"Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina states that of the six hundred thousand food items for sale in the United States, 80% are laced with added sugar. Ninety percent of the food produced in the United States is sold to you by a total of ten conglomerates-Coca-Cola, ConAgra, Dole, General Mills, Hormel, Kraft, Nestle, Pepisco, Procter and Gamble, and Unilever."
--Robert H. Lustig, author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease
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| Teaching about natural sugar (found in fruits) with Louis Schacht of Schacht Groves, at a Growing Healthy Kids' event. |
Next time
you visit a grocery store, look at the checkout area. You will probably notice a refrigerator with
glass doors attractively stocked with sodas.
I am always
fascinated to watch who opens the door and who doesn’t. Do they have kids with them or not? What else do they have in their grocery
cart? Let’s just say that it will be my
cart that contains the kale, not theirs.
Marketing
sugar to kids is a huge business. And
why shouldn’t it be? There are huge
profits to be made from selling sugar, a highly addictive substance with no
nutritional value. A 12-oz soda with 39
grams of sugar contains 10 teaspoons of sugar.
At a recent Growing Healthy Kids workshop, the discussion was on
identifying added (read “unhealthy”) sugars, such as the high fructose corn
syrup found in sodas and ketchup. When I
put 10 teaspoons of sugar in a cup and passed it around, the kids recoiled,
refusing to consume it. But put a soda
in a bright red can in front of them and they will all grab for it.
For-profit
companies develop and market highly profitable food products such as sodas,
fruit drinks, and breakfast cereals that are addictive to kids. It is our job as parents to understand that
our children’s health is not for sale.
With love,
Nancy
Heinrich, MPH
Founder and
Wellness Architect
Growing
Healthy Kids, Inc.
