This article originally appeared in the March-April 1999 Children's Advocate newsmagazine, published by Action Alliance for Children.
What Are We Feeding Our Kids? | Extra resources from the Children’s Advocate bulletin (updated 12-07)
Many U.S. youngsters as young as nine years old are beginning to acquire risk factors that may cause heart disease in later life, according to a study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March. The heart-risk factors, like high cholesterol levels, were especially widespread among Mexican American and African American children. This study is just the latest of many that identify unhealthful diets and lack of exercise as serious problems for today's kids.
"It used to be that parents fed their kids better than they themselves ate, but that's no longer the case," says Sue Foerster of the California Department of Health Services Cancer Prevention and Nutrition Section. She says that parents now seem to have less control over their children's meals.
Foerster says one reason children don't eat right is that parents have less time to prepare healthful meals. Another is the power of the advertising aimed directly at children.
While kids may not be getting all the nutrients they need, many are getting too many calories. Snacking on foods high in fat and sugar is one reason child obesity has doubled since 1980.
Obesity, though, is not an issue easily talked about. Adults struggle to find ways to broach the subject that will not offend children or produce negative self-images. While we are used to seeing public service announcements about childhood smoking and drug use, weight is still a taboo subject. One nutritionist describes a recent television commercial that showed a young boy gorging in front of the TV and putting on weight before the audience's eyes. Many health providers criticized the ad for making fun of fat kids and potentially scaring others into not eating for fear of becoming fat themselves.
Joanne Ikeda, a Nutritional Education Specialist at the University of California at Berkeley, sees obesity as the number one nutritional problem for children. She points out, however, that, "it's difficult to come up with an approach which won't result in more eating disorders."
Ikeda's pamphlet, "If My Child Is Overweight, What Should I Do About It?", suggests strategies to prevent children from putting on weight unnecessarily. She tells parents to allow kids to decide when they have had enough to eat. "Infants cry when they are hungry, then they satiate themselves according to their needs. Somewhere along the way humans lose this capability." Once the child reaches the age of three or four "parents tell the child that they haven't eaten enough, or they have had too much, so they stop responding to their in-built signals."
[According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a nonprofit education and advocacy organization that promotes health through educating the public.]
A lunch box with a bologna sandwich, potato chips, cookies and a fruit-punch beverage is completely missing two food groups and contains an overload of fat, sodium and sugar. Prepackaged lunches such as Oscar Mayer's Lunchables have similar problems. A meal consisting of bologna, crackers, cheese, and chocolate chip cookies provides 31g of fat-as much as three tablespoons of butter, almost half the maximum amount of fat an adult should eat in a day.
A much more healthful lunch is a sandwich made from lean sliced turkey, the child's favorite fresh fruit, an oatmeal cookie or graham cracker and low-fat milk. Or how about low-fat milk, peanut butter and sliced apple on raisin bread, tangerine, and celery sticks?
Margo Wootan, senior scientist with Center for Science in the Public Interest, offers tips on packing the lunch box:
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