Walk into your local Target or Walgreens these days and you?ll find aisles overstuffed with severed body parts, fractured skulls, and deadly crawling creatures.
Gone are the days of caramel apples and candy corn. Now Halloween candy includes gummy-brown ?earthworms,? fake fruit-filled oozing ?eyeballs,? and scorpion ?pops.?
Whatever you call it, it?s all sugar (or more correctly, high-fructose corn syrup), which quickly turns to fat in your body.
Sugar consumption is at an all-time high. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently revealed that one in 20 people drink more than four cans of soda each day. That?s 32 teaspoons of sugar, if you don?t feel like doing math.
Another study at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research showed that 62% of adolescents and 41% of children ages 2 ? 11 drink at least one soda or other sugary drink daily.
The aftermath isn?t pretty. An alarming article a few years ago concluded that one out of every five four-year-olds is obese. Likewise, a recent survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 18% of adolescents are obese. No surprise, then, that doctors diagnose more teens than ever with type 2 diabetes.
So much for leading by example: that UCLA study showed adults who drink one or more sodas per day are 27% more likely to be overweight or obese than non-soda drinking adults.
You probably wouldn?t devour Circus Peanuts or Halloween Peeps, but your pancreas doesn?t know the difference between those barely-edible chewy concoctions and the eggnog you devour at the office holiday with too many petit pastries. Trust me, those few moments of semi-inebriated sugar bliss won?t compensate for post-holiday starring in the mirror and wondering why your jeans don?t fit anymore.
Here?s the thing. You don?t get fat enjoying a small piece of homemade pumpkin pie with whipped cream on Thanksgiving Day. ?But when every day from October through December becomes ?I?ll just have a bite of this? and ?I should make sure the dessert I made for the party tastes okay,? that scale is going to be about as welcome as your hangover on January 1st.
?Take control now, before the holiday sugar hypnosis takes hold. For starters, ditch the Halloween junk-fest traditions. Instead of stale sugar monstrosities (no pun intended), let trick-or-treaters?choose from non-edible amusements like plastic fangs, ?x-ray? glasses, kitschy pencils, and fake tattoos. Dollar stores stock these and other interesting finds that will give kids a happy deviation from their plastic jack o? lantern full of Jawbreakers and gummy witches.
If you go the edible route, offer almonds (Trader Joe?s 100-calorie packs make perfect stuffers) or, better yet, a big bowl of nutrient-filled Emergen-C Kids. Trust me, kids will love the Orange Pineapple Explosion and other fruity flavors dissolved in sparkling or filtered water, and you might even convert a few (pure sugar) fruit-juice and soda drinkers.
You can extend this healthy tradition at Christmas by stuffing stockings with Emergen-C Kids, rather than Hershey?s Kisses and Santa-shaped Russell Stover chocolate that spoil your kids? appetite. You?ll give the gift of health rather than sugar overload and the ensuing nauseating regret, and that?s something for which everyone will thank you.
Sources:
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20110831/D9PFB2OG2.html
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-04-07/health/obesity.preschool.children_1_childhood-obesity-experts-ethnic-groups-body-mass-index?_s=PM:HEALTH
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm
Babey S, et al. Bubbling over: soda consumption and its link to obesity in California. Policy Brief UCLA Cent Health Policy Res. 2009 Sep;(PB2009-5):1-8.
Source: http://jjvirgin.com/3264/easy-strategies-dump-junk-holiday-season/
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