Where the wild sugars are

In a recent post we noted the almost ubiquitous presence of sugar, added during processing, in just about every packaged food in the supermarket.

Here are a few examples, courtesy of the American Heart Institute, of the amount of calories in various foods from added sugars alone.

• One 12-ounce soda: 133
• One 6-ounce fruit yogurt: 78
• One cup of canned peaches in syrup: 115
• One 12-ounce fruit punch: 62
• One cup of vanilla ice cream: 90
• Three chocolate chip cookies: 42
• One tablespoon of pancake syrup: 27

Where our meals come from

We know that we Americans increasingly take our breakfasts, lunches and dinners at fast food outlets, but just how increasingly?

This increasingly: 20 years ago, we ate 10 percent of our meals at America’s Burger Kings and Taco Bells and Mickey D’s and their like. Today we purchase fully 25 percent of our meals over a fast-food counter or through a take-out window, according to Food Fights author Laura Jana. The parallel increase in adult and child obesity over the same time span is probably not pure coincidence.

What did you expect from government food?

Almost everyone agrees that school lunches should provide America’s children with more fresh and locally grown fruits and vegetables and less fatty meat and starches and sugars than they currently do. One problem is the source of much of the food: the U.S. government.

As San Francisco Chronicle Washington correspondent Carolyn Lochhead noted recently, school food programs are “as much about getting rid of surplus farm commodities as . . . about feeding children . . . and federal rules stipulate that 12 percent of federal food aid to schools be spent on USDA commodities.”

It’s a reasonably good guess that the leading USDA commodity in those school meals is corn, as in chips and dogs and syrup.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 and is filed under Childhood obesity, Fast food and restaurants, Food miscellaneous. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Permalink.