Fast food is so easy! All you do is drive through, take it home and put it on the tables. Unfortunately, fast food is bad for your health - and more importantly, for your kids’ health.
Fast food restaurants keep adding so called ‘healthy items’ to their menus, but most people won’t order the apple slices instead of the fries, or the juice box instead of the soda. If you let your kids eat too much fast food, they won’t even want to eat these healthy foods at home.
The danger of fast food isn’t just spoiling your children’s taste buds. The sugar and fat in fast food can be dangerous to your child’s health. There is a dangerous trend in this country towards childhood obesity. The foods you put in front of your child make a difference.
Trans fat is slowly being eliminated from restaurants due to repeated warnings, but saturated fat is still widely used and can cause severe health problems as well. If you eat out a lot, start asking to see the nutritional information and notice how much fat the foods contain and what kind.
Often one meal at a fast food restaurant will have nearly enough calories to meet the day’s total requirements, and will have even more sodium, fat and sugar content than most people should eat. For kids, this can be very bad indeed.
Children who are still growing need a balanced diet to help their bones and muscles develop properly. Fast food fills the stomach and makes them sluggish, so they don’t want to exercise. It also makes them less likely to want to eat other foods - fast food can become almost addictive for the blood sugar rush that accompanies eating it.
Obesity in children, if caught early is easier to reverse if a firm rule of no fast food is made and followed. You may have to be creative to find foods that will make them happy, but after a while they will grow accustomed to the naturally sweet taste of an apple, and be able to enjoy regular food again.
Once in a while junk food won’t hurt you, but it’s not a good habit to make. Consider saving fast food for very special occasions, and finding other ways to make food that tastes good and goes on the table quick!
