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| How to wear a healthy diet |
If you have spent the last 30 years living the life of an
agoraphobic hermit with an allergy to newspaper ink and a deep mistrust of the
internet you might, just might, have missed the news that the UK is in the
middle of an obesity crisis that is now affecting our children.
Oddly enough this news doesn’t seem to have had much effect
on how we view kids and food. I found a terrific example of this on a website that
listed ways in which you could entice your child to eat more vegetables. It had
all sorts of odd ball ideas but the one that really caught my eye was their
suggestion for enticing your child to eat broccoli; dip it into sugar sprinkles
first!
I kid you not! Apparently the author is convinced that most
children will come away from this experience thinking, “umm broccoli is nice,
shame it had so much sugar on it, I’ll try it on its own next time”, and not,
“Sugar! I LOVE sugar!... Shame it had that green shit stuck to it!”
A classic example of children and culinary inertia are the
kids menus at most of these so called “Family Friendly” restaurants. I’m sure
the chefs in these places are still wearing flares because little seems to
have changed since the 70’s. Pretty much the entire menu revolves around the
theory that if you coat something in breadcrumbs or batter and then deep fry it,
kids will eat it. As a fop to the governments 5-a-day campaign - and to add a
bit of colour to a plate that would otherwise be various shades of brown - they now scatter
a handful of peas over it and, just to ensure that your child can barely walk
afterwards, they finish it all off with a desert that is roughly the size of
the kid eating it.
Worse still – in my opinion at least – is the eagerness with
which some parents get their children hooked on soft drinks. I’ve seen kids
that have barely started weaning sucking ‘juice’ out of a bottle. And you know
what’s most odd about this? The fact that the majority of us don’t think
there’s anything really wrong with this!
Our children are going to grow up in a world where they will
be constantly subjected to temptation, constantly encouraged to take on far
more calories than they really need. Yet they are often raised with the idea
that in order to quench their thirst they have to consume sugar.
The poor beggars don’t have a hope in hell! Every time they
feel thirsty they’re going to reach for a sugar drink, because that’s what they
associate thirst with. So instead of satisfying this base need with the zero
calorie liquid their body actually craves, they’re loading up with hundreds of
excess, empty, calories.
I’d say I was shocked at how sanguine people are about sugar
if it wasn’t for the manner in which the “sugar” debate has taken place. It’s
astonishing just how aggressive an industry this is; every time a scientist has
dared to suggest that sugar might not actually be that good for you, the big
sugar companies have hit back with everything from sugar sponsored
pseudo-science, to out and out character assassination. In short, there is
nothing sweet about the sugar industry.
To prove the point I will make you a bet; following the
recent spate of media articles on the dangers of sugar there will, within the
next 3 months, be a barrage of counter arguments run in almost every national
newspaper, questioning the veracity of the earlier claims – without offering
any solid scientific argument against them - and suggesting serious character
flaws in the scientists making those earlier claims.
This will then be followed by one of those articles that comes
out every few months anyway, in which a 98 year old climbs mount Everest whilst
carrying a Sherpa, kills a tiger with his bare hands and then goes on to win
Mastermind. When asked, he will then put it all down to his diet of refined
sugar, whiskey and Havana cigars.
I for one don’t really care about the debate itself. I think
it’s quite clear that sugar, especially sugary drinks, are best taken in
moderation, so Marty is being brought up with the notion that if you are
thirsty you drink good old fashioned water and if you think you’re going to get
sweets two days on the trot, think again.
I’m working on the theory that there are enormous
corporations out there willing to spend billions to tempt Marty and his mates
into drinking lots of sweet, fizzy, drinks and heaps of fat laden food. It
doesn’t really bother me that they don’t give a flying fuck about the health of
my boy - I don’t give a great deal for them either - but I’m certainly not
going to help them in their quest to boost their profits at the expense of my
sons health.
Sadly, I still seem to be in a bit of a minority on all of
this. I guess part of the reason is that parenting habits change very slowly;
what worked for your parents and for you will work for your children. My mother
was raised during WWII when rationing was all the rage. As a result she, and
her mother, looked upon sugar rich and fatty food as a treat for her kids. The
next generation maintains that approach but because those foods are so much
cheaper and more readily available the ‘treat’ becomes commonplace.
In fact the word ‘treat’ seems to have undergone a
transformation. I recall a treat being something that you had once a month or
once a week, cake with Sunday lunch for example. These days ‘treats’ seem to be
things you dole out on the hour, every hour.
