What the bulk?

The kids have been back in school now for a few days and that means coming up with creative lunch ideas five times a week!

Most of the time I give them each a sandwich, wrap or salad, a piece of fruit, something crunchy and something sweet.

One of the things they love is a very simple homemade trail mix with satisfies the crunchy/sweet thing very well! Sure, Trader Joe's (which finally opened locally, yahooooooo!!!) makes a great assortment of trail mixes, but I think it's fun to make my own. Plus, the kids enjoy being a part of it. Most of the time children really do like being asked to help.

I usually mix Cheerios, raisins, Craisins, chocolate chips (dark), raw almonds, raw sunflower seeds and pretzels. There is really no recipe here or rules, just have fun with it. I recommend making one big batch that will last for days.

Sugar, Sugar, Sugar

Sugar is everywhere. And sometimes it still surprises me how much is in our snacks. Take trail mix, for example. I'm sure you know not all trail mixes are created equal. For example, I bought my son this little trail mix to have during his baseball game. Normally I wouldn't buy one with M&Ms in it, but this was a treat :) Turns out this little harmless looking package had 16 grams of sugar per (tiny) bag.

Well, a teaspoon of sugar is 4.2 grams. So this 16 gram of sugar package has about FOUR TEASPOONS! of sugar.

So what does that look like?

 Most sodas have around 39 grams of sugar. 39 GRAMS. That is more than NINE teaspoons. So the glass above? More than double the amount shown....just drink water, my dear friends!