Page 18
When is a
food not a
Mom - The school says no
food?
more tuna fish
sandwiches in my lunch! Are Not Allowed At
This week involved helping grandkids
prepare speeches for school. First Al-
exandra showed up. She is 9, our old-
est granddaughter. Then 13 year old
Tyler, our second oldest grandson,
arrived and, as I helped Tyler, this
article began to form.
Growing up neither I or others my age
can remember ever being told what
we could and could not bring to school
in our lunches. Today, however, many
schools have signs posted on their
doors banning certain things due to
possible allergic reactions in certain
students. I have seen nuts in general
and peanuts (and peanut butter) and
walnuts specifically banned in some
schools. Outside the food sector,
perfumes and any scented products
are often excluded. One day I asked a
school secretary if the students at her
school were actually banned from
bringing a tuna fish sandwich to school
because on the front doors of the
school a sign said No Walnuts and NO
FISH were allowed in the school.
What has happened, what has
changed so much in a generation that
now we have kids so allergic to certain
things that we have to ban them from
an entire school? It is weird when pea-
nut butter and jelly sandwiches and
guns are on the same “banned from
school” list.
“When did a peanut butter
and jelly sandwich become a
weapon?”
Wings 2 Fly January 2009
Sorry, Peanut Butter
and Jelly Sandwiches
School!
Why are kids so allergy prone today? What Would You Call Some-
Why are so many kids showing up
with learning disabilities and attention
thing That….
deficit disorders compared to not all ● Was high in calories but contained
that long ago? absolutely no vitamins or minerals
● Suppressed your immune system
I am not a doctor, nor health profes-
● Depleted your body of B vitamins,
sional. I have no training in diet, nutri-
tion or any other area that could be chromium, zinc and manganese
relevant so this article is simply an ● Can cause hyperactivity, difficulty
opinion. However, since this isn’t concentrating, crankiness and anxi-
some medical or scientific journal I get ety
to speculate so here is my speculative ● Reduces your ability to fight bacterial
opinion. There are probably a great infections
many reasons but there is one that I ● Interferes with the absorption of cer-
think we all need to look at because tain minerals the body needs
we can all do something about it. ● Contributes to obesity
● Disrupts the body’s metabolism and
Let’s say there was a substance that
its ability to regulate its internal
we called a food that was very high in
workings
calories but didn’t contain a single
● Can create drowsiness and lethargy
mineral or vitamin. Let’s say that 100
especially in children
years ago the average North American
● Can contribute to diabetes
ate 5 pounds of this “food.”
● Can damage the pancreas and liver
Wouldn’t you hope that with all the
● Lowers the effectiveness of enzymes
advancements we have made in
in the body
health, diet and nutrition, by now we
would have reduced the intake of this ● Can cause headaches and migraines
● Has another 100+ negative effects on
“pseudo-food” significantly, if not
the body
eliminated it altogether?
● Can interfere with the absorption of
How would you feel if in 1999 you proteins
were told in a U.S. Department of Ag-
riculture study that the average ●WOULD YOU CALL IT A
American teenage male was now con- FOOD?
suming 109 pounds of this “food” each
year? How would you feel if you found
If you haven’t already guessed, Tyler
out that this “food” is now in a variety
was doing his speech on “Sugar.”
of forms and is in so many foods that
When I discovered how much sugar
studies find it hard to calculate how
we consume, I thought it had to be
much of this “food” the average North
wrong. There is no way I, or anyone
American consumes per year but it is
else, could be eating that much sugar
estimated to be anywhere from 65 to
but if we were and if the effects of
150 pounds?
January 2009
sugar were close to what was being
suggested, then I couldn’t help but
wonder how much it may contribute to
the dramatic changes in our kids that
show up in ways such as an epidemic
of allergies, learning disabilities, etc.
It may be hard to believe but here are
few things Tyler and I discovered.
First, sugar hides under different ali-
ases. Here are some:
Sugar in disguise: sucrose,
fructose, maple syrup, molasses,
dextrose, turbinado, sorbitol and
high fructose corn syrup etc.
Some Sugar On Your Steak
Would you like some sugar on your
steak? After listening to one
nutritionist on the internet I
went to our refrigerator and
checked out the barbecue
sauce we use. The sug-
gested serving size on the
bottle was 2 tablespoons.
In those two tablespoons
are 14 grams of sugar which is about
3 and 1/2 teaspoons of sugar. Basi-
cally half of the BBQ sauce was sugar
which by the way was the number
one ingredient listed on the bottle.