I guess another factor in all of this is that whilst most
parents would be a bit worried if their children were overweight, they would be
absolutely mortified if their child was deemed malnourished or underweight. As
a result most of us are going to opt for a bit too much, rather than a bit too
little.
This isn’t helped by the fact that ‘normal’ is now far
heavier than it used to be. If you are comparing your child to his friends you
will no doubt be comforted by the fact that he’s about the same weight as all
his mates. Sadly, there’s a very high chance that the entire group is heavier
than they should be. Yes, he or she is ‘normal’ but that doesn’t mean they are a
healthy weight. An easy way to test this is to look at them when you’re getting
them ready for bed. Can you see their ribs? If the answer is yes, then they are
probably a good weight. If the answer is no then your child is probably
overweight and, sadly, if they start off life overweight the odds are that they
will struggle with their waistline for the rest of their lives.
Another factor is just general ignorance and complacency. Many
parents are themselves overweight and just don’t view it as a problem. Many
more parents are just unaware of some of the issues. A perfect example of this
is our attitude to ‘fruit juice’ particularly those juices aimed directly at
children.
If you listen to the advertising you could be forgiven for
thinking that these fruit juices are great things, after all they are chocked
full of vitamins and they contain real fruit, often with no added sugar! What
can possibly be wrong? Well, sadly, the answer is ‘quite a lot’.
The biggest issue is that these vitamins are floating in a sea of sugar.
Yes, it’s natural fructose but it’s still sugar and there is an enormous amount
of it. To drink one of these drinks for the vitamins is like drinking Malt Whiskey
for the pure mountain spring water it’s allegedly made from.
The second point is that if you want to consume fruit, eat
one! Drinking a fruit isn’t that good for you for two reasons, firstly when you
smash a fruit up and extract the juice you’re really just making flavoured
sugar water. Secondly, whilst there’s no more sugar in the juice than there is
in the fruit – assuming you didn’t buy one of those drinks where they do
actually add yet more sugar – you are going to drink far more than just one
fruit.
For example, in a typical glass of freshly squeezed orange
juice there are about four oranges. Yet, whilst you could quite easily drink
two glasses of juice, it’s highly unlikely that you could eat eight oranges in
a single sitting. In other words, by drinking the fruit you are taking on board
4 times the amount of sugar than you would if you just sat down and ate it. You
will also still be hungry and will have missed out on a lot of fibre.
But aren’t we all supposed to be eating 5 fruit and
vegetables a day? Yes, we are but the key word is “eat”. Drinking eight oranges
does not mean you’ve just whipped your 5-a-day target because the high sugar
content is doing you more harm than the vitamins are doing you good. As a
result most fruit juices only count as one portion in the 5-a-day regime,
regardless of how much you drink.
The manufacturers are all perfectly aware of this of course
but it doesn’t stop them trying to persuade you that their products are good
for your children, even when they know that’s almost certainly not the case.
Have a look at the labelling on kiddies fruit juice next time you buy some.
Many will contain a phrase that is something along the lines of “Forms part of
your 5-a-day” and have a logo that looks a bit like the 5-a-day logo but isn’t
quite right. This is because they aren’t allowed to use the real logo and
wording because they contain far too much sugar.
Another con that far too many of us fall for are these
‘energy drinks’. If I take a walk around my local football pitch after the youth
teams have been playing, the ground is littered with the tops of these energy
drinks. Here we have a field full of litter louts, running around like crazy
and all leaving the pitch slightly fatter than when they went on because they
have just consumed the best part of 500 calories – assuming they had a bottle
at half time and one at the end of the match. And why did they drink this
nonsense? Because they and their parents have been told that in order to achieve
their sporting best they need to consume a shed load of sugar and salt. Which
would be fair enough if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s complete and utter
bollocks!
The only people who get any genuine benefit from these
drinks are those few elite athletes who really are pushing their bodies to the
limit. For the other 99.99% of us it’s like pouring nitro-glycerine into a
lawnmower – you might start off believing you now own a super mower but all
you’ll end up with is a scorched lawn with a myriad of 2-stroke engine parts
embedded in it.
So, in a rather large nutshell, that’s why Marty doesn’t
drink juice or soft drinks. We’re not fanatical about it, after all sugar and
fat are fine in moderation, but I think it’s important that he grows up with
the idea that water is the best way of quenching thirst. I also hope he grows
up with a very sceptical view of the food and drink industry, an industry that
seems to have mislaid its moral compass... always assuming it had one in the
first place.
