Kids health is threatened by the most popular American food: Pizza. Numbers have shown that kids and teens eat exaggerated amounts of pizza. Apart from being delicious, pizza doesn’t really present other nutritional benefits, but on the contrary, it is high in fat and calories.
Just say out loud the word Pizza when being around kids and you will start a serious food revolution. What is about kids and pizza that bond so well?
Scientists had a curiosity about the amount of pizza consumed by American children and teenagers and took a peek at figures between 2003 and 2010. They researched the diets of kids and teens with the ages between 2 to 11 and 12 to 19.
The days the kids ate pizza, their body gained an extra of 84 calories, 3 grams of saturated fat and 134 mg of sodium. Teens gained 230 calories more, 5 grams of saturated fat and 484 mg of sodium. On the days they consumed pizza, the pizza nutrients stood for 20% of the kids daily caloric intake and 26% for the adolescents, which is a lot, coming from just one meal.
The caloric impact of pizza, increased when consumed between meals. Children added 202 calories and teens 365 just from snacking on pizza.
According to researches, pizza consumption hasn’t dropped during the period of the study. Between 2009 and 2010, pizza was classified as the second provider of fats in children’s diets, which they were eating in schools, and fast food places. The first place of fatty foods consumed by children being occupied by sugary goods, like cookies, cakes, pies, doughnuts.
Since the majority of the children were receiving their daily pizza from school cafeterias, health organisations, have insisted on changing its nutritive composition.
But these nutritional changes might have not been applied by all the fast food chains restaurants. Along 2003 and 2010, an analysis of the pizza nutrients, sold by the most known national fast food restaurants, proved high amount of sodium in the thin crust cheese pizzas.
Pizza consumption can become addictive, especially for the young ones who find it a very convenient food. But the effects of pizza is nothing to joke about. Kids should be informed on the dangerous nutritional facts and the quantities of pizza should be limited. Pizza is definitely an obesity factor food and it should be marketed under stricter health campaigns.
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