What kids really eat
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
If lots of pizza, desserts and sugary drinks amounted to healthy eating, our kids would be doing well. But that's not healthy eating, and a lot of our kids are not doing well. At the National Cancer Institute, Jill Reedy examined national survey data on where kids got their calories:
"For 2- to 18-year-olds, the top sources of energy were grain desserts, pizza, and soda. So the results were pretty alarming." (6 seconds)
Each of these foods contains a lot of "empty calories," or calories from added sugar and solid fat. In fact, 40 percent of kids' total calories come from empty calories. Reedy says the findings suggest that the flow of empty calories into people's food supply must be reduced.
The study was in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
Learn more at hhs.gov .