Fast Food and a Grandmother's Power in Making Pure Food Choices Pt. 3

Every time I turn around there’s yet another news story designed to frighten me into behaving in a certain way. I’ve gotten to the point where I tune out. There’s only so much fear any one person can handle and I’d say most of us are maxed out. So fast food is not usually something grandparents want to think about. Going to get a happy meal creates happy memories. The last thing I want to do is go around in a panic about every little morsel my grandchildren eat. I readily admit, I’ve given them fast food for quick meals when I’ve picked them up from school and we have the pleasant memories to prove it. As I’ve read more about fast food, the meals have become fewer and fewer and now they are non-existent. It took some planning on my part, but now I bring my own snacks to get them through until dinner when they come to spend the night. For me, it really came down to the cost. Sure, it costs me a little bit of time, but as I found out it was costing them their health. Fast food, I discovered, comes with some hidden costs-- obesity, other illnesses, medical costs, and even climate change.

When I was eating fast food (and yes, even I ate fast food at one time and for a long time actually), I tried to make what I thought was a good choice-- something with chicken. It wasn’t until I started gaining weight that I decided to check into just what I was eating. Oh boy was that a mistake. Of course I had been feeding the same thing to my grandchildren. By that time, they weren’t going to give it up just because I was gaining weight. They were still too young for it to make much difference and honestly, they weren’t eating fast food more than once a week and not even that much most of the time. Then I started seeing some more news articles and I began to wonder whether I wasn’t actually behaving in a risky way when it came to their health. At this time, climate change never entered my head as being connected to fast food. 

The truth is, I slowed then stopped feeding my grandchildren fast food because of the costs to them. First and foremost, it costs them their health. The second thing I realized was the risk of a future cost to the family overall. Evidence now shows that fast food is related to obesity, which is related to diabetes. If one of my grandchildren develops diabetes because of his/her diet the entire family will have to adjust and pay for it in time, attention, and medical costs. From what I learned, feeding my grandchildren even one meal a week was not a good idea.

There is increasing evidence that the rise in obesity and diabetes is a national epidemic. For example, The American Academy of Pediatrics has published guidelines for managing type 2 diabetes mellitus in children and adolescents. That’s never happened before. The CDC estimates that there are 151,000 children/adolescents with diabetes in the United States . Although the majority of those are type 1, an increasing number have type 2 diabetes, which is strongly correlated with obesity.  The most alarming thing about these studies is that type 2 in children progresses faster than in adults and the complications are seen earlier: heart disease and kidney damage being two significant problems. Once I saw those numbers, I was frantic to figure out what I could do. Obviously, there are more answers to that than there are hours in the day, but the simplest thing was to just stop feeding them any fast food. As I learned, a child who eats one fast food meal per week will gain about a pound a year.  That doesn’t seem like much except that pound comes from unhealthy ingredients  and kids who eat fast food tend to eat more food all day  and sometimes they were eating more than one fast food meal per week, which I discovered is pretty typical for children in this country. As if being overweight isn’t enough of a problem, obesity is connected to developing diabetes in adults and in children. Since diabetes runs in my family, I felt like I had to make the ultimate sacrifice-- no more fast food meals. Period.

I knew from childhood friends and from my adult relatives that once you have diabetes, life changes dramatically. Diabetes is a disease that must be managed. A person’s very life is at stake. They have to monitor their blood glucose levels daily and sometimes multiple times a day. Diet becomes a huge factor in their lives.  In some cases, they have to take insulin shot. Illnesses and even bumps and bruises take on more significance.  I knew I didn’t want this for my grandchildren. And it isn’t just the physical side, but just about every aspect of their lives is affected. From choosing a babysitter, informing the school, being away from home, going to camp, and even dating and driving, all are things that have to be considered within the framework of diabetes.  In fact, The American Diabetes Association(r) has information targeted specifically to parents of children with diabetes.  

The immediate problems are pretty frightening, but when I looked into the long-term problems, I couldn’t see putting them at risk. Even thought they are children, as a diabetic they could develop blindness, kidney disease, nerve damage, heart and blood vessel diseases, and foot problems from poor blood flow and nerve damage http://kidshealth.org/teen/diabetes_center/basics/complications.html#  It wasn’t easy telling them no when they asked to go to their favorite fast food chain, but after looking at the risks and how easy it would be to prevent them ever becoming obese or getting diabetes from what I was feeding them, it was a no brainer.   I just couldn’t see saddling them for the rest of their lives with this devastating disease.  

I also couldn’t see adding this kind of financial cost to my daughter. Although she would be the one to pay the medical costs for her children, the truth is we all end up sharing by having to pay high premiums and more for our personal medical care. According to Santa Clara University, obesity now costs over $27 billion per year to the healthcare system. Rutgers’ website has wonderful information on the costs of health and poor choices , including the relationships between poor health and wealth. Basically, making poor choices are expensive immediately in terms of the costs of the food. Regardless of what anyone might say, fast food meals cost more than a home-cooked meal. Poor food choices are also expensive throughout one’s lifetime through incurred medical costs. Medical costs result in stress and/or delayed or inadequate treatment, which results in further financial costs. People in poor health die at a younger age and spend more on prescription drugs and healthcare than their peers. So in addition to a person’s health being disadvantaged, his wealth is put at risk. That combination is a sure-fire way to experience stress and all the problems related to it.

I can’t think of anything more stressful than having a sick child. All mothers are anxious when their children are ill, but a diabetic child has to be monitored even more closely.  The blood glucose level could become unstable not just from the illness, but any medications. Then there’s the additional anxiety from the possible loss of income or the loss of a promotion or even the loss of your job from taking too much time off. The more I read, the more frightened I became not only for my children, but for their entire family and for their future. As I said before, I am maxed out on fear. It has been difficult to say no, but I figure it’s easier to say no and have them lose out on a chicken nugget than it is to say yes and have them lose out on their childhood .

