Some of my fondest memories of growing up are of playing sports. Although I did not become a Division I college or professional athlete, the experience taught me invaluable lessons in perseverance, teamwork, and confidence. Sports wasn’t only beneficial to me. Studies have shown many attributes of youth sport, including structured and consistent physical activity and social support important to childhood development and health and perhaps lower levels of depression. What was a crucial and irreplacable childhood experience for me is unfortunately not equally accessible to all children and adolescents.
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It seems that kids are born loving sweets, and in fact, this is true. Across cultures, babies show an innate preference for sweet flavors, which helps them to survive by ensuring that they enjoy the sweet taste of their natural first food, breast milk. Babies also tend to like salty and “energy-dense” foods, and they show a universal dislike of foods that taste bitter. This discourages ingestion of toxic plants or other substances that could be harmful. If babies are born loving sweets and hating vegetables, how can their eating habits become more aligned with what we would consider a healthy diet?
Americans eat way too much salt. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 90% of Americans consume more sodium than the recommended 2,300mg per day. This is a huge public health problem because excess sodium leads to high blood pressure, which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. While many of us know to limit the amount of salt we sprinkle on our food, this will do little to address the problem because 70% of the sodium in our diet comes from packaged and restaurant foods. If we want to reduce sodium consumption, we should focus less on how we prepare food for ourselves at home and worry more about what companies put in our food. But how do we get them to change?
Over the last several decades, public health researchers have been exploring the various ways malnutrition might worsen health among those experiencing an infectious disease. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), malnutrition is the state of too little, or too much, consumption of energy or nutrients. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of malnutrition and inadequate access to healthy foods have been paramount, and were particularly prominent in children and communities of color.
If you visit a New York City or Philadelphia restaurant (when you’re able to go out to eat again), you may be surprised to see a label on the menu that you’re unfamiliar with. Both of these cities require chain restaurants with 15 or more locations nationwide to post sodium warning labels next to menu items and combination meals containing more sodium than the recommended daily limit of 2,300 mg. A single menu item with over a day’s worth of sodium may sound like a rarity, but at Applebee’s, for instance, every single sandwich and pasta dish has more than 2,300 mg of sodium. Sodium warning labels are a relatively new policy tool that cities can use to help educate consumers about the sodium content of their foods, and prompt restaurants to reduce sodium content to avoid labels.
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