What are we doing with our kids’ diet? Do we gift them unforseen consequences which are hidden in childhood but only surfaces in adult life?
99 percent of children eat unhealthy diets. For most of us, this doesn’t come as a surprise.
As a result, most children consume an excess of artery-clogging saturated fat. And nearly all children –nine in every 10 – eat too much sodium. At the same time, most children’s diets are severely lacking in heart-healthy fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
Is it possible to help our children and turn the tide on this epidemic?
Don’t live under illusion that your body can sustain all types of tortures. Don’t gift legacy of faulty genes to your grand-children and ailing body to your kids in their adult age.
Food matters. Period.
Take care.
Research
Kids’ Bad Diets May Mean Worse Health as Adults
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2015/03/17/kids-bad-diets-may-mean-worse-health-as-adults
Northwestern University researchers found that while most of the nearly 9,000 children they studied had healthy blood pressure levels, 40 percent did not have good cholesterol levels, almost none ate a healthy diet regularly and 30 percent were overweight or obese.
These findings may mean more children will face a future that will include heart disease if nothing changes, said Dr. Sarah Samaan, a cardiologist at Legacy Heart Center in Plano, Texas.
“Childhood sets the stage for life. If a child starts off with a healthy diet and active lifestyle, he or she is far less likely to develop chronic, expensive diseases that can take years off of a productive life,” said Samaan, who was not involved with the study.
“Obese kids and adults are far more likely to develop high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis and heart disease, so we should not accept this as the ‘new normal,'” she added.
The healthy diet score was one of four items used to assess the heart health of American children, aged 2 to 11, from national surveys conducted between 2003 and 2010. The other measures included blood pressure, total cholesterol and body mass index (BMI), a ratio of a person’s height to weight used to measure body fat.
Childhood Obesity Facts
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/obesity/facts.htm
Heart Disease Begins in Childhood
http://www.drgreene.com/perspectives/heart-disease-begins-in-childhood/