Obviously, everyone has to make his/her own decisions and weigh the cost for him/herself. After watching relatives battle diabetes and seeing what childhood friends had to do even thought I know that today diabetics have a much easier time monitoring their blood glucose and managing the disease, I decided that NOT feeding my grandchildren fast food was the best choice for us. I didn’t even consider climate change in the decision. It is something to think about though. Again, not to become frightened of the future or guilty because of what you ate for lunch, but to have a better understanding of how individually and globally what we do matters, including what we eat. 

Fast Food and a Grandmother's Power to Make Pure Food Choices, Pt. 2

When it comes to being a stronger influence on my grandchildren than fast food dispensers, time is not on my side. I’m not with my grandchildren every day. If I had access to the same amount of time with them, I still wouldn’t have the kind of money they have. According to Yale, fast food/junk food providers spent about $4.2 billion (yep with a b) in 2009 in advertising and marketing, and American children saw 25,000 to 40,000 commercials per year.  Let’s break that down-- for fast food, the average preschooler saw about 3 ads per day, children between the ages of 6-11 saw 3 1/2 ads per day, and your typical teen between the ages of 12-17 saw almost 5 ads per day in 2009. I can’t compete with that, and something tells me hugs and kisses and even bedtime stories aren’t going to be enough to overcome that level of exposure.  And those numbers don’t include secondary contact like billboards, friends, and product placement in television shows and movies. If those numbers don’t scare you, go to  http://www.fastfoodmarketing.org and you’ll find even more reasons to keep your grandchildren away from all television, friends, movies, or contact with the outside world. Eventually they have to go to school or at the very least go to work so we might as well get used to having fast food/junk food ads thrown at them at every turn. Right? I thought so. The correct answer to that would be No! Even Hell no!

This level and intensity of exposure more than concerns me. I am a fierce protectress of my grandchildren. I only thought I was a lioness when it came to my children. I am positively irrational when it comes to my grandchildren. The odds of them becoming obese and/or developing diabetes is pretty strong. In terms of genetics, our family already has that ticket punched. Obesity and diabetes run on almost every branch of our family tree. There is evidence that fast food marketing is a “probable” cause of obesity. Yes, I know the marketing itself isn’t the cause, but eating fast food is the cause of obesity; however, kids age 3-5 who are exposed to fast food branding (packaging, colors, marketing, etc.) prefer that food even when it doesn’t come from that restaurant. If I bought their wrappers and put my food in it, my grandkids would prefer it. This tells me the branding is pretty darn good. It also tells me that whatever is in the package is going to be eaten and what “they” put in the package is not necessarily healthy food. I've seen some that I wasn't sure if it was real food.

So as a grandmother trying to create home cooked meals that the grandkids remember fondly and as an eco-omi trying to influence their tastebuds to prefer organic, whole, and natural foods, I’m up against billions of dollars and thousands of hours of advertising and slick packaging. If that wasn’t bad enough, the toys and the playscape are another draw for kids to go to fast food restaurants. In fact, now they don’t even have to go into a restaurant to be exposed to food as a “play” theme. There’s going to be a monopoly game  that includes all the brands of all the products a child needs in order to be happy. Monopoly! I love Monopoly. So much for non-descript little green houses and red hotels. But that isn’t all. We can’t forget the “give-aways,” like the one sponsored by McDonald’s on July 27th in Phoenix where the first 100 children to come to that restaurant received a backpack as part of a 28,000 backpack giveaway statewide. Now, how am I going to compete with that? I remember loving everything my grandmothers cooked, but they weren’t competing with flavor enhancers, fast food advertising, free toys, play-scapes, and backpacks.

Connecting play and food is huge with fast food/junk food. Playing and food was a concept my mother strictly forbade and would have made both grandmothers faint in disgust. Well, maybe not faint, but we would have gotten frowns and that was a pretty serious indictment from them. As if toys, games, and play-scapes aren’t enough, there are also websites specifically for kids to go and “play.” I like the McBudget best. This isn’t actually a kid website, but it does feature teenagers/young adults. McDonald’s partnered with Visa to help McDonald’s employees (supposedly teenagers and young adults, but actually they’re closer to 30 understand how to live on the salary they pay them. It’s a pretend budget, but then so is thinking that eating fast food is a best choice for anyone’s at any income. I hear cost used as the reason people eat fast food all the time and it’s obviously pretty common as it was written up in the New York Post and we all know how trendy they are. 

Truthfully, I’ve never found eating at fast food restaurants to be cheaper and studies confirm that fast food is not just less healthy, but more expensive than foods you prepare yourself when you shop with a meal plan. I guess it’s the meal plan that adds the perceived cost to the non-fast food since you do have to sit down and think about what you’re going to eat and then horrors-- make a meal plan, which can take almost an hour if you do it for the month. But hey, let’s say fast food is cheaper and it isn’t, but we can pretend for one minute. The meal itself may cost less, but the health costs far outweigh the couple of dollars a person might save.  A family spends around $13,000 per year on healthcare resulting from diabetes. That doesn’t sound like a savings to me. It sounds like deferred costs with pawn shop interests rates-- heart disease, obesity, diabetes. It also sounds like taking the money away from the entire family and devoting it to the child or adult who gets ill.

It may sound like I’m getting all excited about nothing, except it isn’t “nothing” to me. There is increasing evidence of the rise of obesity and diabetes in this country, even for children. This is serious stuff not just for me as a grandmother of two of the most precious children ever born, but as an organic gardner and climate change activist. It really is all related, but understanding how is for next week.