You would never knowingly feed your children poison. You probably go out of your way to try to get your kids to eat and drink healthy, nutritious foods and beverages. In many cases, the fact that you sometimes promote unhealthy eating and drinking habits in your children is not your fault.
Supposedly “healthy” foods and drinks are often times full of hidden toxins, preservatives, man-made additives, sugars and MSG that can lead to severe health problems. Avoid giving your children the following 7 foods and drinks, and your happy and healthy kids will have a great chance of becoming healthy and happy adults.Fast Food French Fries
Almost all fast food french fries have high levels of saturated fat, trans fat, heart stopping sodium and very little nutritional value. Fast food french fries routinely have 300 to 500 mg of sodium, sometimes as much as 700 or more grams. A regular order can be 250 to 500 cal with 15 to 20 g of fat, including saturated fat and trans fats. You also get as many as 50 g of carbs.
Pop Tarts
You will see claims such as “Baked with Real Fruit” on the front of many pop tart packages. This may be true, but only 10% of the pop tart is fruit, and processed, genetically modified fruit at best. There’s also unhealthy enriched flour, palm and soybean oils, several more genetically modified organisms and tons of sugar and artificial colors.
Chocolate Milk
A 16 ounce Nestle Nesquik Chocolate Milk provides a senseless 48 g of sugar! That is double the recommended daily amount suggested for kids by many national and international health authorities. Excess sugar consumption has been linked to obesity, cancer, high blood pressure, liver problems, mental health issues, diabetes and heart disease. Many other chocolate milk beverages are just as high in sugar.
Breakfast Cereal
Just 1 cup of Cap’n Crunch contains 16 g sugar (66% the DRA), preservatives, additives and “natural” flavors, as well as yellow food colors #5 and #6, which have been linked to cancer, behavioral and emotional disorders in children. Unfortunately, many other breakfast cereals are just as bad for your kids.
Fruit Juices
A 16 ounce serving of SunnyD Smooth Style is made up of only 5% real orange juice. The other 95% of this unhealthy beverage for kids is sugar water. If your child drinks just half this drink, he is choking down 30 g of sugar, 125% of the daily recommended allowance for kids. Other fruit juices is marketed as healthy are just as suspect.
Fast Food Kids Meals
It should be criminal how these nightmares of nutrition are marketed to children. They often come with an incentive such as a toy or prize. Just one of many offensive meals parents give their children is the Burger King Kids’ Double Cheeseburger with Small Fries and Coke. If your child follows your orders and “cleans her plate”, you have just given her 1,100 cal, 17.5 g of saturated fat, 1.5 g of trans fats, 52 g of fat overall and 1,870 mg of sodium.
Soft Drinks, Sodas
Soft drinks are known to promote overweight and obesity, and increase your child’s risk of developing cancer, neurological problems and health disease later in life. The coloring used to make soda attractive is toxic, and caramel coloring is a carcinogen. If you choose an orange soda over a brown cola to skip the caramel, you will probably encounter artificial food colors like yellow #6 and red #40, which are just as problematic health-wise.
There are anywhere from 8 to 13 teaspoons of sugar in a single 12 ounce soda pop or soft drink, 133% to 216% the daily recommended allowance for a child over the course of an entire day.
