5 Foods You Should Never Feed Your Kids


When it comes to feeding your kids, parents often have a hard row to hoe. Between picky eaters that will only eat a narrow selection of foods to the time involved in keeping everyone fed every single day, it can be easy to cut some corners when it comes to good nutrition. While you don't have to feed your kids huge chunks of grilled meat every day, as if they are training for a marathon, there are a few foods you should genuinely avoid feeding them at all costs. Here are 5 foods you definitely don't want to feed your kids.




1. Soda
After hundreds and hundreds of studies linking soda to everything from childhood obesity to type 2 diabetes (the kind that is preventable) and even aggressive behavior in children, it's hard to believe that this still needs to be mentioned. And yet, studies continue to show that a large majority of American kids are till chugging away on what is essentially carbonated liquid sugar. If nothing else, consider your dental bills. Sugared sodas have been shown to be nearly as corrosive to tooth enamel as battery acid.
20-ounces of soda contains roughly 60 grams of sugar. To put that in perspective, a single teaspoon of granulated white sugar is roughly 4.2 grams. That means there are almost 15 teaspoons of sugar in a single 20-ounce bottle of soda. The worst part is, however, that soda represents completely empty calories. There is absolutely no nutritional value in a soda of any kind and yet they are extremely high in both calories and sugar. Just one soda alone provides more than 4 times the amount of sugar a child should have in their diet for an entire day.

2. Boxed macaroni & cheese
Aside from nutritional value that is often not that much higher than soda, boxed macaroni and cheese is most often filled with all manner of chemicals, preservatives, artificial flavorings and colorings. While there are certainly healthier and even organic versions of boxed macaroni and cheese, the problem actually goes beyond just the nutritional value of the food itself. The problem is, processed, pre-packaged and ready-made foods make it far more difficult for children to make the connection between what is grown from the ground and what comes from a box or package. While it may take a little more time, cooking noodles with kids and making mac & cheese from fresh ingredients will give them a better sense of connection between real food and what they are eating.

3. Fruit snacks
Much like soda, gummy or jelly fruit snacks are often nothing more than fruit flavored sugar - far more similar to candy than to any actual food. While many now claim to be made with real fruit juice, the reality is that there is almost none of the nutrition found in actual fruit in fruit snacks. For instance, a popular brand of children's fruit snacks offers 80 calories and 13 grams of sugar (approximately 3 teaspoons) and not a single vitamin or mineral. Conversely, just a single apple only contains 65 calories but offers a whopping 14 different vitamins and and 11 different vital minerals. While it does contain the same 13 grams of sugar, the sugar contained in an apple is fructose rather than sucrose.

4. Honey
While this only applies to children under the age of 2, honey can contain a toxic bacteria that can potentially be fatal to your child. Most adults are immune to it, but small children generally do not yet have an immune system strong enough to fight it. Even when honey has been highly processed, it can still contain the bacteria, so it's best to just avoid giving honey of any kind to small children.
5. Raw milk
While many parents feel that raw milk is healthier than pasteurized milk (and they might be right) the problem is that raw milk is far more likely to cause any number of food borne illnesses. While raw milk may in fact be far healthier for adults thanks to the lack of pasteurization leaving the digestive enzymes and a number of other nutrients intact, the reality is that kid's immune systems are often not strong enough to kill the natural bacteria that remains in unpasteurized milk.


Final Thoughts
While there might be a lot of other foods that you should not feed to your kid, I decided to create a list with what I think are the 5 most important ones. Each food we eat or feed to our kids has a huge impact and the foods in this list have a more negative impact than others.
Try to have them in mind next time you plan your food diet for your kids and you will skip a lot of headache later.


*****

Author Bio
Kendrick Kotter is a huge cooking enthusiast who loves to cook new recipes, write cooking guides and shares his knowledge about cooking. He writes and shares his experiences and recipes with everyone at FuriousGrill




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