High sugar foods and snacks cause more than just increased weight gain and cavities. They actually increase damage that accumulates over time and can lead to chronic degenerative disease in adulthood. Parents should be very concerned about today's nutritional trends and become active in giving their kids the gift of life-long health.
It’s all about the burnAll foods have a ‘glycemic index’, which is a measure of how fast the body burns the food to turn it into fuel. Foods with a lot of simple sugars burn very quickly while foods high in fiber and complex carbohydrates burn very slowly.
High glycemic foods that burn very quickly cause blood sugar to rise fast. The body reacts to this rise in blood sugar by releasing a large dose of insulin to drive the blood sugar back down. This is the reason for the ‘energy crash’ that you feel after eating a high glycemic meal.
Low glycemic foods that burn very slowly cause blood sugar to rise gently at a controllable rate. This way the body does not need to take drastic measures to keep blood sugar under control. You feel a smoother level of energy after a low glycemic meal and don’t feel the crash a couple hours after eating like you do with the high glycemic meal.
The danger of your personal reactorThe energy spike and crash that you feel after a high glycemic meal is because the body uses blood sugar as the primary source of fuel to make an ‘energy molecule’ called ATP. However, the production of ATP is somewhat dangerous because it also leaks other molecules called ‘free radicals’, which in turn cause ‘oxidative-stress’.
Oxidative stress can be very damaging to your cells and if left unchecked this damage leads to chronic diseases like heart disease, some cancers and even depression. The damage caused accumulates in your body in places like your arteries, heart, lungs and brain and slowly leads to chronic degenerative illness.
Luckily, our bodies have mechanisms to keep free radical damage and oxidative stress under control. We have proteins that actually capture the free radicals and ‘neutralize’ them so that they are no longer dangerous. However, to function properly, this system requires the anti-oxidants you get from fruits and vegetables and multi-vitamin supplements.
It’s similar to the dangers involved in using nuclear energy. This is an incredibly efficient energy source as long as nothing goes wrong. If the nuclear reactor over-heats then trouble can happen. The same happens with ATP production. When blood sugar levels are high, ATP production goes into high gear and free radical release gets out of control. High glycemic meals kick up ATP production.
It has been known for some time that eating high glycemic meals leads to oxidative stress and a new study in the July 2006 issue of The Journal of Clinical Nutrition validates that by actually measuring signs of oxidative stress in the blood after eating both low and high glycemic meals. The study found a strong relationship between the glycemic index of the meal and the level of oxidative stress markers in the blood after the meal. High glycemic meals caused high levels of oxidative stress.
Why is this important? It means that high glycemic meals that our kids eat all the time are causing damage that will likely lead to chronic degenerative disease when they are adults. Especially when you couple this with the fact that most kids do not get the anti-oxidant protection that they need from eating several portions of fruits and vegetables. It’s a double whammy; increased damage and decreased protection.
Damage controlWhat types of foods are causing this damage? There are many common kid’s foods that are very high on the glycemic index scale. For starters, high-sugar breakfast cereals, waffles and pancakes with lots of syrup and white toast with jam are very high glycemic foods. It’s not just sugary meals that are the problem. Foods made primarily from refined grains and white flour are just as bad. Things like white bread, macaroni and cheese, crackers and hotdog buns.
You can go a long way in protecting your kids current and future health by switching to whole grain cereals and breads and getting more fruits and vegetables into their diet. This is common sense stuff that people have known for a long time.
My hope in writing this article is that understanding a little more about the reason why ‘healthy foods’ are so necessary will help motivate people to act. Just picture in your head little pick axes circulating through your kids blood every time they eat these high glycemic meals and perhaps that will help you help them make better choices.
To be realistic, food choices are all about balance. It’s not going to kill you to eat poorly every now and then. You just need to understand that it’s all about risk. The more you or your kids make poor eating choices the more damage you are allowing to accumulate and the higher your risk will be for problems later in life. Act now to instill thoughtful food choice in your kid’s behavior.
A proud moment I want to end with a brief story. Last week my 9-year old son came to work with me and we had lunch in our small cafeteria. The menu choices that day were a turkey sandwich, pepperoni pizza, soups and a salad bar. I told him he could have whatever he wanted and I was very happy when he chose the salad bar. It’s not that he doesn’t like pizza or turkey sandwiches but he made a healthy choice on his own because he really likes salad.
A year ago, he hated everything ‘green’. My wife and I just kept putting a small amount of vegetables on his dinner plate and offering salad when we had it. We did not force him to eat this stuff but just kept offering it. Eventually he started to eat more and more and realized that he likes salad. Now both my kids love a wide variety of steamed vegetables and eat all kinds of fruits on a regular basis.
Kids don’t like a lot of foods when they are very young but experts have told us to just keep offering them. Eventually they will come around. Otherwise, they will grow up eating fast food for the rest of their life and be robbed of good health in there older years. Please do not rob your kids of this. Give them the greatest gift you can, their health.
