When I was over 416 pounds my favorite cereals were Kellogg Frosted Flakes and Kellogg Raisin Bran with lots and lots of sugar. (After all why not destroy any positive effects of eating Bran by adding sugar to it right?) I would regularly eat a large bowl of cereal filled with approximately two cups of Whole Milk.  I would purposely let the cereal sit in the milk for a little while to sweeten the milk as it soaked up the sugar from the cereal.  Then I would eat all the cereal out of the bowl and drink the milk by itself and then repeat the process a second time – ummm ummm! – That’s how you get a sexy body like this.

Some U.S. cereals more than half sugar – report

Wed Oct 1, 2008 6:00pm EDT

WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Some breakfast cereals marketed to U.S. children are more than half sugar by weight and many get only fair scores on nutritional value, Consumer Reports said on Wednesday.

A serving of 11 popular cereals, including Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, carries as much sugar as a glazed doughnut, the consumer group found.

And some brands have more sugar and sodium when formulated for the U.S. market than the same brands have when sold in other countries.

Post Golden Crisp made by Kraft Foods Inc and Kellogg’s Honey Smacks are more than 50 percent sugar by weight, the group said, while nine brands are at least 40 percent sugar.

The most healthful brands are Cheerios with three grams of fiber per serving and one gram of sugar, Kix and Honey Nut Cheerios, all made by General Mills, and Life, made by Pepsico Inc’s Quaker Oats unit.

“Be sure to read the product labels, and choose cereals that are high in fiber and low in sugar and sodium,” Gayle Williams, deputy editor of Consumer Reports Health, said in a statement.

Honey Smacks has 15 grams of sugar and just one gram of fiber per serving while Kellogg’s Corn Pops has 12 grams of sugar and no fiber.

Consumer Reports studied how 91 children aged 6 to 16 poured their cereal and found they served themselves about 50 to 65 percent more on average than the suggested serving size for three of the four tested cereals.

Consumers International, which publishes Consumer Reports, said it would ask the World Health Organization to develop international guidelines restricting advertising and marketing of foods high in sugar, fat or sodium to children.

However, the group noted that breakfast cereal can be a healthful meal and said adults and children alike who eat breakfast have better overall nutrition, fewer weight problems, and better cognitive performance throughout the day.

Kellogg said it was working to make its food more nutritious.

“Kellogg recently reformulated a number of our cereals including Froot Loops, Corn Pops, Rice Krispies, Cocoa Krispies and Apple Jacks in the U.S. with improved nutritional profiles,” a company spokeswoman said by e-mail.

“To put Consumer Reports’ information in perspective, yogurt contains more sugar and sodium than a serving of Honey Smacks cereal (25 grams of sugar vs. 15 grams of sugar in Honey Smacks).”

Consumer Reports, like other groups, compares the sugar content of food with its fiber, mineral and vitamin content. Many cereals are fortified with vitamins and minerals. (Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Eric Walsh)

So here we go again – Childhood Obesity is caused by bad parenting. Plain and simple.  There is no way around it.  We may argue that parents are doing the best the can or working with the knowledge they have, or that the government is sabotaging parents or not helping parents enough blah, blah, blah.

The truth of the matter is that parents reward their children with f-o-o-d instead of t-i-m-e.  Parents give their kids sugar instead of love.  It is cheap and easy to take a child to fast food instead of sitting down with that child at the dinner table and actually talking to them.  Instead of taking a kid to the park on the weekend, parents would rather stick children in front of a TV to play video games.  Fat Kids = Bad Parents.

Think about this.  We cannot say it is the child’s fault.  They have a limited base of knowledge to work from.  Children simply don’t know better.  We cannot blame the food industry because it is the parents job to guard what comes into their kids lives. So who’s to blame?  That’s right – parents.

I don’t say these things to belittle parents.  I actually do not have any children of my own.  But I know from experience what shaped me and what shapes kids in general. Parents.

I grew up the child of a mentally ill mother who moved us around a lot.  A whole lot.  And in many of the places we lived she did not cut on the natural gas service to run the stove.  No natural gas meant no home cooked meals.  I lived on fast food – literally.  And this was in the 70’s before it was popular to live on fast food.  No wonder I ‘grew’ to over 400 pounds.

A friend of mine told me once that her mother told her to always have a meat with her starch.  I never learned that.  It took me actually doing research to learn this.  The science behind this is that protein slows down the digestive process allowing carbohydrates to be broken down more in the digestive tract which helps slow the absorption into the body.

So now that I have gone on this rant I will come back and write about how to take some positive steps to improve your child’s eating habits including Vanessa’s own teaching to her son Avery.

Remember, as the parent – YOU are responsible for your child’s health.

Talk to you soon and remember,

There’s A Winner Within You

• 1 in 5 children are obese
• Obese children average 4-6 hours of TV per day
• Nearly one-third of U.S. Children aged 4 to 19 eat fast food every day,
• Only Illinois has a statewide requirement for daily physical education as of January 2007.

While trying out for NBC’s The Biggest Loser I was able to identify that my adult obesity was really rooted in my childhood. Ironically, it was not my activity levels that were the problem when I was young but rather it was the fact that I never learned proper nutrition. This was a result of being transient due to my mother’s mental illness and living in and out of foster care and group homes.

Because of this upbringing I have a real desire to see youth grow up mentally and physically healthy. I also have a desire to help parents make smart decisions about there children’s lives when it comes to health and nutrition. To help me get across this message of proper nutrition and exercise I have teamed up with
JazzyKat, Inc. and JazzyKat Kids to not only tell kids how to get healthy but to show them as well.

The folk at JazzyKat have a passion to reach this and the next generation of children (and their families) to take ownership of their own good health through physical activity and balanced eating. The core target audience is children 18 months – 12 years old, and this age group is engaged with a mobile TrAvEl
GyM™ which consists of child sized exercise equipment and games suited for a child’s physical needs as well as a Healthy Lifestyles nutrition program that provides age appropriate education.

While I have the experience of being overweight from an adult perspective, JazzyKat Inc. are real specialists when it comes to dealing with children. Together I think we make a great team.

Our solution to the obesity epidemic:

Engage parents and children to begin to make healthy choices about nutrition and exercise with real life success stories and solid information.

For more information about what we can bring to your school, business, child care, place of worship or community contact us at Speaking@WinningMan.com or JazzyKat@ameritech.net

Remember,

There’s a Winner Within You!