Sugar and Kids

The reason behind this bitter truth is the eating habits of today's generation. Kids develop bad eating habits since their very childhood which includes loads of refined sugar. In the last 30 years, there has been an epidemic of obesity. The worst part of this epidemic is that we can see obese kids all around. overweight people.

World sugar consumption in 1985 was 98 million tons. However, in 2010 it has reached to 160 million tons.

Sadly, kids of this generation are growing up on sugar.

Parents treat kids with sweets if they do something good. They give their kids packaged food which has minimal nutritional value. This is the primary reason that kids of this generation develop obesity at a very young age. They are in pain due to the heavy weight they carry around all the time. All of it impacts their self-esteem and self-confidence.

 

All the frozen food, boxed food, soda, juices is loaded with refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup which causes wacky metabolism among kids.

We, as parents, need to wake up and take our blinds off to see a clear picture on how our kids are growing up.

Parents need to ask themselves - Are our kids loaded with sugar with juice, soda, cookies and candies as staple diet or are we giving them enough varieties of natural food like vegetables and fruits?

The sugar from a fruit is very well absorbed in the body as compared to sugar in a cookie. If your kid is craving something sweet, give him blueberries or watermelon. Let him develop other sweet-type habits. What happened to those old school ways of preparing dinner from scratch and then serving it on the table for the family? Are we saving our time at the cost of health of our kids?

Let's discuss a few ways how we can reduce sugar intake among kids:

1. Check Nutritional Content of all the eatables you buy from Super stores:

Notice the labels like- Added sugar and flavors, high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, glucose, sucrose, maltose, mannitol. As a rule of thumb, high sugar items contain 15g of sugar per 100g of food and low sugar items contain 5g or less per 100g of food. Target low sugar items.

2. Look for healthy sweet items:

If your kid is craving for sugar, try giving them healthy and natural sugar sources like grapes, blueberries, cherries, dates or watermelon.

3. Don't associate treat with sweets:

If your kid do something good and you want to treat them with a goodie, try a board game or puzzle or movie tickets. Do not associate candies as a prize when they do something good. Let's join hands in building a happy and healthy generation.