Kids and Soft Drinks

Soft Drinks seem to be an issue everytime I turn around these days. Yesterday I went to pick my oldest son (9 years old) up from school early. He met me in the hall with a Coke in his hand and a huge guilty grin on his face. His first words were "Let me explain, Mom." He knows that we do not buy soft drinks. He said they were having a special reward for their class and could choose between Coke or Pepsi. According to his logic Coke was the healthier choice. Later he asked me which one was really healthier. It was easy to explain that neither one had any nutritional value. Two days ago a friend of mine sent me a video about how many tablespoons of sugar was in a can of Coke. In case you do not already know, the answer is 9, yes, 9 tablespoons! This morning I came into work and this article was in my email. This puts yet another spin on soft drinks - DIET soft drinks. I hear people all the time say, "I only drink diet caffine free drinks." We are taught that diet soft drinks are better than regular ones. We are also taught that Diet drinks won't make us fat. These are both false! This article does a good job of explaining why this is not the case. It does not even touch on the ill-effects of artificial sweetner, but that is for another posting.
Kids really need our help and guidance in making these types of choices.

http://www.naturalnews.com/024503.html