All Natural

I'll admit, I am not a huge label reader. But I try my best to make good food choices for my children, especially when it comes to the lunches I send with them to school. For a while I tried sending water bottles in their lunch boxes, but the lids were sometimes too difficult for them to open, and they wouldn't always drink all of the water, and then they wouldn't put the lid back on tight enough, and their lunch boxes (and backpacks) would come home a soggy mess. So then I started sending them with Horizon milk boxes. But I've got to tell you, with 3 kids, at $1 per milk box, they quickly got cut from our weekly grocery list. For a short time, Schepps was making milk boxes for 36 cents each, but after literally about a month, I couldn't find them anywhere for sale. So after searching for a good drink to send in their lunch boxes, I decided to go back to an "Old Faithful".... the Juicy Juice juice box. My kids like these juice boxes, and at around $2.30 for an 8 pack, the price was right too! And somehow, I felt good about sending them with one of these juice boxes in their lunch box each day because it says right there on the front of the juice box, "All Natural, 100% Juice." As a Mommy, I felt good about that. The words "All Natural" just made me feel like I was making a healthy choice for my children.
So today, when Hector and Avery came home from running some errands together, I noticed that Hector had bought Avery a 6 pack of something called Kool-Aid Bursts. It's literally a six pack of premade Kool-Aid drinks. I asked myself if Hector knew or realized that those things are loaded with sugar! I walked over to the Kool-Aid box and told Hector that I couldn't believe he would buy something like that for Avery's school lunches. I mean, we needed to see right then and there just how much sugar was in these things... I turned the box around to the label, and read that they have 9 grams of sugar per serving. Wow! That's a lot! And then, to really drive home my point to Hector, I pulled the box of Juicy Juice juice boxes out of the refrigerator and read the label on the All Natural, 100% Juice, Juicy Juice juice box container. And that's right around the time that a wave of shock came over me... Right there, plain as day...

That's right, folks. The "All Natural" juice has 22 grams of sugar per juice box! Over twice as much sugar as the Kool-Aid, and they are both 6.75 ounces. Now get this........ The juice box is 6.75 ounces, with 22 grams of sugar. That's 3.26 grams of sugar per ounce. A 12 ounce can of Coca Cola has 39 grams of sugar. So, how many grams of sugar per ounce are in a can of Coca Cola? Grab your calculators... Go on... Or you can do the math in your head... Go ahead, I'll wait. :-)

Shocked????? Because I was!

HOW could I have been so totally and completely unaware of this? Am I reading that juice box right? Because I think I'm still in shock. Hector and I have made a REAL effort to not let our kids drink sodas. Don't get me wrong, they drink them. But we don't buy them and bring them into the house. They usually only drink them on special occasions or family outings. I simply can not understand why I never read the label. I guess it just never occurred to me that all natural juice could have the same amount of sugar as soda.

So, I know that I always ask for comments on here, and that my loyal readers are busy moms like me. But I would LOVE your ideas, comments and suggestions on healthier drink alternatives for my kids' lunches.