KIDS AND FAST FOOD, OBESITY, AND DIABETES

I am stepping out of the norm here and writing about kids and fast food.  Now understand, I am not against fast food for children.  Just this past Saturday I bought my 7-year-old granddaughter a McDonald's happy meal while we were out enjoying some Christmas activities.  But that is not something we do on a regular basis.  Having said that, I recently saw a study from about a year ago that said 30% of our kids eat fast food everyday.  Another said that a survey of 4th graders in one of our nations large cities said that nearly 50% were overweight.  Might there be a correlation between the two?  I think so.

What concerns me even more is the number of these children who will be facing diabetes later, if not already.  Please do not feed your children fast food everyday.  If they are overweight, make small subtle changes in their diets to help them lower their weight.  Remove a lot of the snack foods from your home and replace them with whole-grain crackers, fresh fruit that is easy for kids such as grapes, bananas, etc, and fresh produce such as baby carrots, etc.  Healthy, unsalted, nuts can also he a good idea.  And remember all things in moderation.

I am not a fan of Mrs. Obama and some of the crazy ideas about school lunches.  My daughter used to be an elementary school lunchroom manager.  When they had to replace some of the foods with fresh fruit, their trash cans were full of apples, bananas, etc.  I am also against banning toys in happy meals, etc.  We can control what our kids eat better than we do.  And it starts when they are young.  Don't reward behaviour with food.  Refrain from buying the heavily coated sugar cereals; teach your youngsters to eat healthy cereals.  There is much we can do to protect our children and grandchildren from this hideous disease known as diabetes!