Why is fast food unhealthy for children?

The trouble with most pit-stop food isn't just the fat, salt, and calories. It's what's missing. Think about it. When was the last time you had a meal to go that included whole grains, fruit, and vegetables? In a recent survey of 3,000 children's meals at chain restaurants, over 95% didn't meet the basic nutritional guidelines for preschool and school-aged kids.

Excess sodium seems to be a fast-food given. Even in kids' meals, sodium may amount to nearly half or more of their daily limit. So watch how much salt they are eating throughout the day, knowing they're likely to get more than you like when eating on the run.

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One of the primary causes of the risk factors for heart and circulatory diseases as well as diabetes in children is a poor diet. A diet that is high in sugar, sodium, and fat and low in fiber -- in other words, a typical fast-foot diet -- offers little nutritional benefit and can do a lot of damage to your child's health. There's nothing theoretical about these dangers.

Nutritionists and physicians have reported that their youthful patients are being diagnosed in alarming numbers with high cholesterol; high blood pressure (obese children are more than twice as likely to develop hypertension); fatty liver, a precursor to cirrhosis; obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which excess flesh around the throat blocks the airway, causing loud snoring and a chronic lack of oxygen that can damage the heart and lungs; type 2 diabetes (one in four overweight children shows signs of the disease); and a myriad of other diseases, including some cancers, that used to be associated only with adults.

As recently as 1990, less than 4% of children with diabetes had type 2. Now the American Diabetes Association reports that as many as 45% of newly diagnosed cases of diabetes in children are type 2. That is a truly shocking increase, especially when you consider that it is largely preventable.