More people will be entertaining this month, than any other time of year. The challenge is how to eat healthy when sugar, white flour, altered fats, high fructose corn syrup and artificial food flavorings and colorings are everywhere. In fact, holiday gatherings are landmines of hidden chemicals.

You can still enjoy the season, yet remain healthy if you follow the following tips:

Presents make all kids happy!

1) It makes sense to feed your family a light healthy snack before going to a holiday gathering. Parents often don’t have much control over what their kids eat at other people’s homes (especially Grandma’s house). The trick is to eat whole foods first. Chips, candy, cookies and other sugary foods won’t be so tempting, if your child’s tummy has previously eaten a whole food.

2) At the party, load up your (and your kid’s) plate with veggies, fruit, cheese, and slices of turkey or roast beef. After you and your kids have feasted on real food, indulge in the holiday’s treats. You won’t eat as much, because you’ll already be satisfied with whole food. Keep a look out for super foods: blueberries and other fruits, veggie slices, salmon, deviled eggs, and nuts.

3) Foods to avoid or at least hold off eating until you’ve had some real food: Crackers are the worst for altered fats. It’s hard to find a cracker that doesn’t have interesterified  fat as an ingredient. Candy and cookies are loaded with sugar and food colorings. Baked goods usually are made with white flour, lots of sugar, many times have altered fats, and are devoid of nutrients.

4) Choose your beverage wisely. Soda pop has approximately 10 to 14 teaspoons of sugar in one can. (I say, save your sugar consumption for chocolate, and the darker the chocolate the better it is for you!)

5) Keep a proper perspective. If you over indulge in junk foods, get back on track New Year’s Day.

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Liked this posting? Read Surviving the Holidays with a Picky Eater: CLICK HERE.

For the last 30 years, our Thanksgivings have been as natural (chemical free) as possible. Most Thanksgiving dinners are loaded with ingredients the Pilgrims never heard of: High Fructose Corn Syrup, MSG, artificial colors and flavors, polysorbate 60, sodium caseinate, and transfat. These ingredients are so commonplace today, that for many Thanksgiving wouldn’t be Thanksgiving with them.

I was motivated all those years ago to eliminate chemicals from our Thanksgiving feast, because our four-year-old daughter, Jenny, reacted to the additives and sugars in processed foods. Today, there are over 3,000 additives in our food supply, we have Genetically Modified Foods (GMO), and sugar is paramount. In fact, we now have a new sugar: High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS).

Savannah and Ashlyn are determined to help their mom make their Thanksgiving healthy and yummy.

According to a USDA’ report, about one-quarter of the calories consumed by the average American is in the form of added sugars; the majority comes from high fructose corn syrup. Part of what makes HFCS such an unhealthy product is that it is metabolized to fat in your body far more rapidly than any other sugar.

Making your Thanksgiving healthier really isn’t as difficult as you might first think. Purchase a turkey with the nutrition label listing only one ingredient: turkey. Save money and make your own stuffing with leftover whole wheat bread. Instead of soda pop, containing HFCS, for the kids, offer sparkling apple juice. Don’t use box mixes or canned vegetables, like sweet potatoes.

I’d like to know who came up with “candied sweet potatoes.” Aren’t sweet potatoes, well, sweet, without marshmallows? Did you know that marshmallows are really sugar-mallows, because they no longer contain any marshmallow root. Marshmallows are made from sugar, primarily corn syrup, water and gelatin.

I suggest regulating sugar in all its forms to dessert. Delete it from the main course. And, totally eliminate High Fructose Corn Syrup from your Thanksgiving meal altogether.

Many of the dishes we serve during the Thanksgiving meal are loaded with sugar. Why aren’t they considered dessert? This is beyond me! Jello “salad” is one that stands out. Jello is made with only five ingredients: water, gelatin, sugar, and artificial colors and flavors. This doesn’t sound much like a “salad” to me.

Cranberry sauce is a Thanksgiving perennial. They say there is always an exception to the rule. This is my exception for sugar during Thanksgiving dinner. Cranberries by their very nature are tart. I always purchase cranberries in the produce department and cook them with less sugar than is suggested in the directions. Some make their cranberry sauce with apple juice instead of sugar, but I haven’t been able to find the right combination that suits our family.

