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Fast Food Facts For Kids And Their Parents

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After sugar sweetened beverages, fast food is the most unhealthy food product marketed to children. Fast food companies speak to children early, often, and when parents aren’t looking. Fast food is aggressively marketed toward children as young as two.

In 2009 the fast food industry spent more than $4.2 billion on TV advertising and other media. Preschoolers saw 21% more fast food ads on TV then in 2003; children saw 34% more; and teenagers 39% more.

According to Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, a comprehensive study looked at the marketing of the twelve largest fast food chains and at the calories, fat, sugar, and sodium in over 3,000 kids’ meal combinations and 2,781 menu items.

 

What The Study Found

  • 13-17 year olds buy 800-1,100 calories in an average fast food meal – about half of their recommended total daily calories.
  • At least 30% of the calories in menu items purchased by children and teenagers are from sugar and saturated fat.
  • A single meal contains at least half of the daily recommended sodium for young people in most fast food restaurants.
  • McDonald’s and Burger King show only healthy sides and beverages in child-targeted advertising but automatically serve french fries with kids’ meals at least 86% of the time and soft drinks at least 55% of the time.
  • Faced with pressure about portion sizes companies rename, not eliminate, their largest sides and drinks.  For example, Burger King’s 42-ounce “King” drink is now the “large” option; the previous  32-ounce “large” is now a “medium”; the  “medium” 21-ounce drink is now a “small”; and the 16-ounce “small” is now the “value” choice.
  • Kid’s food choices are affected by exposure to food and beverage ads targeted to adults. More than 60% of fast food ads seen by children are not for kids’ meals and older children (6-11) are more likely to order something from the dollar menu or a combo meal (27%) than to order a kids’ meal (21%).
  • Snacks and dessert choices had as many as 1,500 calories — five times more than the ADA’s recommended 200 to 300 calorie snack for active teens.
  • During non-meal times in the evening and after school, teens ordered more fast food than any other age group.
  • Of 3,039 possible kids’ meal combinations only twelve met preschool nutrition criteria; 15 met nutrition criteria for older kids and only 17% of regular menu items qualified as healthy choices.

 

 

You Probably Should Eat A Healthy Breakfast – Here’s Why . . .

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My Mom always made me eat a “good” breakfast – eggs, leftover hamburgers from the night before, some kind of hot cereal made with milk.  My Mom grew up on a working farm – and farmers had the right idea about the need to fuel themselves for the coming day (and to use whatever food was on hand). The habit of eating a healthy breakfast has stuck with me, but even though many of you know how important it is, you probably don’t always make it a priority or carve out enough time to do it.

The advice to eat a good breakfast has been around for centuries.  It’s clear how it affects your body’s biology, but now it’s being documented that eating a healthy breakfast — especially one high in protein – can leave you feeling fuller and less hungry throughout the day.

 

A Breakfast Study

Research published in the journal Obesity studied teens who either skipped breakfast or ate a 500 calorie breakfast of cereal and milk (with normal amounts of protein) or higher protein meals like Belgium waffles with added protein, syrup, and yogurt for three weeks.

At the end of each week, the teens filled out appetite and satiety questionnaires, and had a brain scan before lunch that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify brain activation responses.

The researchers focused on teens because 60% of them skip breakfast and breakfast skipping is strongly associated with unhealthy snacking, overeating (especially at night), weight gain, and obesity.

 

What They Found

The results showed that eating breakfast led to increased fullness and less hunger throughout the morning.  The fMRI showed that before lunch there was also reduced brain activity in regions that control food motivation and reward.

Eating breakfast reduced brain signals that lead to reward driven eating behavior when they’re active.  The higher protein breakfast produced greater feelings of satiety and changes in reward driven eating behavior than the normal protein milk and cereal meal.

Since skipping breakfast is associated with more snacking and food cravings, breakfast — especially one that is rich in protein — could be an effective strategy in controlling appetite and preventing overeating.

 

 

Want To Save 100 Calories?

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Skip The Bacon

Want to save around 100 calories? That’s what’s in two medium slices of bacon.

Nix two slices of bacon on your bacon cheeseburger or two slices on your club sandwich or breakfast sandwich.

If you eat bacon five times a week that’s a pound lost in seven weeks and five pounds lost in 35 weeks just by subtracting those slices from what you normally eat.   Of course, that’s assuming you don’t add an extra slice of cheese or a heaping spoonful of mayo!

A Healthy Eating Lesson On The Subway

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New York city, uptown #2 train, Saturday night.  Not too crowded, most people are wearing their subway stares – avoiding eye contact, eyes glazed over, ipod earbuds in place, bodies rocking with the motion of the train.  My trip isn’t long enough to pull out something to read, so I start to scan the ads that run above the seats– something I’ve entertained myself with since I was a little kid.

