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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.

Refined sugar sneaks into our diets in everything from the obvious cookies and candies to less-apparent packaged goods, such as pasta sauce and frozen food. And added sugars, such as high-fructose corn syrup, aren't the only problem; processed carbohydrates (such as that white bagel you wolfed down between meetings this morning) break down similarly in the body. Whatever the source, these simple sugars have an immediate effect: The pancreas has to work extra hard to manufacture insulin (the blood sugar-balancing hormone), and whatever energy the body can't use gets stored as fat, resulting in unhealthy weight gain and even insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes.

Obesity