Children and nutrition

My friend, Vikingzen blogged about a fabulous topic. The title is Political Fluff. She discusses the junk that is served to our children in schools. She comes from a similar background that I do, junk food was not a staple in our homes growing up.

It astounds me how many parents buy into the junk food commercials aimed at children and think that if they buy the crap it's actually healthy for their kids. For example a brand name lemon-lime soda's commercial shows people harvesting plants that resemble carrots but instead of the carrot at the end of the plant it has a can of this brand of soda. It's great marketing but a terrible image, one that is sending a very bad message.

When I found out I was pregnant last year I started reading labels. I decided that everything I put in my body was going to be something that was beneficial to my baby. I was astounded with the crap that is put in our foods! One of my pregnancy cravings was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. As I was choosing which brand of jam/jelly I discovered that all the jam/jellies out there have high fructose corn syrup! I realized that there is nothing beneficial about high fructose corn syrup. Thankfully I found a brand of jam that was all natural. On the same grocery trip I decided that I needed granola bars. A pregnant woman must eat! I was shocked as I was reading the label to find that darn ingredient again, high fructose corn syrup. So I decided to wage a war against that ingredient. I did some research and found that high fructose corn syrup may be one of the causes of obesity in our country. What I discovered is fructose releases the hormone leptin. Leptin regulates our storage of fat and regulates our metabolism. So, obese people have built up a resistance to leptin. A very informative article about high fructose corn syrup can be found http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12058364/.

I'm going a little of track from Vikingzen's blog. I agree with her 2 cents that parents should be held accountable of the foods their children eat. I recently discovered a statistic that is astonishing, 25-30% of toddlers in our country do not eat a single fruit or vegetable in 1 day. My question is, what are they eating? All I can think of is that there has to be a lack of education in this country. There is a frame of mind out there that Vikingzen and I will never understand.

So there it is. I could blog for hours on this subject but have decided to stop here.