One whole side of the subway car I was in was filled with posters for New York City’s “Are You Pouring On The Pounds” campaign — aimed at teaching people to reduce their sugar intake (and lose or keep off weight) by cutting down on sugary drinks. It also encourages New Yorkers to drink water, seltzer or low-fat milk instead of the sweet stuff.

The posters are filled with liquid pouring out of bottles of soda, “sports” drinks or sweetened iced tea and turning into blobs of fat as it reaches the glass. Large graphics leave you with no doubt about the number of teaspoons or packets of sugar in each drink — or the total amount of liquid sugar that you could drink daily – as shown in the photo above.

For example: a 20 ounce bottle of soda is equivalent to 16 packets of sugar and a 32 ounce gigantic size cup – the kind so popular in movie theaters, gas stations, and arenas — contains the equivalent of 26 packets of sugar.

Do You Forget To Count The Calories You Drink?

It’s hard to overeat without noticing it. But, many people who gain weight — and can’t figure out why — forget to include the calories in what they drink.  Sugary drinks can add hundreds of calories and they don’t even make you feel full.

On average, Americans now consume 200 to 300 more calories each day than 30 years ago, with nearly half of those calories coming from sugar-sweetened drinks. A survey of adult New Yorkers shows that more than 2 million drink at least one sugar sweetened soda or other sweetened beverage each day – often at 250 calories a pop. Teenagers who drink sugary beverages get an average of 360 calories from them each day.  (They’d have to walk 70 city blocks to use up that many calories.)

Some Facts

A teaspoon of sugar weighs about four grams and each gram of sugar has four calories – or about 16 calories per teaspoon of sugar. On average, Americans consume about 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day – the equivalent of around 350 calories.  (Added sugar refers to the extra, empty calorie, added sweeteners, not the sugar that naturally occurs in foods like fruit and milk.)

The quickest way to decrease some of that sugar is to cut down on soda and sweetened drinks.   Sugary drinks, including sweetened tea or sweetened water that claims to be healthy, account for about one-third of added sugars.

Eating large quantities of sugar can lead to obesity and health problems like diabetes and heart disease. The American Heart Association recommends a daily max of six teaspoons of added sugar for women and nine teaspoons for men.  That’s quite a bit less than 22 teaspoons Americans generally average.  Too many spoonfuls of sugar may create the need for medicine rather than making it easily go down!

Other People May Make You Eat More

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Reservations for eight? You might eat 96% more! No kidding.  We tend to continue eating for a longer period of time when we’re with people compared to when we eat alone.  Maybe it’s because we mindlessly nibble while someone else talks, or the good manners we learned in fifth grade, or because we’re just having fun and enjoying great food. We do tend to stay at the table longer when we’re with others and the longer you stay at the table, the more you eat.

Losing Track

Friends and family also influence how much you eat. Sometimes you can get so involved in conversation that all the monitoring of what pops into your mouth goes out the window.  Have you ever looked down at your plate and wondered where all the cookies went or how you managed to work your way through the mile high dish of pasta or the four pieces of pizza?  How many tastes did you take of everyone else’s meal and dessert?  Those tastes aren’t like invisible ink.  Those calories count, too.

Who Sets the Pace?

You tend to mimic your table companions. They eat fast, you eat fast.  They eat a lot, you eat a lot.  Ever wonder why you look at some families or couples and they’re both either heavy or slender?  As Brian Wansink, PhD says in his book, Mindless Eating, “birds of a feather eat together.”

How Much More?

Wansink reports on a study that shows how strong the tendency is to increase how much you eat when you eat with others.  Compared to eating alone, you eat, on average:

  • 35% more if you eat with one other person
  • 75% more with four at the table
  • 96% more with a group of seven or more

Why?

The pattern of eating more when we’re in larger groups than when we’re eating alone is common in adults. One reason is a phenomenon called “social facilitation,” or the actions that stem from the stimuli coming from the sight and sound of other people doing the same that that you’re doing. When you’re eating in groups, social facilitation can help override the brain’s normal signals of satiety.

Some Helpful Tips:

  • Think about who you are eating with – and why.  If you want to have a blast and don’t care about how much you eat – eat with a big group and chow down.
  • If you want to be careful about what and how much you eat, think about eating lunch with your salad (dressing on the side, please) friends rather than the pepperoni pizza group.
  • You tend to adjust your eating pace to that of your companions.  So, sit next to the slow eaters rather than the gobblers if you’re trying to control how much goes into your mouth.