Pre-made, whipped toppings, like Cool Whip, are primarily air, sugar and transfat. Make your own whipped topping with real whipping cream. Not only will it taste better, it’s better for you. Cool Whip is made of water, corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated coconut (this is the transfat) and palm kernel oil (CPKO), sodium caseinate, vanilla extract, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 60 (glycosperse), and beta carotene.

A natural Thanksgiving begins with having yummy, healthy recipes and then purchasing whole foods. Now’s the time to do a little planning. Read labels and find products free from sugar and artificial ingredients. Take a close look at the ingredients in your favorite recipes and make healthy substitutions. Finally, keep sugar regulated to dessert.

For my alternative to the jello fruit mold, CLICK HERE.

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One can of soda pop contains between 10 and 14 teaspoons of sugar.

Six teaspoons of sugar lowers the immune system 25 percent for 12 hours.

Fifteen teaspoons of sugar lowers the immune system 95 percent for 12 hours

Sugar causes the pancreas to malfunction, leading to hypoglycemia, diabetes and mood swings.

The Bad News
White bread is a simple sugar. White rice is a simple sugar. White sugar is a simple sugar. Soft drinks are simple sugars. Even fruit juices are simple sugars. Each of these spikes your blood sugar high and then drops it down low. This is very hard on the body, on the adrenal glands and the pancreas. What’s worse, is that these foods are usually a picky eater’s favorite.

The Good News
Sugar isn’t the only sweetener. Stevia comes from the sunflower family, native to subtropical and tropical regions. It is known as sweetleaf, sugarleaf or steiva. As a sweetener, stevia’s taste has a slower onset and longer duration than that of sugar. It has a negligible effect on blood sugar, which is a boon for those with diabetes. And stevia extracts can be 300 times the sweeter than sugar.

Stevia as a Sweetener
Stevia is just becoming well-known in the US, but has been widely used in Japan for over 20 years. Because the human body does not metabolize the sweet glycosides in stevia leaf (they pass right through the normal elimination channels) or any of its processed forms, the body obtains no calories from stevia. Processed forms of pure Stevia can be 70-400 times sweeter than sugar. Whether these products are called Stevia, Stevioside, Rebaudioside, Stevia Extract, or Stevia Concentrate, if they are in their pure unadulterated form they do not adversely affect blood glucose levels and may be used freely by both diabetics and hypoglycemics. For people with blood sugar, blood pressure or weight problems Stevia is the most desirable sweetener.

In all of its current forms, stevia has a taste unique to itself. Just as honey, maple syrup, and brown rice syrup, each have their unique sweet taste, so does stevia. Along with its sweetness there is also a slight licorice taste. Unlike artificial sweeteners, the sweet glycosides do not break down in heat, which makes Stevia an excellent sweetener for cooking and baking.

Stevia’s Safety
There has never been a complaint that Stevia, in any of its consumable forms, has caused any harmful side effects in the 1500 years of use in Paraguay and about 20 years in Japan. Scientists, who have studied stevia, state that it is safe for human consumption.

Following extensive research Dr. Daniel Mowrey reported: “More elaborate safety tests were performed by the Japanese during their evaluation of stevia as a possible sweetening agent. Few substances have ever yielded such consistently negative results in toxicity trials as have stevia. Almost every toxicity test imaginable has been performed on stevia extract [concentrate] or stevioside at one time or another. The results are always negative. No abnormalities in weight change, food intake, cell or membrane characteristics, enzyme and substrate utilization, or chromosome characteristics. No cancer, no birth defects, no acute and no chronic untoward effects. Nothing.”

Coming next: Cooking with Stevia

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The findings suggests the high-fat and high-sugar diet leads to changes in the fetal brain’s reward pathway, altering food preferences. They studied rats and found that the brains of the pups were altered by what their mothers ate during pregnancy.

I don’t know why we need another study to prove what moms eat while pregnant and nursing affect their babies. I guess, we don’t believe that the amount of high-fat, high-sugar in the foods we eat is “excessive.” That’s because we play word games with ourselves (actually lie). What exactly is excessive anyway?

Tristan’s preference for sugar or not is directly related
to how much his mom consumed while pregnant and nursing.