Do you drink soda pop such
as Coke and Pepsi? Each can
has about 7-8 teaspoons of
sugar in it.
And for all those who go for
sports drinks like Gatorade…
In a 32 ounce bottle of Ga-
torade there are about 14 teaspoons
of sugar.
I was surprised to find out
that in 6 ounces of Yoplait
Strawberry Yogurt there are
about 7 teaspoons of sugar.
Do you ever have
Pop Tarts for breakfast or a
snack? Well two of them
have about 8 and 1/2 tea-
spoons of sugar just wait-
ing for you.
Even one of those Nutri-Grain bars
that we often grab for a snack has 3+
teaspoons of sugar in it.
Wings 2 Fly
In my home country, Statistics Can-
ada has estimated that we eat on av-
erage 23 teaspoons of added sugar
every day which would be bad enough
until you read that the 23 teaspoons
only include the refined sugar, honey
and maple syrup we consume. Not
included in that total are the sugar we
get from fruit juices and all the added
sugars we get from corn sweeteners
which is what you find, for example, in
all the soda pop we drink and a host
of other products. The 23 teaspoons
alone convert to about 92 grams or
about 3 and 1/4 ounces. Multiply that
by 365 and you and I are eating about
74 pounds of refined sugar, honey and
maple syrup per year and remember,
that doesn’t include all the extra sugar
you and I are getting from fruit juices
and all the products containing fruc-
tose, corn syrup etc. By the way, if
you count calories, every teaspoon of
sugar is about 15 calories.
To be fair, our bodies do need sugar
but considering the fact that North
Americans were eating 5 pounds per
year a hundred years ago, let’s go out
on a limb and say that 100+ pounds
per year might be a little more than
we need. It is estimated that our
sugar consumption has gone up 26
pounds in just the last 20 years! And
we wonder why our kids are hyperac-
tive?
Tamara, our second oldest daughter
and Tyler’s mom sent me a list from a
web site showing 124 ways sugar can
ruin your health You can read them at
http://www.powerattunements.com/
article121.html
Personally I would like to know a lot
more about sugar’s impact on our im-
mune systems. I read that when we
take in excessive amounts of sugar,
our insulin levels rise which result in a
decrease of growth hormones which in
turn depresses the immune system. I
have also read that our immune sys-
tem has to work so much to combat
the effects of sugar in our system that
it may then not be able to fight off the
things that it normally would. One of
the tactics in a war can be to get your
opponent fighting on so many fronts
that they get stretched so thin they
become ineffective everywhere.
Page 19
In language that I can understand, we
have wonderful little “Pac Men” run-
ning around our bodies gobbling up all
the junk that could make us sick. We
have other “soldiers” who carry tiny
little hand grenades with them and
when they meet bad guys in our bod-
ies they pull the pin, toss the grenade
and destroy those evil-doers. How-
ever, when our cells have too much
sugar in them, our little Pac Men can’t
eat as much of the junk as they nor-
mally would and our little soldiers
head out to face the evil-doers with
far fewer grenades. Needless to say,
that’s not good especially when you
realize that it doesn’t take much sugar
to create enough of an imbalance in
us to mess up our troops.
Could it be possible that we are creat-
ing a situation where our immune sys-
tem has too many battles to fight and
not enough weapons because of the
100+ pounds of sugar we eat each
year? Sugar brings our immune sys-
tem down to a slow crawl when it
should be humming along like a well
tuned race car and if I remember cor-
rectly, sugar in the gas tank is never a
good idea. To close here are 2 quotes
that should make us consider what we
are doing to our kids.
Beth Mansfield, Canadian nutritionist
talking about Fruit Rollups, Mellon
Berry Blast: "It tells me it’s made
with real fruit, it’s low fat. Well
what’s in here? Corn syrup, sugar.
Concentrated pear puree, which is
basically pear which is sugar.
Then sugar, then some oil, the list
goes on and on. So here in one of
these little rollups, I’ve got 12
grams of carbohydrate which is
pretty much all sugar – so we’re
looking at 3 teaspoons of sugar in
one little Fruit Rollup.”
Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition
at New York University says "We’re
seeing type-2 diabetes in very
young children now. This was
never seen before, at least not in
the quantity that it is now. Rates
have tripled among young children
in the last 10 years”
Maybe it is time we stop and do some-
thing for our kids when it comes to
sugar consumption!