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Food for children - sweet fat

A lot of foodstuffs made and advertised for and loved by children should be consumed with great care. Their composition is often unbalanced and some product groups contain too much sugar. Children's foods on the whole tend to have too much fat and too many calories.

Humans seem to be born with a sweet tooth. Even babies prefer sweet food. The disadvantage of sweets is their combination of sugar and fat. They taste delicious, but contain a lot of calories. Plus, the sugar is turned into acid in the mouth, which could then damage the teeth. But there is no point in trying to ban sweets from the house completely. A little sweet every now and then can make you happy. And children can learn to enjoy a little treat from time to time rather than to stuff themselves all day. Children can also learn to differentiate between good sweets and bad sweets. Many fruits like strawberries or cherries can satisfy the need for something sweet without being unhealthy or containing too many calories. (see also here)

Some other foodstuffs are not necessarily made for children, but children are the main consumers. This includes chips, pizza, chicken nuggets and hamburgers. They all contain huge amounts of fat: 100 g of chips, which is a tiny portion, can contain up to 12 g of fat and about 300 kilocalories. If you add ketchup (which contains a lot of sugar) or mayonnaise, the fat and calorie content goes up even more. One salami pizza contains on average 35 g of fat and about 800 calories, which is 1/4 or even 1/3 of a teenager's daily need for calories.

Coke and lemonade, our children's and teenagers' favourite drinks, are not the best thirst-quenchers. One 0.3 l bottle of Coke contains the equivalent of 12 sugar cubes, a lot of caffeine and additives like phosphoric acid. This mixture makes children restless. The phosphoric acid also deprives the body of calcium, the vital element for the growth of bones. Lemonade also contains a lot of sugar.

Enjoying fast food and coke every now and then does no harm. But please, not every day!

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