Kids and obesity, kids and diabetes, kids and the threat that they won’t live as long as their parents – we’ve heard it all. Anyway, the other morning I was opening some Pop-Tarts.
First, I should explain what I was even doing with Pop-Tarts. It was soccer camp week, OK? For five days, I had to drive my boy out to Walter E. Hall Park on Everett’s Casino Road.
So I ripped open the foil pouch and was about to pop two tarts in the toaster. For some reason, I stopped to read the package.
“Calories 200,” it said. Not great, but not so bad. Then I looked again. “Serving Size 1 Pastry.”
“You want just one Pop-Tart, right?” I asked my son, a tall, slim 7-year-old. “Right,” he answered. The pastries come two to a pouch. I saved the second one in a plastic sandwich bag.
None of this was any big deal, except it has me looking more critically at labels and thinking about what we eat. That second Pop-Tart wouldn’t have made my boy obese, but eating two of them every morning would be a bad habit.
My childhood, in the 1960s, no doubt included too much penny candy and grape bubble gum. But acquiring those sugary treats often involved a bike ride to the store, followed by a long afternoon of running around the neighborhood.
Many of us over 50 have no memory of sitting on a couch watching TV, unless it was for Saturday morning cartoons or a show before bed. During the day? I remember being shooed outside, never mind the cold, heat or rain.
Some parents now seem so fearful of everything from stranger abductions to skinned knees that they ignore the health perils of flopping on the sofa.
My second-grader has been hurt skateboarding, bike riding and playing soccer. I can say he should be more careful, but I’d never say he should be less active.
On Thursday, I wandered through a supermarket checking packages of a few foods that are kids’ favorites. My children don’t stick to grapes, raw carrots and nonfat milk, nor do yours. If we’re going to give them some treats, it helps knowing how much is too much.
My boys consider Campbell’s SpaghettiOs with meatballs to be exquisite fare. There are 240 calories in a serving – but the suggested serving size is one cup, and a can contains about two servings.
A 120-calorie “serving” of Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies is three-quarters of a cup. I don’t know about your cereal bowls, but ours hold considerably more than that. Pringles? A 150-calorie serving is 14 chips.
Soda is often mentioned as a big contributor to obesity. A serving is supposedly 8 ounces, or 100 calories for regular pop.
But Pepsi’s 24-ounce bottles now come in six-packs. Pepsi also sells those stubby 8-ounce cans, but for the $2.99 price of a six-pack of those, you can nearly always find a 12-pack of 12-ounce cans on sale. Who’s not going to drink the whole can?
In fairness, some food companies are making efforts to limit portion size. Let’s talk Oreos.
On the big bag of the Nabisco cookies, a serving size is listed as three cookies for 160 calories. There also are lunch-box packs, multiple Oreos in a rectangular container for 270 calories. Now, there are Oreo “Twins,” just two cookies per .78-ounce, 100-calorie pack.
Environmentally minded shoppers may balk at the packaging, and individually wrapped packs cost more. But the price could be worth it if small servings foster a habit of moderation.
The stakes are high.
In a report in 2000, a panel of the American Academy of Pediatrics said only 4 percent of childhood diabetes cases in 1990 were the type 2 kind associated with obesity. By 2000, that number had risen to 20 percent, and as high as 45 percent in some age, ethnic and racial groups.
Of children diagnosed with type 2 diabetes – which used to be called adult-onset diabetes – 85 percent are obese, according to the academy report.
One of the scariest articles I’ve seen on the subject was a USA Today story published July 16 with the headline “Diabetes warnings often go unheeded.”
In the story, 48-year-old New Yorker Albert Ramos told of how he ignored his disease until a foot injury wouldn’t heal. Ramos is now an amputee.
Complications of type 2 diabetes also can include blindness and an increased risk of heart disease.
I was eating lunch and just happened to pick up that discarded copy of USA Today. A few days later, I just happened to read the Pop-Tarts box – and chose to give my kid just one. It was a very small choice, barely worth a mention.
Small choices add up. Making the right ones now could make a huge difference for our kids.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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