A Spoonful of Sugar
How much sugar should we eat…in moderation? People underestimate the amount of sugar they regularly eat. The average amount of added sugar consumed in a day is a whopping 22 teaspoons. That’s 2 to 3 pounds per week! Obese people eat two and a half times more: 52 teaspoons a day. Some recommend cutting our sugar consumption to 6 teaspoons a day, but truthfully, for optimal health, you shouldn’t be eating any added sugars.

Sugar Trap
Instead of trying to figure out how much added sugar is in the food you eat, stop eating added sugars altogether. That’s right no added refined sugar. You have to read labels in order to avoid sugar traps.

Especially if you’re pregnant or you’re nursing you can avoid having a child who is addicted to sugar by eating wonderful food with natural sugar in it: fruit and veggies. Choose whole grain cereals and cook at home using natural sweeteners like honey and maple syrup sparingly. Drink carbonated water and fruit juice instead of soda. It’s never too late to cut out sugar. Start today.

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It wasn’t until a health concern that Britney decided to eliminate all sugar from their family’s diet. Removing sugar isn’t as easy as Britney first thought.

Processed Foods Contain Sugar
Sure, sugar is a major ingredient in soda, kids’ cereals and treats, but it hides in most every processed food.

We believe candy equals love, but it means heart disease.

It’s a major component found in ketchup, it’s found in most canned and boxed foods, it’s added to beverages, even vitamin drinks. Sugar is a chameleon hiding under numerous names ( Click Here for various names for sugar). Britney had no idea how prevalent sugar was in her diet, until she began to read nutrition labels.

Heart Health
We assoicate sugar, especially candy, with love, never thinking that it will increase the risk of heart disease. It’s been drilled into our collective conscience that saturated fats are bad for heart health. However, a new study published in Circulation found that teenagers, who consume large amounts of sugary foods and drinks, are more likely to have risk factors for heart disease.

The study authors examined the sugar-consuming habits of 2,157 teens. The teens participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 1999 to 2004. Among the participants, daily consumption of added sugars averaged 21.4 percent of total energy. The results of the study indicated that the more added sugar teenagers consumed, the more significant was the association with factors known to increase cardiovascular disease risk. For example, the higher the intake of added sugars, the lower the mean high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels. Added sugars also were linked with levels of low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and triglycerides.

Sugar Caramelizes the Heart
What’s that? Sugar caramelizes the heart!!! A lot of attention is given to the effects of saturated fast on the heart. Little attention is paid to the consequences of consuming sugar. Caramelizing is good when browning sugars while cooking, it’s not so good for your heart. One of sugar’s most destructive effects on the heart is its tendency to encourage the formation of Advanced Glycation End products (AGEs) in the body. AGEs are the final product of a series of complex rearrangements. AGE formation in the body results from the same process that caramelizes sugar when it’s cooked.

Sweetened drinks, such as soft drinks, are the largest contributor to added sugar intake in the U.S. The use of added sweeteners containing fructose (sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup) has increased by 25 percent over the past thirty years. Now it appears not only is obesity a problem when consuming sweetened drinks, but cardiovascular disease as well.

The study found teens who consume large amounts of sugar are more likely to have risk factors for heart disease. Fifty-six percent of 8-year-olds drink soda every day. The way to avoid having teens who consume too much sugar, is to limit sugar intake while they are young.

Parents are responsible for teaching their children how to appreciate whole foods. Parents purchase the food their kids eat. If sugar is limited, kids won’t grow up drinking soda and eating sugar loaded foods. It’s up to parents to set the tone in the home and what you do now will impact your kids’ health for the rest of their lives.

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This coming year, I already know I want to spend more time in God’s Word. When I read scripture, it gives balance and perspective to all that I do. Don’t know why I procrastinate opening up the Bible, but I do. This year, no matter what, I want to make reading scripture a regular part of my day.

Okay, I’ll go one more and make a second resolution. This one is really for you. There are moments when I want to stop writing the Baby Bites blog. Yes, it’s true. I’ve posted twice a week for over two years.

Who knew sugar does so much harm?

Sometimes the blogs come together in a few minutes, mostly they do not. I love to research nutrition and health, so I usually have something to write about. When I don’t, then I get creative. My resolution is to find new ways to help you in your family’s health journey. Every week, I’ll do my best to give you the latest vital health information.  If you have any topics or questions you’d like to know more about, let me know.

