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Houston Babies
Poll: Lesser of 2 evils?
I know both chocolate milk and apple juice are not the best choices to drink for a toddler, but DS will drink them, so those are our options for him to stay hydrated currently (without a meltdown fight, anyway).
I feel like the chocolate is extra sugar, but the milk at least has some fat and nutrients (although I am now considering buying the Sugar Free syrup to make me feel better!).
Apple juice = pure sugar to me, but it has some vitamin C :-/ and since I water it down a lot, I feel like he is at least getting more water than calories.
Which do you think is the lesser of 2 evils?
[Poll]This discussion has been closed.
Re: Poll: Lesser of 2 evils?
I voted chocolate milk, but honestly I'd do some of each and keep trying water and OJ and whatever other juices you want to (hopefully) broaden his palate. Personally I'm not real anti-sugar so long as the kid doesn't have a weight issue, in fact I'd rather give sugar than artificial sugar substitutes (aka chemicals).
FWIW, my kid is currently addicted to gummy fruit snacks, talk about sugary! But, it was the trade off for weaning him off his paci, without the ginormous continual screaming fit. I console myself that I buy the "natural" ones and they do have vitamin C in them!! So.... yeah... baby steps...
ETA: My kid drinks water a lot and plain milk but I still let him have juice and chocolate milk, my philosophy is this: he's a high energy kid, he's going to burn those extra calories no problem and variety is the spice of life, right? I don't think he'd had chocolate milk before last May when we went to Costa Rica, apparently flavored milk is hugely popular there, sometimes I had a hard time finding plain milk (that wasn't powdered) but they had all kinds of crazy flavors.
He will drink water, regular milk, and OJ - so we do still offer them to him. But when he asks for somethign specifically, it's either chocolate milk or juice - so, just trying to justify either so I feel ok about fulfilling the request instead of saying "no" and having a meltdown. :-)
I do only get 100% juice and always water it down. And the chocolate milk - I literally just put a little dollup in it and let him watch me stir it. So, it probably doesn't have much chocolate in it - he just thinks it choco milk b/c he saw me put some in it. (He never gives it back to me after he drinks it for "more chocolate", so that's good - I think I am tricking him just enough.) ;-)
Have you tried giving him a water bottle? Maybe if he isn't used to drinking from them he will drink more from it.
E loves drinking from them and will always try to finish off the water I have in mine.
Ah - you are right - I forgot he does like to drink out of water bottles. We don't typically buy bottled water, though - maybe I need to change that. ;-)
Our doctor has recommended chocolate milk over juice, provided you have a child who refuses things without sugar.
This is something I work hard to combat. Like everyone, we all have things we have to work around in our children that are not ideal eating habits.
Juice to me is liquid sugar and has little to no nutritional value. When I had GD, the first thing the dietitians forbade was juice and soda. You know that means its probably really bad.
Orange juice with added calcium is better than apple juice; apple juice is sugar in liquid form. Chocolate itself is not harmful; it is the sugar that is the issue. I wonder how far you can dial it back until you just add brown food coloring? (I'm a tricky parent...I plot all the time against meltdowns.)