you pay attention to print and TV ads, you'll see that word a lot, or some synonym. You deserve everything, you deserve it now, and if you don't get it, you're deprived and somehow getting an unfair deal.

What is this doing to us, and to our kids? Who are we trying to impress when we bring out the single serving non-biodegradable juice, milk and water bottles for guests instead of turning on the tap and filling up a glass?

Do our kids deserve overpriced, oversugared food so that they can feel affluent now, while at the same time parents are wondering how to save for college?

Just a thought...