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Yum yum: chewy endocrine
disruptors, treated with petroleum waste product like hexane, laced
with sewage sludge and poisons, and sweetened with some neurotoxins-
would you enthusiastically offer this to your children?
Would you encourage your
kids to reach for snacks that cause cancer, diabetes, obesity, heart
attacks, macular degeneration, hormone problems, violence, aggression,
and suicide?
The answer is obvious: a
resounding NO.
But the truth is hard to
swallow: yes, yes, yes, we do. This is something we all do and
something that other adults allow and encourage almost every day.
I’m talking about junk food.
And July 21 is “National Junk Food Day.”
The stark reality is that
every day is national junk food day. We all give it to our children way
too often. Our schools and churches and daycares do it. We give them
“kiddie” cereal for breakfast. We use white bread for their lunch
sandwiches. They drink fruit punch that has no fruit in it, or worse,
pop. Most kids have fast food regularly, and vending machines make
candy an easy reach. The whole family enjoys a few bags of chips on
movie night, and picnics mean Kool-Aid and sugary “bbq” sauces. There
are French fries and caramel apples and ice cream and cotton candy at
the fair and the fireworks and Grandpa’s always got the pantry stocked
with licorice and peppermints and “juice” boxes. They’ll eat mac and
cheese for dinner, or other white pastas drenched in chemicals.
But is it really so bad?
No, it’s worse. Many of us
have a vague idea that there are “too many chemicals” and that too much
sugar will rot your teeth. We know that junk food is empty calories.
But “empty calories” is a
myth. It implies neutrality, when in fact, those whopping calorie loads
aren’t empty at all. They are filled with dangerous drugs and toxins
and artificial fats and the worst of all of them, sugar. Yes, sugar.
Our sweet, sweet sugar is incredibly dangerous, but no one really
worries about it. Just like alcoholics, we justify it all the time and
tell ourselves and others that we’re just using a little bit. But sugar
is implicated in a major way, in all of the major diseases. We would
never give our babies alcohol or drugs or ask them to sip on window
cleaner. But we make every excuse in the book for giving them junk
food. “It’s not so bad.” “It’s not that much.” Sugar is not just
“potentially” related to our three big diseases- cancer, diabetes, and
heart disease. These killers seldom make an appearance without it.
Even our doctors will hand
our kids a lollipop after a good checkup and say that moderation is
fine. And moderation is fine. But the truth we hide from ourselves is
that we are not moderate. We live in a supersize it age, but even if
our portions were small, we consider daily junk food “moderate.” What
does true moderation look like? We’re eating sugar by the tons. The 100
thousand new food products that have been invented in the past few
decades are nearly all sugar or refined grain products, along with a
few toxic “health foods” like soy protein bars, which are made out of
hexane laced industrial waste. Soy protein isolate might sound great,
but it’s deadly.
The truth is, there is no
such thing as “new food.” Real food is real food, but we don’t even
recognize it anymore. Real food is real vegetables, real fruits, real
fish, real meat, real eggs, and it all comes in recognizable forms,
best without the cans and boxes.
It’s a parent’s
responsibility to teach the child what to eat, not the child’s
responsibility to resist addictive, sweet, gooey foods. But how? There
are a few stumbling blocks to our best intentions.
“I just can’t get him to
eat fish/vegetables/meat/fruit. He’ll only eat white bread.”
This is a devastating
problem we created ourselves by offering that white bread or Sugar Bit
Cereal in the first place. Here, as always, the truth is best. “Mommy
found it easier to avoid upset by making your tuna with white bread.
But white bread doesn’t have any ingredients that help our brains grow,
and now we have committed to using the best foods because we care about
you. We’ll experiment with different kinds of goodies until we find
healthy things you enjoy.” Or how about, “We talked with Dr. Jones, and
read this interesting information online. Now we know that the cereal
we’ve been buying has some dangerous chemicals in it that will make it
impossible for you to grow properly, and it’s making mommy fat. Now
we’re going to work as a family on eating fruit and eggs for breakfast.
And it’s so much yummier!” This may take some consistent repetition.
“It’s more convenient.
It’s cheaper.”
Nice try. And true on both
accounts. But if convenience matters more to us than the nutritional
building blocks for our child, and his health, then something’s wrong
with our priorities.
“I’m too tired to plan
and cook properly, or to fight out the constant demands for candy.”
Guess what makes a person
exhausted? Lack of nourishment, and sugar. These are more exhausting
than a full day, late nights, or illness. People who have more energy
than we do usually eat better than we do.
“It’s an occasional
treat.”
Is it? Be honest. Is junk
food REALLY something your family only has a few times a year? Probably
not. Start now and remove the “sugar equals reward” mentality that our
culture, media, schools, businesses etc try to promote. “You deserve a
break today.” “I’m lovin’ it.” Be honest about why it’s not really a
treat.
“There aren’t any
alternatives.”
We might need to think
outside of the cookie box to remember the alternatives, but not that
long ago, the alternatives were the only options. Grandma had to make
pies from scratch, with real ingredients and way less sugar and way
more fruit- real fruit- than the sorry boxed “blueberry” toaster tarts
that pass for pie these days. Cookies had real eggs, whole flour, real
oats, real nuts. We don’t have to avoid dessert entirely. No time to
bake? Order pies from church sales and freeze them. Go to farmer’s
markets and buy treats after you talk with the people about what goes
into them. These should still be rare indulgences. Making your own
means you can better control the sugar. Use next to no sugar when
baking. Yes, it’s time consuming, yes, it’s expensive. But remember,
when you’re paying .99 cents for a box of cookies, you’re not getting
cookies. You’re not really getting food.
Other alternatives? Make
your own iced tea by brewing tea, cooling it, and then chilling it with
a tiny bit of honey and some lemon. Never buy flavoured yogurt- you may
as well eat ice cream with all that sugar. Get plain yogurt, and chop
some bananas, berries and nuts on top. Sweeten with a tiny bit of real
maple syrup. Your kids’ taste buds, and yours, will soon find store
bought iced tea sickly sweet. And when you do occasionally stop for
fast food, the whole family will notice how sick you all feel, after
eating so well and feeling so healthy. It will then magically limit
itself.
How do we make the
transition?
The best way is
“consistently.” The best way is to simply to start facing the truth
instead of justifying or minimizing it.
And that means sharing the
truth with our children. Let them understand how their bodies work, and
how we need whole foods and wonderful vitamins and minerals from fresh
veggies and fish and eggs and fruits. Reassure them that our bodies are
marvelous machines that can tolerate some wear and tear, but that we
need to do our best to fortify our cells with the good stuff. And
don’t shy away from calling junk food what it is: poison. Just like
crack, just like tobacco, just like Draino. “Don’t put that in your
mouth- it’s poisonous.”
Too often, parents don’t
want to scare kids. Why not? Isn’t knowing that junk food causes
diabetes less frightening then getting diabetes? The world is and has
always been a dangerous place, and the more equipped kids are with true
information, the better they can control danger. Empower them. Our
children deserve knowledge. We should be protecting them from the
perils of toxic food, but instead we protect them from the truth.
When Johnny whines because
the kids at school get soda for lunch, tell him plainly “we can’t offer
your friends wholesome foods for lunch. But unfortunately Jenny’s
parents don’t understand that soda pop causes diabetes. You know the
disease that Aunt Agnes has, the one that made her blind and turned her
feet blue? She has to take needles every day and she is very weak. We
care too much to give you pop.”
Junk Food Day is nothing to
celebrate. Let’s turn this into National Junk Food AWARENESS day.
Beyond the Dentist - Stuff You
Didn’t Know About Sugar |