My last blog, A New Year’s Resolution for Your Family’s Health, brought up a common problem parents face. Even when  you do your best to feed your family healthy foods, well-meaning friends and family keep giving your kids sugar. Especially for those who want to cut out or cut back on the sugar your family ingests, I’ll begin my resolution by offering reasons which will help you to explain to others why sugar is harmful:

• Sugar interferes with healthy eating, by substituting empty calories for nutritious foods.
• Sugar promotes picky eating.
• Sugar is addictive.
• Sugar can lower your Vitamin E levels.
• Sugar suppresses the immune system.
• Sugar feeds cancer cells.
• Sugar can contribute to hyperactivity, anxiety, depression, concentration difficulties, and crankiness in children.
• Sugar can cause behavioral problems in kids.
• Sugar can produce a significant rise in triglycerides.
• Sugar can cause drowsiness and decreased activity in children.
• Sugar can reduce helpful high-density cholesterol (HDLs).
• Sugar can promote an elevation of harmful cholesterol (LDLs).
• Sugar can cause hypoglycemia.
• Sugar contributes to a weakened defense against bacterial infection.
• Sugar can cause kidney damage.
• Sugar can increase the risk of coronary heart disease.
• Sugar may lead to chromium deficiency.
• Sugar can cause copper deficiency.
• Sugar interferes with absorption of calcium and magnesium.
• Sugar can increase fasting levels of blood glucose.
• Sugar promotes tooth decay.
• Sugar can produce an acidic stomach.
• Sugar can raise adrenaline levels in children.
• Sugar leads to periodontal disease and cavities.
• Sugar speeds the aging process, causing wrinkles and gray hair.
• Sugar can increase total cholesterol.
• Sugar contributes to weight gain and obesity.
• High intake of sugar increases the risk of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
• Sugar contributes to diabetes.
• Sugar can contribute to osteoporosis.
• Sugar can cause a decrease in insulin sensitivity.
• Sugar leads to decreased glucose tolerance.
• Sugar can cause cardiovascular disease.
• Sugar can increase systolic blood pressure.
• Sugar causes food allergies.
• Sugar causes free radical formation in the bloodstream.
• Sugar can cause toxemia during pregnancy.
• Sugar contributes to eczema in children.
• Sugar can overstress the pancreas, causing damage.
• Sugar can cause atherosclerosis.
• Sugar can compromise the lining of the capillaries.
• Sugar can cause liver cells to divide, increasing the size of the liver.
• Sugar can increase the amount of fat in the liver.
• Sugar can increase kidney size and produce pathological changes in the kidney.
• Sugar can cause depression.
• Sugar can increase the body’s fluid retention.
• Sugar can cause hormonal imbalance.
• Sugar can cause hypertension.
• Sugar can cause headaches, including migraines.
• Sugar can alter the mind’s ability to think clearly.
• Sugar can increase blood platelet adhesiveness which increases risk of blood clots and strokes.
• Sugar can increase insulin responses in those consuming high-sugar diets.
• Sugar increases bacterial fermentation in the colon (diarrhea)

May 2011 Be Happy And Healthy.

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Just Like “Jumbo Shrimp”… “Healthy Candy” is an Oxymoron


In America the annual per capita consumption of candy is about 24 pounds. Children eat between 1 and 4 pounds of candy just at Halloween.

I have avoided writing about Halloween candy, because I feel that it is no longer safe for kids to trick-or-treat. Also, I’m not fond of a day celebrating the dead and all things evil on All Hallow’s Eve an occult holy day.

That said, kids still consume tons of Halloween candy at school, collecting candy from neighbors and family or they attend a fall festival, or church harvest party and end up with just as much candy.

Have you ever wondered why you never have to convince a picky eater to eat candy?

Haley munches on her candy stash.
Photo with permission from ZIMage Photography

The Sugar Monster
Sugar is a monster. Somehow that’s appropriate for this holiday. Unless the sugar is listed as “organic” or it says “pure sugar cane,” it’s most likely from GMO beets. Just about every disease is linked to or made worse with sugar consumption.

