Hacker News Reader

Comment by sevensor | Hacker News Reader

Those toddlers' parents may not have received the greatest nutrition education. In the 1980s, ketchup was famously declared a vegetable (despite being mostly sugar). Anecdotally, as a child in the U.S. during that era, I remember being marked wrong on a nutrition worksheet where I identified milkshakes as a dessert. No, my teacher insisted. Milkshakes aren't dessert. They're dairy.

View on HN

That's the thing about the food pyramid that was so bad, foods don't always neatly fit into one category, and foods sharing a category can have very different nutritional profiles.

No wonder so many Americans eat iceberg lettuce, and put added sugar in bread.

Well, even in the 80s, people were mocking the Reagan administration's classification of ketchup as a vegetable.

And for all the flaws of the food pyramid, I can remember a time before that when it was even worse. We had the "Basic Four" food groups: meat, dairy, fruit+vegetables, and grains.

The four lobby groups!

Wait, what's wrong with iceberg lettuce? Seriously, as an American that eats like 1/2 head per day, am I rotting my teeth out? Am I headed for diabetes? You've got me scared.

I think he's just referring to it having next to zero nutritional value.

It's nutritional profile is significantly less than an average vegetable. I advice switching iceberg lettuce for darker leafy greens. Assuming you eat the lettuce in salads this can be done without much discomfort by slowing introducing darker greens in your salad, and adding more as your body is accustom to them.

You aren't hurting yourself by eating lettuce, but it's a missed opportunity to do so much more for your diet. See the difference for yourself.

https://www.nutritionvalue.org/Lettuce%2C_raw%2C_iceberg_%28...

https://www.nutritionvalue.org/Spinach%2C_raw_nutritional_va...

It's not bad of itself but it's nutritionally deficient. My ex raised herps lizards and turtles. Both die of malnutrition if fed too much iceberg lettuce.

It's nutritionally equivalent to an unfiltered glass of water

Ketchup vegetable wasn't "education"; it was political football with school lunch funding and minimum vegetable requirements and trying to feed kids when they'd simply throw away any salad they were served.

I agree most comments here are confusing what's being taught in schools with what was a ridiculous "compromise" in school cafeterias.

But I'm sure the reason kids threw away fruits and vegetables because they were terrible; not necessarily because they were healthy. I don't know if it's a low value put on food or cost-cutting...I'm sure both are related. You can see this in places other than schools, outside of every corporate meeting is a tray of terrible honeydew and cantaloupe. Most lettuce and tomato don't really have flavor but seem to leach off-flavors. In my personal experience, when I find out someone says they don't like a certain food about half the time it's because they've never had a good example of it.

It's difficult because fresh food spoils so much more quickly than other, cheaper, and less healthy foods. But what's crazy is that today we have way better technology than most of human history to make even the foods most prone to spoilage cheaper an accessible...it's just relative to frozen pizza and ketchup it's more expensive.

Most food suppliers for schools are the same companies supplying food for prisons. With a captive consumer base I certainly wouldn't expect all that great of fruit and vegetables. Their only concerns are profit and passing minimum safety standards.

> No, my teacher insisted. Milkshakes aren't dessert. They're dairy.

Ha! I suppose fruit roll ups[1] are also "fruit" then right?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_roll_up

I'm a parent of two kids.

One thing I've noticed is that a huge percentage of the American population had been tricked into thinking that fruit juice is healthy.

It isn't healthy. It is soda with some vitamins tossed in as far as the body is concerned.

I fully blame the US government for this. Even liberal cities that pass soda tax laws ignore fruit juice, because hippies with a naturalistic fallacy are a powerful voting bloc on the Democratic party.

I would say that MOST toddlers I see drink several juices a day.

For my kids, it was always a treat, and served incredibly watered down, as in 1 part juice to 6 parts water. So sweet that they don't even know that.

Insanity.

Agreed. We don't water it down, but we do consider it a treat -- a juice box is a lollipop, not an apple. It's not for daily consumption.

I also see lots of parents offering "fruit snack" candies to their kids as if that's a legitimate substitute for actual fruit.

Don't even get me started on breakfast cereal.

If I create milkshake from milk and fruit only is that still desert? That is how they are done around here.

We'd call that a shake in the US, but not a milkshake. My gut tells me there is a distinction. You can drink a "shake" after the gym, but a milkshake with a burger and fries.

Our milkshakes will have other additives such as malt, vanilla extract, and some sweetener.

I would call it a smoothie, not a shake. To me a shake is a smoothie with ice cream in it.

That's a Fruitmilk

I'd call that a smoothie and still treat it as a dessert. Fruits are pretty sugary and very much an "after a meal and in moderation" thing for me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com