Most folks have heard, by this point, that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has called for a number of measures to help keep young children from choking on food. Their recommendations include warning labels on foods that pose a high choking risk (hot dogs, grapes, carrots, gumballs – or just about anything else that’s small and round or can be bitten into small, round pieces), recalls of products that pose a big choking hazard, and even the redesign of the good-ole American hot dog.
Why? Here are a few related facts:
- Cut a hot dog crosswise and you have a cylinder the perfect size and shape to plug a child’s windpipe.
- A child’s throat doesn’t know the difference between a little rubber ball (for which our government requires a warning label) and a cherry tomato.
- Kids under age 4 can’t chew with the “grinding motion” they need to safely eat hard foods like peanuts and raw vegetables.
- Experts estimate that about one child every five days chokes to death on food in the U.S.
Other government agencies are reviewing the AAP recommendations, and might eventually put some into effect. But meanwhile, any parent with a sharp knife and some common sense can handle their own hot dog redesign. Simply cut the frankfurter in half lengthwise, and then crosswise into bite-sized portions for your child. You can also halve grapes and cherry tomatoes, and chop most other foods into appropriate pieces. Anything you can’t cut to airway-friendly size is probably not appropriate to serve until your child is older.
Here’s a link to the (lengthy) AAP recommendation …
More about choking prevention …
Target stores today pulled Valentine’s Day “Message Bears” from their shelves. The bears hold inflated vinyl letters that are tainted with lead –more than eight times the federal limit for products intended for kids 12 and younger. The lead was detected by testers at the Center for Environmental Health (CEH), a nonprofit dedicated to reducing the industrial use of toxic chemicals, as part of their annual testing of Valentine’s Day products. The organization informed California Attorney General Jerry Brown about the lead-containing bears, and he sent a letter to the retail chain asking them to remove them from the shelves and accept customers’ returns of the products. If you have one of these bears, take it back to the store and insist on a refund.
UCLA researchers now claim it’s the junk food ads kids see while they’re watching television, and not the time spent sitting, that links TV viewing with childhood obesity.
Preschool-age children who eat family meals regularly, get enough sleep and have limited screen-viewing time have a lower risk of obesity, new research has found.
The higher a woman’s blood levels of common flame retardant chemicals, the tougher it is for her to get pregnant, a study from UC Berkeley shows. Chemicals called PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) are found in furniture, carpets, electronics, fabrics and plastics. About 97% of us in the U.S. have detectable levels of these chemicals in our blood, and women in California tend to have higher exposure than those in other parts of the country because of the state’s stringent fire retardant laws.