JENNIFER LIPPMAN

My daughter’s two and she’s never had a juice box.  I’ve never filled her sippy cup with anything but water.  I tried milk at the beginning, but she flatly refused.  So I continued with water and now, two years later, it’s still the only thing she asks for when she’s thirsty.

An 8 ounce box of organic apple juice from R. W. Knudsen contains 30 grams of sugar and zero grams of fiber.  A normal sized apple contains 18 grams of sugar and 3 grams of fiber, and it’s the “good” sugar—you know, the kind that’s actually IN the actual FRUIT.  You can’t put juice in a box without processing it in at least a few ways.  First of all, the 100% juice is from concentrate.  This means the water from the oranges (which are usually from Brazil, our largest supplier of oranges) is evaporated by machines, the oranges are purchased by dairies in the U.S., shipped over by air and then reconstituted by more machines which add back the water. (!!)  And remember, that’s organic, 100% juice.  Other juice boxes contain as little as 10% juice and are labeled “juice drink”.  Yummy.

Yesterday, at our first “Mommy and Me” class, the teacher asked us to sign up for a day to bring juice boxes and snacks.  I immediately thought about how I would deal with this.  Would I let Daniella drink the juice and begin the downward spiral towards sugar water as beverage?  If I told the other moms she was diabetic and couldn’t drink juice, I’d be lying.  If I told the other moms she didn’t like juice and actually preferred water, they’d think I was a lying control freak.  So what did I do?  I signed up to be the very first mom to bring snacks.  I went to Trader Joes and bought organic cheddar cheese sticks, no salt pretzel thins, freeze-dried mangoes and mini bottled waters.

The kids scarfed everything and asked for more.  It was a snack success.  There was calcium, healthy fat and lots of protein in the cheese.  Pretzels for carbs and the pure joy of crunchy snacking.  And why get salted?  If your kid eats an unsalted pretzel from Trader Joes and asks you to put salt on it, then talk to me. 

The biggest hit, of course, were the freeze-dried mangoes.  Delicious.  Melt in your mouth.  Sweeter than candy.  All sugar, but sugar with fiber and vitamins from an actual food group.  Real fruit with no added sugar or artificial flavors.

And every kid drank water.  No one complained or asked for juice.  The youngest boy drank milk from his sippy cup.  I prayed that next week Taylor’s mom would follow my lead and bring water.  But I wondered if instead, I would watch quietly as my child became another card-carrying member of the juice box nation.