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Children do not need to eat large amounts of sugar. In the 1800s, the average American consumed 12 pounds of sugar per year. By 1975, however, after the overwhelming success of the refined-food industry, the 12 pounds had jumped to a world-leading 118 pounds per year, and jumped again to 154 pounds per capita (for every man, woman, and child) by 1997. This amounts to 53 teaspoonfuls of added sugar per person per day. This is in contrast to the recommended 6-18 teaspoonfuls per day, depending on total calories in an individual’s diet, recommended by the USDA (Food Consumption, Prices and Expenditures, United States Department of Agriculture, 1999). The effect of sugar intake on children's behavior is a hotly debated topic in pediatrics. Parents and educators often contend that sugar and other carbohydrate ingestion can dramatically impact children's behavior, particularly their activity levels.

Fruit juices contain lots of simple sugar without much fiber. Many people think of juices as health foods. This simply isn't true. In small quantities they are fine, but they are mainly a way to get many of the calories and some of the nutrients from a substance, without getting as full and without getting the needed fiber. One study has shown that children who drink more than 12 ounces of fruit juice per day are shorter and fatter than those who don't.

Children do not need large amounts of fat--although fat by itself isn't quite the culprit that most people think. Fat in combination with simple carbohydrates (such as sugar, white flour, white rice, or potatoes) is far more dangerous than fat alone because the fat is handled by the body so differently. French fries, potato chips, cheeseburgers on white-flour buns, donuts, candy bars, and the like are particularly bad.

Other sources of calcium include fortified breakfast cereal, soya beans, tofu, soya drinks with added calcium, dried figs, okra, curly kale, rice pudding and baked beans.

soya beans and tofubreadpulses such as chickpeasgreen vegetables, especially watercress and okra (but not spinach)other vegetables, such as cabbage and onionsdried fruit, especially dried figsnuts, such as almonds, and seeds, such as sesame seeds

Today we have a nation that is addicted to sugar. In 1915, the national average of sugar consumption (per year) was around 15 to 20 pounds per person. Today the average person consumes his/her weight in sugar, plus over 20 pounds of corn syrup.

What happens when you eat a refined carbohydrate like sugar? Your body must borrow vital nutrients from healthy cells to metabolize the incomplete food. Calcium, sodium, potassium and magnesium are taken from various parts of the body to make use of the sugar. Many times, so much calcium is used to neutralize the effects of sugar that the bones become osteoporotic due to the withdrawn calcium.

These wastes accumulate through the brain and nervous system, which speeds up cellular death. The bloodstream becomes over-loaded with waste products and symptoms of carbonic poisoning result.

One of sugar's major drawbacks is that it raises the insulin level, which inhibits the release of growth hormones, which in turn depresses the immune system. This is not something you want to take place if you want to avoid disease. An influx of sugar into the bloodstream upsets the body's blood-sugar balance, triggering the release of insulin, which the body uses to keep blood-sugar at a constant and safe level. Insulin also promotes the storage of fat, so that when you eat sweets high in sugar, you're making way for rapid weight gain and elevated triglyceride levels, both of which have been linked to cardiovascular disease. Complex carbohydrates tend to be absorbed more slowly, lessening the impact on blood-sugar levels.

If there is more glucose around, there is going to be less vitamin C allowed into the cell. It doesn't take much: a blood sugar value of 120 reduces the phagocytic index by 75%. So when you eat sugar, think of your immune system slowing down to a crawl.

Here we are getting a little bit closer to the roots of disease. It doesn't matter what disease we are talking about, whether we are talking about a common cold or about cardiovascular disease, or cancer or osteoporosis, the root is always going to be at the cellular and molecular level, and more often than not insulin is going to have its hand in it, if not totally controlling it.