Thursday, January 02, 2003

All juice or no juice

More to-do about juice on the InteliHealth site, this time reporting findings from the American Dietetic Association that "children and adolescents are drinking higher amounts of less nutritious fruit-flavored beverages and carbonated soft drinks than 100 percent juice." All-fruit fruit juice can provide kids with vitamins and make up their food-pyramid fruit servings for the day, but "juice drinks" and soda mostly just give them big ol' mouthfuls of sugar. The association's recommendation, naturally, is for parents to limit kids to juice and nothing but the juice. And I try, oh American Dietetic Association, I try. But the juice-ish beverages all have flashy labels and clever names and cool-looking bottles or foil pouches. The battles I have with my son at the supermarket, putting my foot down over Kool-Aid or Hi-C or Bombastic Berry Blast or some such. A nice bottle of pure apple juice just can't compete. But, you know, I'm sure that if I sit him down and explain the nutritional ins and outs of the situation, he'll eschew that sweet stuff in a second. Yeah, that'll happen.

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