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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > Important Reasons to Avoid Feeding Your Children Processed Foods (Pedcast by Sonya Williams)
Podcast: Portable Practical Pediatrics
Episode:

Important Reasons to Avoid Feeding Your Children Processed Foods (Pedcast by Sonya Williams)
Category: Kids & family
Duration: 00:11:16
Publish Date: 2020-02-02 07:19:33
Description: News flash- the state of nutrition among many American children is bad…very bad. Obesity and metabolic disease are now common in children, largely due to the consumption of an abundance of processed food. And by the way, being obese, having hypertension, or an elevated blood sugar during childhood imparts a good chance of that child having long-term health consequences as you are about to see in today’s pedcast so stay tuned! Image by H. Ondrejkova Pixabay Images Intro Music What is ultra-processed food? There is a new buzzword floating around. You might have heard it - “ultra-processed foods”. The term ‘ultra-processed foods’ essentially means, just like as the name implies, foods that have been drastically altered in various ways from their original form in nature, like potatoes being made into potato chips or French fries, whole grains being made into breakfast cereals or donuts, or fruit being made into fruit gummies or fruit drinks. You get the idea. This is not cooking; this is fundamental changing the food through processing turning them into what your grandmother called “junk food” being full of “empty calories”.  Ultra-Processed foods have been industrialized with added sugar, artificial colors and flavors, oils that are unnatural, preservative additives, lots of salt and chemically modified fats, and are often low in fiber, vitamins, and minerals. We call these “foods of convenience” or "industrial foods" since many of their ingredients are artificially manufactured. And recent data shows that about 50% of American diets consist of ultra-processed foods. That is a crazy amount that we know can’t be good for children, especially their hearts!   What is the Evidence that Processed Food is Harmful to Your Children? What is the evidence that processed food is harmful to your children? According to emerging science, there are direct negative health effects of ultra-processed foods on a child’s long-term heart health in particular.  I’m sorry to say that might be your child if they eat a lot of fast food or convenience foods. But how can this be you ask?  Well, we know that bad heart health can begin in infancy and childhood. The cascade toward heart disease is a slow insidious process that can begin very early in life due to various factors, one of which is obesity.  But what is the link between obesity and ultra-processed foods you ask?  The link comes from recent evidence pointing to the fact that when adults, and probably children as well, are given a diet of ultra-processed food versus a whole food diet, they consistently eat more calories and gain weight from the ultra-processed diet. Conclusion-processed food is more satisfying than whole food and given a choice, we eat more of it. And what is particularly scary is additional research showing that a diet of ultra-processed food has also been correlated with the thickening of the heart muscle in young children, possible your children! Thickened biceps are usually a sign of good health but a thick heart muscle is definitely not. We should not be seeing this kind of thickening in the hearts of our children. That’s adult stuff, but the objective evidence is that these highly processed diets are putting your kids at serious risk of heart disease and other long-term health problems like liver disease, diabetes, and allergies. The conclusion of many who study this issue is that children who are consuming a large amount of ultra-processed foods like packaged cookies, soda, chips, and fast foods, are getting too many calories and too few nutrients leading them toward being both malnourished and overweight children. An amazing combination.   Time for Action   So, what can you do to ensure that your children’s diets are healthy? I hope I have convinced you that we have more than enough evidence that a diet rich in ultra-processed food is harmful for your children. Of this, I think there is no doubt.
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