What Parents Need to Know About Fast Food

There are a lot of facts every parent should know about fast food. The good news is, information about fast food is readily available on the internet. The bad news is, despite this availability, parents still encourage fast food as a staple in their kids’ diet.

Below are some popular facts about fast food:

1. You would have to walk for seven hours straight to burn off a Super Sized Coke, French Fries and a Big Mac.

2. Fast food is a major contributor to the obesity epidemic. Left unabated, obesity will surpass smoking as the leading cause of preventable deaths in America.

Obesity has been linked to: Hypertension, Coronary Heart Disease, Adult Onset Diabetes, Stroke, Gall Bladder Disease, Osteoarthritis, Sleep Apnea, Respiratory Problems, Endometrial, Breast, Prostate and Colon Cancers, Dyslipidemia, Steatohepatitis, Insulin Resistance, Breathlessness, Asthma, among other serious diseases.

3. Fast foods are high in preservative content – and low on actual nutritional value.

4. Most nutritionists recommend not eating fast food more than once a month. 5. Fast food is possibly linked to cases of increased inattention and hyperactivity in children.

Even with the release of Super Size Me last 2004, there is no real decline in fast food sales. The alarming fact is, more and more people get into fast food everyday. As parents, you want your child to get proper nutrition three times a day.

Here are tips on how to get your kids avoid fast food:

Lay down the facts straight. Explain why fast food is bad. Nothing is really better than communicating with your kid the straight facts you know. On the other hand, make sure that when you talk to your kid, you sound like you’re informing them rather than imposing something on them.

Condition them to like healthy foods. Cook healthy delicious food at home. This would be very difficult especially for parents who can’t cook, but the trick here is to get your child’s palette used to healthy organic taste, rather than the artificial flavor that fast food offers. If your child is used to the home-cooked healthy taste, they will not enjoy eating at fast food restaurants at all.

Offer alternatives. If your kids are used to the fast food taste already, then introducing them to the savory home cooked meals may not be easy. Offer instead foods that are a lot closer to fast food. Introduce fruit shakes in place of ice teas, sausages instead of hotdogs, pesto instead of spaghetti, tacos instead of chips. Gradual transitions can help kids adjust to a new diet better.

Bond as family over food. Avoid stuffing food in the refrigerator for your kids to heat via microwave whenever they are hungry. Microwaved food tastes a lot like fast food. Turn family meals into regular family habit instead so your kid would get more familiar with home-cooked food instead. As soon as your kid gets the family meal into his system, he will routinely look for the home-cooked taste.