Sunny D?

Kids shouldn't drink it anyway because it tastes nasty.

Why the Scooby Doo Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, specifically? Isn't it all a salt-bomb, no matter what "shape" the pasta is in?

I used to love Sunny D when I was a kid, but when I started reading food labels as a teenager, I realized that Sunny D was more or less just "orange"-flavored sugar water.

Wow, now there's a walk down memory lane. As a kid I pretty much ate all this stuff. Kudos bars were trated like actual granola bars in my house. The Snickers kind was my favorite. That, some Dunkaroos and a bologna and cheese sammich rounded out my lunch in elementary school.

Man, I miss Dunkaroos.

I wonder if Fruit By the Foot is any more or less unhealthy than Fruit Rollups. They beat Fruit by the Foot in taste and general awesomeness. Any food stuff with tongue tattoos has gotta be good for you!

@emona: Yes, but Fruit by the foot had paper on it that came right off and Fruit Roll-Ups had a piece of plastic that stuck like glue to the snack if it was at all warm or humid out. Half of my snack time was spent wrestling that stuff off.

@Smashville: I mean they the passed purple stuff. PURPLE STUFF. I love purple stuff.

This is not a terribly inspired list. They picked some ridiculous easy targets, and said the same thing about each one. Mass market canned soup has too much sodium! Kraft Dinner has too much sodium! Sunny D has too much sugar! Well, of *course* they do, they're the home cooking equivalent of junk food.

What really gets me, though, are some of the alternate recommendations. Replacing one brand of granola bar with another, healthier brand is great, and kids really probably won't notice the difference... but substituting brown rice for Kraft Dinner? I'm a fan of rice, it has its place, I make a pretty mean risotto myself, but if my mother had told my six year old self "Instead of the delicious cheesy salty Kraft Dinner you were expecting when you walked home through the rain for your lunch, here's some plain brown rice!", she would have had a mutiny on her hands. Ditto with replacing waffles with plain oatmeal.

Their "healthier" suggestions for six of nine items are yet another processed food product. Don't feed your kid this shitty TV dinner, feed him that one instead. Um, no.

I find SunnyD's commercials make me very very irritated. I've never liked it even as a kid, and they're spouting "Has as much vitamin D as MILK!" to make it seem healthy.

I know bovine milk isn't good for everyone, but for gods sakes JUST GIVE THEM MILK (Soy, Rice, Bovine, or whatever)!!

If your children insist they want sweet drinks (and you can't find the spinal fortitude to "deprive" them) make Kool-Aid with a mix of granulated sugar, and Stevia/Newvia/Splenda. Sweet, and is really just mostly WATER which kids should drink lots of when playing anyway.

@TakingItSeriously: When my nephews whine about sweet drinks, I give them chocolate soy milk. Don't like it? Here's some tap water. It's called being an authority figure.

I'm sure if the list had been expanded to 20, Capri Sun would have been on it. That stuff was potently sugary.

that list is practically 90% of the average kid's summer diet...

@o-line: For the most part, but at least we're starting to see more whole grain macaroni and cheese on the shelf. Not that it affects sodium content, but, hey, more fiber.

@pecan 3.14159265: And they don't even do the orange flavor well.

@TakingItSeriously: I have always, always hated the taste of straight milk. Loathing. Passionate, whole-hearted loathing. Blessed was the day, somewhere around first grade, when my family stopped more-or-less force-feeding it to me.

(Soy and rice milks were not exactly readily available alternatives when I was a small child.)

There is a sweet and not terribly unhealthy alternative for active kids, though, and that's juice. Real juice, not "juice" like Sunny D. I went through a lot of grape juice as a kid.

@Applekid: Hahaha, awesome...

@Applekid: What's funny is my initial comment was going to be, "Are we to infer that it's okay to drink the purple stuff?"

@TakingItSeriously: Or something like Crystal Light with no sugar.

@VA_White: But! Food from paying advertisers is much healthier.

For Time's financials.

"Kraft Scooby-Doo! Macaroni & Cheese Dinner

Better choice: Uncle Ben's Brown Whole Grain Rice. Swap mac and cheese for brown rice as a side dish. "

Wow, brown rice. Sounds like a real riot. I hated when I had to stay over at THAT kid's house.

Nothing against brown rice, I just don't think you're going to get away with it as a substitute.

@EBounding: They left out the part where you cover the brown rice in cheese whiz.

@EBounding: Yeah, kids tend to stay away from the houses that serve brown rice instead of mac and cheese. A better good alternative is cheesy rice (but not too cheesy) with vegetables.

@Etoiles: While it has more vitamins than sugar water, juice has a ton of calories. A small glass a day is good for you, but given the (natural or unnatural, depending on the variety you get) sugar content, it's nearly as bad as soda. In fact, sometimes it has MORE calories.

@VA_White: And the "Eat this, not that" guy recommends stuff in the same restaurant. I think they just know that their audience isn't going to make any significant changes, so a minor improvement is better than nothing.

I'm not a kid but I have Original Goldfish on my desk in front of my while I typed this. I don't mind the salt. I drink a lot of milk and water though.

@pecan 3.14159265: I don't think kids lose their innocence when exposed to sex. Kids truly lose their innocence when they actually start to read nutrition labels.

@emona: Same here with Kudos. What do you mean the peanut butter chocolate chocolate chunk isn't healthy? IT'S GOT PEANUT BUTTER IN IT. Kid Logic yess.

