You are what you eat?

If this is true - we could be in trouble! (But sometimes trouble just tastes so good...)

Fast food and processed meats and preserved fruits and vegetables and hormone-injected animals and plants just don't prove to hold the kind of nutrition our bodies crave. Our Grandma's and Great-Grandma's ideas of farm-raised home-cooked meals don't usually match up to our fast-paced need for grub. Take a recent study for example, for what the kids in our nation consume:

• Most kids consume 25% of their calories in the form of junk food.
• French fries were found to be the number one vegetable source in children's diets.
• Soft-drink consumption among children has more than doubled since the late 1970s. Most 8-year-olds consume soft drinks every single day, and the phosphorous in these beverages can leach calcium out of bones.
• Hot dogs, cookies, and sweetened beverages are among the Top Ten foods consumed by infants and toddlers ages 4-24 months.

What kid, when offered apples and carrots or pizzas and cheeseburgers, would choose the first? If they could have grilled chicken or corn dogs, what will these little guys want? Obviously, it's up to Mom and Dad to make sure the right foods get into their kids. But what happens in the lunch line at school? Who guides them at their friend's houses to choose fruit juice instead of a soda pop or fancy colored slushies? What I'm getting at, is that despite our best efforts, the people we live with probably aren't digesting enough vitamins or nutrients with their current diet. And why limit it to kids? Adults have just as hard a time maintaining a healthy diet. Home-cooked meals are simply, at times, not an option.

See what you think of THIS:

"But the reality is that most kids today do NOT get the micronutrients they need from what they eat. Not by a long shot. By some estimates, only 2% of kids regularly eat the recommended number of servings of different food groups. The result is that, even though the typical American child eats too many calories, the typical child is getting suboptimal levels of many key nutrients, including thousands of food components (phytonutrients) we are just beginning to learn about."

Some more interesting though not uplifting news:

Not all vitamins are created equal. One extremely popular kids brand [of vitamins] contains hydrogenated vegetable oil, the chemical dyes FD&C Blue #2 Lake, FD&C Red #40 Aluminum Lake, FD&C Yellow #6 Aluminum Lake, artificial flavors, aspartame, sugar, butylated hydroxytoluene (this preservative is a suspected carcinogen banned in all foods in Japan and Australia, and in baby foods in the U.S.), carrageenan, gelatin, and pregelatinized starch.

Poor diets are linked to behavioral problems, overweight issues, poor academic achievement, and so on.

Would a healthy diet make healthier kids? Yes, of course. THIS website actually gives some great tips on how to get the kids involved, making their own healthy choices. Things as simple as planning, preparation, and presentation, and getting the child interested and participating in the food hunting/cooking/eating process could all help. And few things are better than simple education.

But the question is, are supplements important for little people? It sure seems like it. Their little bodies are growing and developing, paving the way for the rest of their lives. You can find nutrition recommendations all over the web. Check out the following websites for to see their advice and recommendations for nutritional and dietary needs: USDA/ARS Children's Nutritional Research Center, USDA Food and National Agriculture Library, or the International Food Information Council.

Also, if you want to check out some children's vitamins that are 100% natural, ultra-pure, organic, kosher, and gluten-free, with no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives added... (and they taste good!) click HERE.