All that junk is bad food

By John Muturi

The food that our children eat has changed drastically over the years — but not entirely for the better.

In today’s world where time is of essence and majority of parents work, speed and convenience have become necessities rather than luxuries. Thus, it is convenient to buy potato chips, burgers, fried chicken, pizza, biscuits, chocolate, white bread, fizzy drinks or ready-made products for your child’s lunch.

Simply watch parents and their children at fast food joints or supermarket shelves, and you will see that this trend has become a real pastime. They go for foods with high fat, sugar and salt content.

Eaten in large quantities, these foods could easily cause obesity in your child. An obese child is at risk of contracting life-threatening illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease. According to research findings, children and youth who eat a lot of fast foods have a larger calorie intake and gain more weight.

Even if your child is not overweight, allowing him or her to eat large amounts of junk food reduces their likelihood of having a healthy balanced diet with vitamins, minerals, fibre, antioxidants and other nutrients. It is an open secret that very few children eat the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

Equally, since many of these foods contain a lot of salt, the child is at a high risk of getting high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.

Children are no longer taking their traditional ‘three meals a day’. Often, when a child is not feasting on fast food or takeaways, we are stuffing him or her with snacks and convenience foods at home. True, some ready-made meals and convenience foods are of good nutritional quality and may not differ a lot from home-cooked food but for some, the nutritional quality is severely compromised and could eventually threaten the health of your child, especially when eaten in large quantities.

Junk food is usually high in energy (calories), saturated fat, salt and sugar, while providing some measure of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fibre. A fast food meal comprising a large burger, regular fries, large milkshake and an ice cream desert could contain more than 60 grams of fat and 1,500 calories of energy, which is 80 to 90 per cent of the total daily energy requirement for the average seven to 10-year-old.

It is recommended that no more than 35 per cent of our total energy intake should come from fat. It should be from carbohydrates or protein. However, for some fast foods, more than half the energy comes in the form of fat and quite a high amount of salt. Some burgers contain meat that is 50 per cent fat! Those bits and pieces you buy in supermarkets specifically for your child’s lunch boxes, such as crisps, chocolate and soft drinks contain large amounts of fat, salt and/or sugar.

Case for obesity

Kristina Murrin and Paul Martin in their book, What Worries Parents, say that junk and fast foods are a major contributor to childhood obesity. They cite research findings indicating that young people who eat a lot of fast food also tend to have a larger total energy intake and weight compared to those who eat moderate quantities. Children tend to consume more calories when they eat at restaurants than when they eat at home, mainly because restaurant food contains more calories and comes in larger portions.

Obesity can result from many factors, including lack of physical activity and genetic predisposition, but eating too much fatty or sugary food is a key factor. If you consume more food energy than your body expends, then the surplus will be stored as body fat. Ultimately, the only certain way for children to avoid becoming overweight is to be physically active and not to over-eat. Sadly, many children do neither.

Obesity is bad news in many ways. Fat people are more likely to develop high blood pressure and coronary heart disease. Someone who is overweight in childhood is twice as likely to die of heart disease in adulthood. Childhood obesity is also a cause of sleep disorders, psychological problems and diabetes in later life. Because today’s image-crazy society strongly condemns obesity, a child who is fat is often teased and cannot easily make friends. He or she thus develops a low self-esteem.

Moreover, high fat diets and obesity also increase the risks of certain cancers, including cancers of the colon, rectum and breast. There is evidence to suggest that diet plays a role in about a third of all cancers and some experts regard obesity as second only to smoking, as a cause of cancer.

Heart disease and strokes

Obesity aside, another reason to worry is the high quantities of salt (sodium chloride) in most fast and processed foods which can lead to raised blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. The recommended maximum salt intake is two grams a day for children aged one to six years, and five grams a day for children between the ages of seven to 14. Unfortunately, majority consume about twice that, with more than half of it coming from processed food.

Children who add salt to their food tend to have a higher blood pressure. Incidentally, you do not need to add salt to your food in order to consume too much of it (salt). Already, a large portion of it is hidden in everyday foods like breads and baked beans.

Some products specifically targeted at children contain surprisingly large amounts of salt. A takeaway burger, for instance, can give a young child more than the recommended daily intake of salt.