Despite the fact that UC Berkeley nutrition specialist Joanne Ikeda retired last year, she continues to serve as a childhood nutrition expert and is frequently contacted for comment by the news media.
Yesterday the San Francisco Chronicle published a fun story by Stacy Finz about changes in laws governing school foods. Finz opened the piece with a personal anecdote about her own childhood snacking habits.
"When I was growing up, my after-school snack almost always started with a triple-decker peanut butter and sugar sandwich on Wonder bread," Finz wrote.
She sought Ikeda's comments on the Institute of Medicine's guidelines for children's foods, which call for a diet containing no more than 35 percent of calories each from fat and sugar and a maximum of 200 mg of sodium daily.
Ikeda said the IOM's standards should be used to help parents and children make good choices. It's more important, however, to follow the federal government's recommended daily values for fat, sodium, calories and the like. Those guidelines can be found at http://mypyramid.gov.
In selecting foods for their children, Ikeda recommends parents check a product's ingredient label first to see if sugar or unhealthful oils are high on the list. If not, then proceed to the nutrition fact box to investigate further, according to the Chron story.
Also during her "retirement," Ikeda is serving as a consultant to Cartoon Network, which is adopting a new health agenda, according to a recent press release. Cartoon Network has newly formalized food- and beverage-related guidelines that will regulate the use of its licensed characters and it will develop new programming that integrates positive messages regarding nutrition and activity, the release says.
