Tag Archives: refined sugar

School lunchroom becoming the gateway to obesity and disease

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It’s hard to escape the ubiquitous junk food advertisements everywhere we go. It’s no wonder childhood obesity in the United States is becoming more and more rampant.

You would think that kids would at least be shielded from such marketing at school. But sadly, that’s not the case. If anything, it turns out that schools have become the perfect liaisons for selling to future sugar and fat addicts. And we’re not just talking about snack vending machines, we’re talking about school lunches!

Why is this? Because there’s lots of cash to be made. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine just released a report revealing who is making the dough off of overweight children, and how they are doing it.

To paraphrase Bill Maher: “They don’t want you dead, but they don’t want you healthy. They want you sick, because that’s where the money is.” As adults, at least we can take responsibility for our own choices. But it’s just plain wrong that that they are targeting kids at their place of learning.

Processed food and soda health food? Dieticians paid to say yes!

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I’m lucky we didn’t have soda or processed foods in the house much as a kid. It just wasn’t part of the Italian/Albanian cultural way of eating I grew up with. We ate a lot of simple, healthy foods like pasta e fagioli (beans), homemade pizza with tomatoes and olives (and no cheese), escarole and white beans, and lentil soup. The only “processing” I can think of was my grandmother asking me to go through the huge pile of uncooked lentils on her table to look for stray pebbles.

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On holidays we’d have my Italian grandmother’s homemade cookies, or my Albanian grandmother’s homemade baklava. On very rare occasions we had a soda, either root beer or cream soda, as a treat. But that’s what sugar should be, an occasional, festive treat. Yet for many it’s Continue reading →

Sugar industry not so sweet

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In a story that’s eerily reminiscent of the tobacco industry, recent documents have shed light on the sugar industry’s history of manipulating public information to maximize profit at the expense of public health. 

Finally, the word has been getting out. If you haven’t already seen them, we highly recommend the documentaries King Corn and Fed Up. Each film in its own way elaborates on how refined sugar is everywhere, and is one of the leading causes of obesity and other related illnesses. And if that’s not bad enough, the politics behind it will really make you sick!