Train up a child…
Are Soft Drinks Okay for My Child?
Many schools around the country have either removed pop machines or substituted soft drinks with juice or milk. In my opinion, there is good reason for this. Not only is soda not good for children, but much money is wasted on buying these drinks. That money could certainly be used in a better way.
Children need to eat the recommended foods in the Basic 4 food groups. These groups include fruits, vegetables, cereals and grains, and meat. When a child fills up on soda or junk food, he/she is not hungry to eat what should be eaten. We call things like soda “empty calories” because there is no nutritional benefit there for the child. The two main ingredients in soft drinks are caffeine and sugar. The caffeine in soda is definitely not good for children. It tends to make them overactive. Too much sugar for children is not good either. Some parents allow children to drink the brands of soda that do not have caffeine. This is a step in the right direction, but water is the best drink of all.
Let’s consider the sugar in soda. Four grams of sugar is one teaspoon of sugar. In a small can of soda, there are usually 8-10 teaspoons of sugar. Some of the juices for children contain just as much or more sugar and are not the best choice either. To supply the juice for children, parents should choose real juice, not juice “drinks”. You can figure how much sugar is in a drink. Look on the label. Check the number of grams of sugar per serving. Multiply this times the number of servings in the container. Divide by 4 and you have the number of teaspoons of sugar in the container. Some of the large sodas contain 2 ½ servings. When checked out, this is about 23-24 teaspoons of sugar.
What happens, then, if a child drinks sugary pop or juice drinks each day, eats a sugary cereal for breakfast or perhaps a pop tart? Then for a snack, he/she might be given something else with a lot of sugar. The child is getting way too much sugar. The body has to deal with it. If this pattern continues, the pancreas simply “wears out” over time because it is overworked due to having to deal with so much sugar. Type II diabetes may be the result.
An occasional soda without caffeine will not hurt the child providing he or she is getting proper nutrition the rest of the day. I would say that one each day is too many sodas. Someone has said that water is the cheapest medicine there is. We develop our tastes through habit. We can learn to really like water just as we learned to like soda.
What does a habit of one soda per day cost? If the soda is taken from a machine costing $1 per can and a person drinks one can per day, it is easy to see that the cost is about $30 per month. If we multiply that times 12 for the months of the year, we see that we are spending about $360 per year on something that is harmful to our bodies. If there are four people in the family drinking one can of pop a day at this price, this habit has cost almost $1500 per year. In addition, there are the future health costs of treatment for problems that may be caused by the habit.
I have heard many parents say, “I just have to have my Pepsi!” Is it any wonder, then, why the children want to drink soft drinks, too? As in so many cases, here, too, children learn by example. We can improve our health and save money as well by changing this habit.