Eating For Health

Added sugar.   Seems like most foods we eat have added sugar.   Last week we talked about all the added sugar in foods, especially sugar-sweetened beverages like soda pop, sweetened tea and fruit punch.   The Star Tribune ran some interesting articles about added sugar, one about readers challenged to give up on added sugar for a month.      Journalist , Erica Pearson, began noticing how many foods have added sugar.   Not just the donuts, cakes, pies, cookies that we all know have added sugar, but the salad dressings, spaghetti sauce, ketchup, even chicken stock.     The Star Tribune challenged readers to take a sugar break – a bread from added sugar for 28 days.   They called it the “28-day Sugar Free Challenge” which they held in February.   Why February?   They said it was the shortest month which made the challenge somewhat easier. Goal – cut out the added sugar in one’s diet for 28 days.    This was to include not just the sugar you added to your morning cereal or c

Added sugar.   We have all heard about added sugar but so many people are confused as to what foods have added sugar, how to know if a food has a lot or a little added sugar.   At the gym this week a mom was giving her toddler some Cheerios as a snack.   Good choice as Cheerios are easy to eat and very healthy.   Then the mom said she avoids the Goldfish as they are too high in sugar.   I asked, “even the whole grain Goldfish?”.   She didn’t know about that.   I came home looked up Goldfish.   The Goldfish Cheddar has 0 Sugar grams.   The ingredient list does list “sugar” but it must be an amount less than 4 calories as the label says 0 grams of sugar.   I then looked up Baked with Whole Grain Cheddar and again sugars = 0 grams.   The ingredient list has no sugar listed.   The first ingredient is Whole Wheat Flour so it is a healthy choice.   The crackers also contain real Cheddar Cheese and some heart healthy oil.   I couldn’t find a reason not to served these fun crackers to ki

Look around and you will see so many kids who are overweight.   Often these kids also have parents who are overweight.   CDC reports that childhood obesity in the USA has become a very serious problem.   Being overweight puts adults and children at risk for poor health.   How many kids in the US are obese? For kids ages 2-19 years of age: 18.5% are obese which equates to 13.7 million obese kids in the USA 13.9 % of kids ages 2-5 are obese 18.4% of 6-11-year olds are obese And 1 out of 5 or 20.6% of 12-19-year olds are obese Moms (and Dads) play an important role in helping prevent obesity in their kids.   Medical Press has a good article discussing 5 healthy habits of Moms that can reduce obesity risk in their kids.   The article published by the journal BMJ discusses research about 17,000 female nurses and their 24,289 kids and looked at five healthy habits of the moms.   These 5 healthy habits lowered their kids risk of being overweight by 75%.    5 Healthy H