Babies and Food Giants

Babies and Food Giants

Photo caption: In Motts for Tots apple juice, a popular fruit juice parents serve their children, a 200ml serving comes with 13 grams of sugar and 50 calories. An equal-sized serving of Safeway brand apple juice dishes up about 23 grams of sugar and 93 calories.

 

An article on CNN today draws attention to a growing epidemic of obesity in infants. Several factors come into play to affect a child’s health, but one issue of growing importance is nutrition labeling. Often, parents just aren’t aware of what they’re feeding their children. "There's a disconnect in people's minds. The mothers don't know. They're used to thinking juice is good; juice is fruit. What they don't tell them is all the sugar in the package," says Dr. Sandeep Gupta, director of Pediatric Overweight Education and Research Program at Indiana University Health. At a stage when physical and mental health development is critically important and equally sensitive, why isn’t more being done to protect kids by enlightening parents?

One answer: Lobbying. In a summary of a recent opinion piece by Kelly Brownell (director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University), the issue of the food industry’s lobbying capabilities comes into plain view. As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration attempts to redesign and clarify the traditional food label, more direct grouping may not be an option. “Food industry’s powerful lobby would block such a black-and-white system that categorized every food as either healthy or unhealthy.”

 

 

So for now, parents are stuck with labels depicting quantitative components, rather than an understandable translation of what they’re actually getting. And the babies are paying the price.