This just in: Processed, sugary and fried foods all contribute to obesity in kids, a study finds.
Yes, this was an actual headline in the A section of the Washington Post this morning. On the one hand, it seems like a pretty obvious point to make the above-the-fold news cut. On the other, maybe this is a good thing. The long overdue connection between food and health is breaking through.
Looking at the latest statistics in the article, there is good reason: 31 percent of kids in the Americas are obese. That number rises to near 40 percent in Europe. And there were several paragraphs about how fatty foods – though high in calories – are not high in the satiety that they produce. In other words, they don’t fill you up. So kids eating a bag of chips are getting lots of energy (which gets stored as fat when it isn’t used), but they might finish the bag still hungry.
Which gets me back to my refrain: At CAFB, we are working to make sure those kids have access to vegetables and protein. And we’ve got to keep at the task of presenting fun, inexpensive ways to prepare that food, making the healthy choice the easy choice. It’s all part of the broader movement to end hunger that we are working, each day, to create.