We Have Lost Our Minds (The Fed Up Challenge)

There is a documentary titled Fed Up in which the relationship between childhood obesity and sugar intake is examined. Most people of course know that sweets can lead to weight gain so the movie follows several obese/overweight young people who with the support of their families have changed their eating habits to lose weight and get healthy. Armed with cupboards and fridges full of health foods, yogurts, low fat and low calorie snacks the kids give it their best but all end up failing at losing weight. All of the health foods show a have one thing in common, added sugar. 

The recommended amount of added sugar per day for a preschool aged child is 4 teaspoons or 16 grams. Everyday my preschool whole loves all carbs and sweets gets a 'healthy' snack of organic yogurt. The sugar count in this snack is a shocking 22 grams per serving. Shocking! By the time he has one snack he has had more sugar than he should consume in a day! That does not included te teaspoon of sugar (I mean 2 tablespoons of ketchup) he likes to use to dip his grilled chicken in at dinner time. 

For a long time we have been connecting his behavior to the foods he eats and have been working on improving his eating habits. Trying for more fruits, veggies, yogurt, cheese, & whole grains was our beginning goal then we cut out a lot of processed foods. When the baby came we found ourselves using more processed food snacks: granola, trail mix, and cereal. We found that behavior was becoming out of control for both kids and we were frustrated. After a talk about needing to find ways to again improve diet we sat down to watch Fed Up together not really knowing anything about it but with the tag line "Congress thinks pizza is a vegetable" we were drawn in. 

The result of watching that movie has lead us to do the challenge. We are only going to do a 7 day strict no added sugar plan for te whole family and see what we learn about our diet and our bodies. After that we will decide how we want to change our diet for the future we will use honey and maple syrup once the challenge is over the naturally sweeten foods most likely. 

I would like to share our journey and document how we feel and what we do. I also encourage you to do a quick estimate of your added sugar intake. Remember fruit and vegetable sugars are good just non of the hidden, sneaky sugars are. 

Any way wish us luck, we may be crazy.