Sugary Drinks at School
In the previous section of Seattle Organic Restaurants, I talked about childhood obesity and school lunches. In this section I’m going to talk about the harms of soda and sugary drinks. Many families know that 12 ounces of coke has 12 teaspoon sugar. But what they do not know is that 12 ounces of most fruit juices in packages have up to 8 teaspoon of sugar. Everyone thinks that a day without orange juice is like a day without sun shine! Many parents think that orange juice is good for their kids because of vitamin C.
Drinking a glass of FRESHLY SQUEEZED orange juice has 110 calories and lots of vitamin C but drinking orange juice from a container has tons of sugar and only sparkles of vitamins C. Even the freshly squeezed orange juice will lose all its nutritional value little by little if it’s sitting there and you don’t drink it. After 20 minutes, even a freshly squeezed orange juice has no nutritional value left but just sugar.
| Drinks | Sugar Amount/ teaspoon |
|---|---|
| Starbucks frappuccino | 25 |
| Sprite/ coke | 17 |
| Milk Chocolate | 16 |
| Orange Juice | 10 |
Bill Clinton asked the soda companies to pull all their sodas out of the elementary schools and surprisingly they did. The only reason the soda companies agreed to do that was that they also owned the juice and sport drink companies. So the only thing they had to do was to replace their sodas with sport drinks or juices in the schools vending machine.
Also these day our kids are spending more hours than before in front of the TV with no physical activity. The preschool children are now exposed to more ads for sugary drinks than before.
Teenagers are sold advertisement to sport drinks, flavored water and energy drinks. All this aggressive advertising has increased the SALES OF ENERGY DRINKS BY 240%.
The food companies are aggressively marketing the unhealthiest products to your children and as parents you shouldn’t undermine their influence and power. Every day, one out of 5 teenagers drink three or more sweetened beverages with their school lunch. The problem with sugar sweetened drinks isn’t just sugar but the amount of preservatives, salt, artificial coloring and high fructose corn syrup and many other harmful chemicals. Our bodies aren’t designed to fully digest high fructose corn syrup and the side effect of corn syrup can be devastating for the body.
