Beyond. Health and Wellness Magazine July 2016 | Page 8

Healthy Diet is more important
than ever. As a society, we
see the effects of poor diet at
a younger and younger age.
Let’s first look at the eating
behaviors of most kids
• Most U.S. youth consumes less than the
recommended amounts of vegetables,
fruits, whole-grains, dairy products
and oils.
• And according to recent data, 91%
of Americans don’t eat the daily
recommendation of vegetables.
• Most US youth eats more than the
recommended maximum daily intake of
sodium by over 90%.
• Empty calories from added sugars
and solid fats contribute to 40% of daily
calories for children and adolescents
aged 2–18 years, affecting the overall
quality of their diets. Approximately half
of these empty calories come from six
sources: soda, fruit drinks, dairy desserts,
grain desserts, pizza, and whole milk.
• Adolescents drink more full-calorie soda
per day than milk. Males aged 12–19
years drink an average of 22 ounces
of full-calorie soda per day, more

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than twice their intake of fluid milk (10
ounces), and females drink an average
of 14 ounces of full-calorie soda and
only 6 ounces of fluid milk.

Statistics that help support
why kids should eat more
fruits and vegetables

(All of these are from the CDC, Center for
Disease Prevention or fitness.gov)
• Childhood obesity has more than
doubled in children and quadrupled in
adolescents in the past 30 years.
• In 2012, more than one-third of children
and adolescents were overweight or
obese.
• Only one in three children is physically
active every day.
• Children now spend more than seven
and a half hours a day in front of a
screen including TV, video games and
computers.
• There is a huge difference depending
on socioeconomic status. Nearly
45% of children living in poverty are
overweight or obese compared to 22%
of children living in households with
incomes four times the poverty level.
• Obesity-related illness, including
chronic disease, disability, and death,
is estimated to carry an annual cost of
$190.2 billion. Projections estimate that
by 2018, obesity will cost the U.S. 21
percent of our total healthcare costs –
$344 billion annually.
• Obesity is also a growing threat to
national security – a surprising 27% of
young Americans are too overweight
to serve in our military. Approximately
15,000 potential recruits fail their physicals
every year because they are unfit.
• Overweight and obesity are the results
of “caloric imbalance”—too few calories
expended for some calories consumed—