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