Sports Drinks are Junk Food

By Mary Mucci

Being on a nutrition committee these days takes courage. Parents who are trying to address the obesity issue and educate kids about some of the dangerous foods they are eating stand to upset their neighbors. But someone’s got to say no..no more… The Cold Spring Harbor school district had banned fried foods over ten years ago. Now the big job was to cut out some sports drinks.

Many sports drinks are just junk food according to all the usual standards. Sure soda is junk food. But at least most of us know that already. But sports drinks have been masquerading as good for you drinks. and they’re not good for anybody…at least not those that have high fructose corn syrup.

In addition to the usual problems, HFCS may increase your triglyceride levels… that what may be responsible for the rising bad cholesterol found in young kids these days.

So while the kids may not all be happy. They might just get used to it. And they might just learn that it makes little  sense to work out hard only to pump yourself full of sugar and chemicals the minute you stop.

Congratulations Cold Spring Harbor!

To Your Health,

Mary Mucci

Contacts:

Laura Lynn Iacono,

Registered Dietician/ Nutrition Educator

Roslyn, 516 286 5255, www.onepotatotwotomato.com

 

Lynn Newman, M.S.

Nutritionist, NYS Licensed

Glen Head, 516 674 4868, www.newmannutrition.com

Comments

[John]

I think I need to be contrary, here:

Rather than blaming anything with sugar (which somehow wasn't a problem twenty or thirty years ago) or any food that had even the merest contact with fat (if your fried food is greasy, you're doing something terribly wrong), could it possibly be something else?

Remember that the obesity rate skyrocketed overnight (literally) when the USDA changed to the arbitrary Body Mass Index. When beanpole basketball players are classified as obese, something has gone off-track, and the "epidemic" might be exaggerated.

Also, can it be that kids are gaining (bad) weight because they spend half their lives either at school or doing homework? The buses in my area even pick the kids up and drop them off at their doorsteps, so they're not even walking to the corner bus stop! Add in up to ten hours a day, and sad excuses for exercise in PE class aren't going to cut it. Add in that everybody communicates by cellphone or computer, and there's no reason to leave the house, except to get to a vehicle.

Nobody cares because they're "seen and not heard," I guess.

But I guess it's easier for parents (and parent associations) to demonize sugar and fat than socialize the kids--by which I do not mean communally raising them, enforcing one set of values on everybody--and far easier to give them arbitrary rules to follow than educate them and give them real alternatives.

Of course, one might also wonder what's so wrong with the system that kids are driven to vending machines in the first place, or why the schools are allowing a big billboard, essentially, to be shoved in every kid's face. But nah. The problem must be the high fructose corn syrup.