Presented with a great deal of sadness, this is a letter that Fooducate received from one of its readers, a dentist:
Hi Fooducate,
Attached is a picture of the mouth of a 4 year old kid !!!!!!!
He used to “love” sodas and juices. As you can see, the dangers of soft drinks are beyond calories! I moved from Italy some years ago to USA, and believe me, it is SHOCKING to see the way many people eat here. Adults can choose, but kids can’t. They depend on the knowledge of their parents, especially their mothers.
Credit: Fooducate
This kind of damage – we need to stop it. All the industries making billions of dollars by destroying the health of innocent kids. For me all these drink “products” are not food.. I call them “poisons”….
When I educate the mothers of my patients about the causes of their tooth decay, many of them cry, since they truly believed that the juices and drinks they saw advertised (with supplements of vitamins, minerals, etc) are healthy for their children.
As you can imagine, when a kid has a mouth like this (I cannot imagine the pain), they can’t chew, so the only thing that they can do – tragic solution – is drink to avoid more pain! So they drink more juice. Can you believe how tragic the situation is? For me, it is like you are putting gasoline to the fire, thinking that you will stop it.
Some juices and soft drinks have a pH around 2.30 whereas our pH in balance will be around 7.00. When I explain to parents that the battery acid (for a car) is 1.00, and they are serving their children liquids with a very close percentage of acidity (plus in some cases 12 tsp os sugars in a 12 oz drink) they are without words…
So why we do not turn back to remember what Hippocrates said: A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings and let our food be our medicine, and our medicine be our food.
I would like to share with you an anecdote from when we just moved to USA from Europe. My youngest daughter said to me “Mom, you should quickly learn English!” When I asked “why?”, she said “Well just look at the paint that you bought thinking that it is yogurt…”
It’s hard to find “normal products” here, like yogurt or bread or cookies without sugars added, corn syrup, trans fats, hydrogenated oils..and who knows how many others “fancy” ingredients that sometimes you need a degree to be able to read and imagine what could it mean?.
Even going to the restaurant to find a salad without sugary dressing is difficult. In Italy, you have olive oil and balsamic vinegar and you are all set.
Arrivederci!Veronika
I have my thoughts, but I’d rather hear yours. As the mother of a four-year old who hasn’t even lost her first tooth yet… I can’t look at that picture for too long. I might even pull it down.
My word.
I think this is a rather unfortunate situation of not seeing the forest for the trees. It’s being blinded by pretty marketing. The big sign that says “Fortified with vitamin c!” might cause you to overlook the 32 grams of sugar in one serving… which is usually a serving size that you accidentally double when you give to your child. (Or, if your kid is like mine, they realized that you give teeny little cups so they ask you for a drink of it several times a day.)
This also makes me think about environments where kids are heavy on the juice – the “lil hugs,” the quarter waters, the juicies – and are probably light on dental insurance. It’s… just something to think about. At least this mom could get some kind of insight from a professional. What about the ones who cannot?
Just… some things on my mind as I read this…and sigh a little bit.