I'm sorry, but is there some sort of child-related salt crisis going on? Of this list, more than half the items were called out because they contained more salt than recommended. Aren't there enough sugary, high-carbohydrate, empty-calorie-laden foods out there to fill a hundred "10 worst" lists before we should even think about adding items because they are too salty (if in fact "too much salt" really is a health risk in the first place [for people without a pre-existing heart condition] - the jury's still out on that).

@TakingItSeriously: I always thought the Sunny D ads were ridiculous too. PACKED WITH VITAMINS WHOO THIS IS HEALTHY and then at the end you hear a low fast-talking voice saying 'contains 5% juice'. For god's sake, just give them some orange juice if they want orange juice.

@EBounding: As much as I love brown rice, when I am in the mood for some mac and cheese, brown rice does not do it for me.

@cabjf: Agreed, but as a kid most artificially sweetened things didn't taste good to me. Even as an adult I am not fond of most artificial sweeteners when used alone. I'm not willing to force my kids to eat/drink things that I wouldn't/won't eat/drink myself. So I choose to mix regular sugar with Stevia/Nuvia/Truvia. I usually use 1/3 to 1/2 the sugar as a result, and it tastes fine :).

@cabjf: Juice is a great alternative for an occasional drink, but if my son is outside playing in the hot sun I like him to consume plenty of fluids. My son drinks water without complaint, because his mother and I do.

@lpranal: Exactly. These kinds of articles never fail to irritate me.

Nice try for the article, but most of those substitutes wouldn't fly. Brown rice instead of mac n cheese? Um...no. And while milk may be healthier, if the child is seeking juice-like drink, it can't replace Sunny D. (I would have recommended replacing Sunny D with actual Orange Juice. High in natural sugars, but not added sugars.)

Hey, stupid little kid! Those goldfish are bad for you, so I'll eat them instead.

I swear that the 'ers' in Goldfish Crackers is just there as a disguise.

Now.. must run to Costco at lunch and buy a bucket.

@smirkette: and it can cause serious diarrhea in small children. Cutting juice with water is a time-honored trick ... and keeping servings small.

One of my favorite foods as a kid was Handi-Snacks [www.amazon.com]

I loved those. They're probably really disgusting to me now, but they were my favorite thing when I was young. I actually liked the crackers better than the sticks, and it came with the little plastic bar-shaped paddle that you could use to put the cheese on the cracker.

@o-line: True true

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): I drink pomegranate/blueberry mix juice with seltzer. I use maybe 1/4 cup juice to one can seltzer. it's so good and it gives my brain the impression of soda. I would assume it would work with most kids too.

@Tiber: I like how the author of the book does that. It's not like if my friends wanna go to Red Robin, I'm gonna say "no, my Eat This Not That book tells me I can't go to Red Robin at all; let's go to Subway." He makes it doable.

@Etoiles: But even real juice is packed with a ton of sugar which turns into fat. Granted, if your kid is outside playing all day it doesn't matter what he eats as much as the kid who sits around. But still, milk has a lot of nutrients you just don't get from juice.

@TakingItSeriously: I'm not a fan of artificial sweeteners either. Just about the only thing I can handle is Crystal Light, but not the individual pouches, only the pitcher size powder for some reason. There's not a single diet pop I like. And "light" juice, especially the Minute Made lemonade, is disgusting to me.

@EBounding: Haha, seriously. I don't even like rice as an adult, and get kinda ticked when something tastier could've been served.

@EBounding: Kids begged to come eat dinner at my whole grain, no-packaged-foods house. But that's because my mom was a kick-ass cook. My lunch was also far more popular than the packaged stuff in the lunch-table-trading.

(And as for substituting for your own kid, if you just never introduce the crap, they never know the difference. I didn't have any white bread until I was in high school and then I was like, "Dude, what IS this crap?")

@abyzmal: Too much salt IS a health risk. It's awful for your heart, and it's not something that gets "burned off" by extra activity. Too much sugar, too much fat--those are not a huge deal if the kid is active.

Kids eat way too many processed foods, which are almost all too salty. Even "homestyle" or "homemade" food is packed with salt, especially at restaurants. I went to Red Robin the other night and I'm trying to watch my sodium intake (high BP) and the options were EXTREMELY limited, even with the "healthy" stuff like wraps.

@pecan 3.14159265:I like the crackers better as well, the stick was always a bit tough for my taste. :)

@o-line: This was my initial reaction too. Im also kind of horrified that they went from "mac and cheese" to "brown rice" THAT fast. I mean...I love brown rice, but what if its a mac and cheese kind of night? They could have at least said "make it your damn self" or named some organic mac, like they do for the granola bars.

@Lokys: This. Absolutely.

@SpiderJerusalem: And seriously, what kind will accept a pile of brown rice from mac and cheese? Annie's makes some organic mac and cheese that is probably healthier (I don't know the exact nutrition facts). Or make your own.

@Etoiles: Yeah. Why DO people gloss over juice? Apple juice is particularly inexpensive.

My family was friends with a family that ONLY had Tang powder in the kitchen. They still do to this day. The Tang jar occupies a place of pride on their kitchen counter. I was obliged to spend some time there when I was in college working for them, and they looked at me like I was a princess for asking if they had any orange juice.