4/17/10

Children and food

If when you go to school, and show 10-year-old kids different types of food, what does it tell you about how they eat?
If they recognize Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Coke, Gatorade, Special K, "Lunchables", fruit roll-ups, fruit juices, canned food and McDonalds... but cannot tell the difference between a few greens, basic herbs, or recognize oats... would you be surprised that kids are becoming fat, reaching puberty earlier than ever, and suffering from diseases that were common only to older folk?
If kids easily recognize white sugar and white flour, but give a sigh of awe at the mere sight of brown sugar, brown rice and whole wheat flour... are we not missing something here? Perhaps just basic nutrition?
Were you to compile a journal of what your kids eat everyday, 365 days a year, what would they get at the end? A varied, colorful, rich diet full of different types of vitamins, amino acids, micro-organisms, protein, calcium, iron etc... brown rice, whole grains, beans, vegetables, fruits...
Or plain-old protein, calcium, sugar, fat, hormones (regular, hormone-enriched dairy/meat such as cheese, milk, chocolate milk, pizza, chicken nuggets, hamburgers, hot-dogs, sliced turkey, sliced ham...), and chemicals (food coloring, vitamins, maltose, dextrose, niacins, guar gum, xantham gum, citric acids, preservatives, nitrates, hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup...): chicken, milk, cheese, meat, cereal, chips, soda, white bread, donuts, school cafeteria food, fast-food...
If we want our children to live well, and be happy, successful, and free of suffering from diseases and ailments, don't we have a responsibility to do anything we can to feed them good food? We are responsible for their well-being. We lay down the basics on which they will build their lives, and their future. If our kids are 10-years old, that means only another 7 or 8 years of our lives before they go off on their own! Make those count, and be proud that you once said NO to junk food, and YES to good food for your kids.

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