It’s time to ban junk food for kids. Before it’s too late
We’re a nation of junk food junkies clogging our veins with three times the daily recommended amount of fat, sugar, chemical and salt-laden items.
Not convinced? Then chew on this: we’ve just been given a C for Crap in an extensive CSIRO survey of Australian diets.
The Healthy Diet Score marked out of 100 a group of 40,000 people from all ages and demographics on how often they ate the essential food groups including fruit and vegetables, grains, lean proteins like fish and poultry and so on.
The average score was an alarming 61 and the average Aussie — as in overweight Aussie — eats “larger portions of junk food, more often” according to Professor Manny Noakes.
“If we were handing out report cards for diet quality Australia would only get a C,” Prof Noakes declared.
The findings are an appetite killer and forecast a shocking nutritional future for our children.
Frankly, our obesity crisis means we now have to bite the bullet, not the burger, and ban junk food for children under the age of 16.
And that’s because selling to minors this garbage dressed up as a meal is tantamount to child abuse.
An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report this year said one in four Australian children are obese or overweight.
It also warned that a high BMI is the second highest contributor to the burden of disease after dietary risks. The traditional culprit, smoking, comes in at number three.
By law, kids cannot smoke or drink alcohol. Goodness no. They can’t get that pack-a-day habit going because they can’t legally buy them.
Booze and cigarettes are harmful and could kill them if they get hooked.
But are they any more addictive than the drive-through cuisine pumped full of additives that gets shovelled on children’s plates for dinner? I think not.
In a CSIRO statistic to make your teeth ache, the amount of these fast food and convenience items we’re choking back is equivalent to 32kg of chocolate a year.
“Junk food is no longer just an indulgence — it’s become mainstream and Australians are eating it each and every day,” Prof Noakes said.
If you look around you, you’ll probably see someone quite happily killing themselves with “food”.
You know, the processed pub burger’n’chips which hangs over the edge of the already large plate. The upsized soft drink for less than a buck but boasting priceless damage to waistlines and kidneys.
Plus the lollies, chocolates and chips which have their own strategic supermarket aisles to bewitch children.
The large multinationals are manufacturing this tempting rubbish so it’s ridiculously cheap compared to fresh and whole foods. It’s convenience as a main with a side of poison.
Outlawing fatty, salty and sweet convenience food means we can train kids’ palates so it is the healthy, nutrition-laden food they crave when they are hungry.
I know some child health professionals will argue that it’s better to let children occasionally eat snacks instead of eliminating them from their diets all together.
But eating junk at a young age and getting a taste of it forms bad habits which lead to lifetime of health consequences.
Nobody wants their child to be overweight and, later in life, to be at higher risk of high blood pressure and bowel, oesophageal and pancreatic cancer not to mention heart disease and stroke.
You wouldn’t feed a Big Mac to a baby so why do we think it’s OK for children?
The junk food option is skilfully marketed. It is alluring, there is no doubt.
Smoking was once alluring too but we now accept that cigarettes will be sold in packets emblazoned with images of gangrenous limbs and black lungs.
A bag of saturated and trans fat-laden chips should feature a close up of a clogged artery. A takeaway pizza box should be plastered with statistics on what the salt and additives do to you once you take a bit of the pepperoni cheese. And a warning label: Not Suitable For Children.
Yes, a parent should be accountable for their children’s upbringing but a ban on junk food for minors does not diminish mum or dad’s responsibility to drill home the impact of the food children put into their bodies.
Banning junk food for under 16s is a big ask but when faced with the enormous financial and social cost we shoulder for being unhealthy and fat, we owe our kids the healthiest start in life possible.