Sugar consumption is directly related to the explosion in obesity and diabetes. In the refining process, all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, enzymes, and other beneficial nutrients have been stripped away. What’s worse much of the sugar in candy is now High Fructose Corn Syrup.

The amount of Halloween candy each child eats depends on his/her age and the amount their parents permit. This can be the ultimate battle, because after all, kids feel the candy belongs to them.

You can control your children’s candy consumption by having them dump all of their goodies onto the kitchen table when they return home. First of all it’s a good idea to inspect what in their bags. Next, let them sort the candy into three different piles: their favorites, the candy that they like somewhat, but not their favorites, and ones they don’t really care for.

The goal of the three piles is to allow kids the opportunity to designate their favorites. Parents can then combine the favorite candy into smaller packages so it’s not all eaten at one time and then throw out everything else. The small bags can be put into school lunches and eaten as after-school snacks. By dividing the candy this way, consumption is more manageable and the least favorite candy is disposed of right away.

Healthy Candy
Is there such a thing as “healthy candy”? No, I don’t believe so, but there are some candies without all the chemicals. It would be more accurate to say “natural candy.”

Sugar is always an issue, but for special times, it’s nice to have choices. My third daughter couldn’t tolerate the artificial dyes and flavors in candies.  I found out later that they are derived from petroleum, no wonder. When she was a child we had only two choices, both contain hydrogenated oils: Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups and Bit-O-Honey. Of course our Holiday Homemade Fudge is made without artificial stuff.

Today, you can find lots of “natural candy” without hydrogenated oils, artificial colors and flavors in a whole foods store or online. I found two online that look very promising: Natural Candy Store and Sugar Coated Organics.

The candy they sell has “Absolutely NO artificial colors or dyes, NO artificial flavors, NO artificial sweeteners, NO high fructose corn syrup, NO preservatives, NO hydrogenated oils.”

There is candy for special diets: Vegan, gluten-free, Feingold approved, and kosher. I even found kosher candy canes! (That seems like another oxymoron, oh well.) You can purchase lollypops, jellybeans and organic candy bars.

So what’s in this natural candy? You’ll find ingredients like Organic Evaporated Cane Juice, Organic Rice Syrup, Citric Acid, Natural Green Apple Flavor, Dark Chocolate, and Natural Alfalfa Extract Color, Natural Lemon Flavor.

Natural candy is more expensive than ordinary chemical-filled candy, but I believe it’s worth it. Also, if you spend a little more, you just might eat a little less.

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Do you know what percentage of food dollars is spent on processed foods, most, if not all, which have added chemicals to enhance flavor?

Kids are conditioned to these psychedelic flavors. The additives like food flavorings,  high fructose corn syrup, MSG and salt are almost always ingredients in processed foods, especially junk foods. Salt is added to processed foods for longer shelf life as well as taste.

Zachary and Angel love psychedelic colors… not chemical- altered flavors.

MSG is added to food to give it that indescribable taste-explosion that’s found in fast food. These additives become additive. That’s why MSG is found just about everything, including French fries. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find MSG on a food label as it has many aliases.

What about those yummy fruit flavors? Today, chemicals can give candy and gum a strawberry or an apple flavor, but it’s really petroleum. Do you really want your kids to eat petroleum?

Add sugar, especially High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) to the mix and it’s very hard for whole foods to compete with the psychedelic flavors. HFCS fools the brain. It interrupts the signal that your stomach has received enough, so you over eat. Once HFCS is no longer in your diet, you will find that you’re satiated with less food.

Your child’s body craves real food, even if you have a picky eater. Yes, even picky eaters, who refuse to eat whole foods, need them for health. To be successful in transforming a picky eater to a healthy eater, whole foods must replace fast foods and junk foods. ( Baby Bites: Transforming a Picky Eater onto a Healthy Eater explains how you can accomplish this in about a week.) You’ll be fighting an uphill battle if cookies, crackers, chips, candy and sugar-filled drinks are found in your pantry and you regularly purchase fast foods.

Psychedelic flavors alter our perception of food. It changes our sensory expectation of what is tasty. Because of marketing highly processed foods, kids expect a taste-sensation when they eat.

Adjust Your Taste Thermostat
It will take a week or so for your kid’s taste buds to adjust to whole foods. Be assured, they will adjust. Yes, you need to be patient and hold the line.

