Want to Know Why There is a Problem with Obesity, Food Allergies, & Child Behavior Today?

Because the market is rife with products like this:

Tampico Citrus Punch, as seen on a big “on sale” display at my local Wal-Mart. “With Vitamin C” the package says. Want to know what the ingredients are?

WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CITRIC ACID, CORN OIL, FOOD STARCH MODIFIED, POTASSIUM CITRATE, ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), POTASSIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVATIVE), XANTHAN GUM, NATURAL & ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, LESS THAN 2% OF ORANGE, GRAPEFRUIT, LEMON AND TANGERINE JUICE CONCENTRATES, POTASIUM SORBATE, YELLOW #5 AND #6, EDTA (TO PRESERVE FRESHNESS)

There is more corn oil in this beverage than there is real fruit juice.

How many parents out there are pouring a glass of this in the morning for their children to go along with their chocolate covered sugar bomb cereal and thinking that they’re doing a good thing by giving them “juice”?

I KNOW that it was less than $2 for that whole gallon of high fructose corn syrup laden corn oil. However, it doesn’t cost $2 to fill a gallon sized jug with fresh tap water. And if your children just “won’t drink water – what will I do!?” at least with a product like Kool-Aid, you can feed them the artificial dyes without the corn oil, and you can control the sugar quantities yourself.

I want to say it’s ignorance. I want to say that parents just don’t know any better. But, honestly, I’m beginning to believe that some of the problem is simply laziness. Even without being educated in the real food arena, a parent can’t believe that the above list of ingredients is healthy on any single level for his or her child. It can’t be believed. So, either that parent too lazy to read the label, or he or she just doesn’t care.

The libertarian side of me refuses to acknowledge the other side of me – the side that wishes that poisoning our children this way was illegal – the side that wishes that the store shelves were wiped clean of such atrocities and replaced with fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, healthy meats.

We get donations of bread and desserts at the soup kitchen every day from a local grocery store. The desserts are labeled with nutrition labels. A “Kahluah Chocolate Silk Pie” came in topped with some fake soy whipped “cream” and one of the girls who works there tried a slice. “This pie is so good,” she said to me, “do you want to try it?”

I said, “Have you read the ingredients?” I pulled the package out of the garbage and read the list of forty-some-odd ingredients in that little eight-inch pie. “I’m guessing you haven’t or you wouldn’t be eating it.”

She, jokingly, said, “You just want to take all the fun away, don’t you?” And kept eating the pie.

Yes. That’s me. I just want to take the fun out of things. I don’t just want to make a pie with whole ingredients topped with fresh whipped cream and say, “Eat this one, compare it to the other and tell me which tastes better, which feels better in your mouth, which feels better in your stomach?”

It breaks my heart that there are people who just don’t know how bad this is for their bodies and for the bodies of their children. But at the same time, it makes me so angry that there are corporations that purposefully produce this crap.

All I can do is keep hyping my real food agenda. But, honestly, I’m a whisper in a hurricane compared to the marketing out there. Please read labels. Please make wise decisions regarding what your children consume. Their entire future depends on the decisions you make as you walk down the grocery aisle.

Hallee

I’m so grateful for your visit, today.
You would bless me if you added me to your feed reader or subscribed via email.
You can also become a fan on Facebook or follow me on Twitter. I would love to see more of you!
This post was linked to: