Child Nutrition 115: Why home cooking matters

From Coursera's course

[Stanford School of Medicine]

(MUSIC)
[Why is so much processed food bad for our health?]

Our children are in trouble, because we've
outsourced the job of feeding them.

The average American diet consists of
about 70% processed food.

That's food that's produced by companies
who prioritize

short-term profit over the long-term
health of our children.

As the processed food industry expands,

many other parts of the world are also beginning

to follow this trend.

Now, one of the biggest problems, is that
surprisingly large amounts of

salt, sugar and fat are hidden in these
foods,

in order to extend their shelf life and enhance their flavor,

so that they'll be more likely to sell.

By far, the majority of the excess salt
and sugar

in the average American child's diet comes
from processed food.

Almost everything you find on the
supermarket shelf

that has been packaged, canned or bottled, falls into the category of processed food.

These include things like breakfast cereals,

granola bars, cookies, crackers and sweetened drinks.

Even some brands of the foods you might consider to be inherently healthy,

can turn out to be heavily processed,

like yogurt, or cheese, or even pasta sauce.

One way to differentiate a highly processed food from a less processed one

is to look at the number of ingredients listed on the label.

If the food has a long list of ingredients,

the food is most likely highly processed,

especially, if those ingredients are not easily recognizable to you.

Now the bottom line is that when we can,

we should choose foods that are less processed for our children.

The best option, is almost always the kind of food

that we prepare and serve to our own families in our homes.

When we cook, we get to decide what is going into our children's bodies,

and unlike the processed food manufactures, we have a strong interest

in the health of the people who are going to be eating the food that we make.

Now, not everybody can afford to buy fresh whole food ingredients all of the time,

but if we do the best we can with the resources that are available to us,

we can begin to have more control

over where our food comes from, and also how it's prepared.

And we can make sure that only reasonable amounts of fat, sugar and salt

go into the food that our children are eating.

In the long run, a diet of mostly home cooked foods,

prepared by someone who cares about the people eating that food,

will almost always be healthier for the whole family.

(MUSIC)

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[Stanford School of Medicine.]

[The preceding program is copyrighted by the Leland Stanford Jr University Please visit us at med.stanford.edu.