Your thermostat adjusts your furnace or air conditioner when you change the temperature control. Once the new temperature is programmed in the thermostat the temperature in the room eventually alters.

The same is true for taste buds. Once they’re programmed to whole foods, the sweetness of an orange or a ripe peach will be unbelievable. A sip of soda pop will become excruciatingly sugary. The craving for salty chips will be replaced with desiring the crunch of julienne veggies and dip. Canned soups will become too salty. Boxed macaroni and cheese will loose its appeal. (By the way, the processed dried cheese in mac and cheese is loaded with colorings and MSG.)

Do your children have psychedelic taste expectations? We spend 90 percent of our food dollars on processed foods. Not until you change that statistic for your family will your children begin to appreciate the taste of whole foods.

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Our food supply has become so polluted that it’s difficult to discern what’s a whole food and what’s not. I’ve divided my ‘Top 10 Worst Foods of the Decade’ in half. Today’s blog contains the second half: 5 through 1. Click Here to see Part One. I’ve listed them in descending order. The most obvious foods, which we regularly eat, are mentioned in my previous blog. The not-so-obvious unhealthy foods we often believe are healthy are covered in today’s blog, ending with the one food parents really believe is a health food, but it’s full of sugar.

#5 — Fried Chicken (A popular kids’ menu item.)
Fried chicken comes in many forms for kids: chicken fingers, chicken nuggets, chicken sandwiches, etc. Parents often think this is a better choice than a hamburger. There’s six to ten grams of trans fat in each order of onion rings or chicken fingers.  KFC Original Recipe Chicken Dinner has seven grams of trans fat, mostly from the chicken and biscuit.

#4 — Microwave Popcorn
A report from the FDA indicates that a chemical coating used in microwave popcorn bags breaks down when heated into a substance called perfluorooctanoic (PFOA). The Environmental Protection Agency has identified PFOA as a “likely carcinogen.” Another study has found an acid that can be extracted from the chemical causes cancer in animals and is “likely to cause cancer in humans.”

Why is cereal on ‘Nonna’s Top 10 Worst Foods’ list? Madison’s not sure.

A second potential danger in microwave popcorn is diacetyl, an FDA-approved chemical found in the fake butter flavoring. There’s even a debilitating respiratory disease called “popcorn workers lung,” (the medical name of the condition is bronchiolitis obliterans) suffered by microwave popcorn factory workers caused by extended inhalation of the chemical’s fumes. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, (NIOSH) concluded that diacetyl needs further study so that workers in the flavorings and snack industry are no longer at risk. Do your family a favor and purchase a hot-air popper! It’s just as fast as the microwave variety and when you use organic popcorn and real butter, it’s a healthy snack.

#3 — Processed Lunch Meats
Hot dogs are considered “kid food.” You’ll find them on many children’s menus and are considered a summer staple. Most cured meats, expecially breakfast and other sausage, bacon, luncheon meats, and hot dogs, contain nitrites and nitrates. They’re added to processed meats to prevent botulism and enhance the taste and color of the meat. Without nitrates processed meats would be brown, just like cooked hamburger. Once inside the body, they can form nitrosamines, a cancer-causing chemical. These carcinogenic compounds have been associated with cancer. They have also been linked with leukemia and ADD/ADHD in children.

#2 — Boxed Cereal (including instant oatmeal)
More than 2.7 billion packages of cereal are sold in grocery stores each year. It’s the third most popular supermarket product (behind soda pop and bread). This translates to an average of 10 pounds, or 160 bowls, of cereal per American each year.

Extruded grains are industrially processed foods, including “healthy” breakfast cereals, which really aren’t so healthy. For all boxed breakfast cereals, grains are extruded — forced out of a hole at high temperature with pressure in order to make them into the various shapes typically found in breakfast cereals. The extrusion process destroys most of the nutrients in the grains, including fatty acids. Boxed cereals end up being empty calories. Cereals marketed to children are even worse as they are loaded with added sugars. Even the organic oatmeal pictured has 3 teaspoons of sugar per serving. Make your own hot oatmeal, it’ll cost less, taste better, and have less sugars.

#1 — Fruited Yogurt
The number one food parents believe is a healthy food and it’s NOT…is fruited yogurt. Yogurt is full of probiotics. Probiotics live in the tube that runs right through the middle of us. It includes our nose, sinuses, mouth, upper airways, lungs, esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines, rectum and anus. We no longer eat a healthy diet with natural foods containing good bacteria, so the bad bacteria proliferate. We think we’re eating healthy foods with probiotics, such as fruited yogurts. But fruited yogurts have up to 7 teaspoons of sugar in a serving. The sugar feeds the bad bacteria, so we’re not better off than when we started. The solution is to eat PLAIN yogurt with active ingredients and add fruit-only jams for flavor. (Vanilla flavored yogurt is not the answer, either. There’s more added sugar in the vanilla yogurt!)

Click Here for The Decades Top 10 Worst Foods…items 10 through 6.

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I must admit this list was harder to put together than I first thought. Our food supply is mostly processed and when you’re talking about processed anything, well, it’s just not healthy. I decided to pick the most common horrible foods I could think of. Ones we regularly eat and many times think of as healthy food choices.

I’ve divided my ‘Top 10 Worst Foods’.  Today’s blog contains the first half of my Worst Foods List: 10 through 6. I’ve listed them in descending order. The most obvious foods, which we regularly eat, are mentioned in today’s blog. The not-so-obvious unhealthy foods we believe are healthy will be covered in my next blog, ending with the one food parents really believe is a health food, but it’s full of sugar.

“According to a recent report, due to the recession, Americans are eating cheap, unhealthy, fatty foods. So apparently, the recession started in 1957.”
…Conan O’Brian

Angel’s tongue is blue from the dyes in birthday cake frosting. You can’t readily see the effects of trans fat in the icing.

#10 — French Fries
French fries come in at number ten, because we really know this is an unhealthy food. Still, 21 percent of toddlers eat French fries EVERY DAY! French fries are potatoes, so what could be bad about that? Most French fries are purchased out. They are cooked in altered fats and seasoned with salt and many times with MSG (a hidden toxin). There is between 4 and 7 grams of trans fat in a single serving of fries.

#9 — Soda Pop
More than 15 billion gallons of soda pop were sold in 2000. That’s least one 12-ounce can per day for every man, woman, and child in America. But, kids drink more soda pop than their parents. In the past 10 years, soft drink consumption among children has almost doubled in the United States.  Most parents are in denial about the amount of soda pop their children regularly drink. Studies have found over half, 56 percent, of 8-year-olds down soft drinks daily. Soda has been dubbed, “liquid candy” and rightly so, as soda pop is the number one source of sugar in our kids’ diets. A single can of soda pop has between 14 17 teaspoons of sugar!

#8 — Birthday Cake
Kids go to parties all the time. Birthday cake is made from white flour, sugar and altered fats. The icing is primarily trans fat and food coloring. Trans fat has a half-life of 51 days, so if your child goes to a party every 2 months, then trans fat is continually in his body!

#7 — Non-Dairy Whipped Topping (like Cool Whip)
Cool Whip is made of water corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated coconut and palm kernel oils (“hydrogenated” IS trans fat). Trans fat molecules are absorbed into your cells, compromising the cell’s metabolism. Trans fat lowers the HDL (good cholesterol) and increases the LDL (bad cholesterol), leading to heart disease. In pregnant women, trans fat, like alcohol, drugs, carbon monoxide from cigarette smoke, and pesticides, pass through the placenta to the baby, affecting the baby’s metabolism in direct proportion to the amount ingested by the mother. In addition, there’s a correlation between trans fat and Type 2 Diabetes. To make matters worse, trans fat inhibits the absorption of vitamin K (vital for bone growth). Trans fat is a toxin interfering with all membrane function.

#6 — Store-Bought Cookies and Crackers
Cookies and crackers range from 30 to 50 percent trans fat. Many baked goods are moving away from trans fats and using interesterifed fats. Interesterified fats are like trans fats raising the blood levels of the “bad” LDL cholesterol. At the same time, lowering the “good” HDL cholesterol levels. Just because the package boasts, “No trans fats” doesn’t mean that it’s a healthy product. Look for interesterifed fat on the nutrition label.

Click Here for The Decade’s Top 10 Worst Foods…items 5 through 1.

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