Snacks: Delicious but dangerous

Snacks: Delicious but dangerous

Santi Hendrawati, Contributor, Jakarta

Candy, potato chips, chocolate, taffy, ice-cream, milk and
other snacks as well as instant noodles are consumed in large
quantities by many children and in some cases are the staple of
many a kid's diet because some parents allow their children to
eat such junk food.

Andang Gunawan, a nutritionist who graduated from the
Queensland Institute of Science in Australia, has conceded that
it is not easy for parents to prevent their children from buying
and eating snacks, which are available in various forms, tastes
and colors in the supermarket, in small shops and in food stalls
near schools.

Processed foods such as the aforementioned, are cooked several
times and lose most of their nutritional value. Other processed
snacks are produced through a long dissolving, heating and
evaporation process, which eliminates not only vitamins, but also
minerals and various other kinds of nutrition needed by human
bodies.

The use of additional ingredients, preservatives and
seasonings such as MSG, can have an adverse effect on brain
development in children. Other chemical substances can be even
more dangerous to human health, as those materials have been
found to disrupt metabolism and eventually leads to brain damage.

Disruption of the metabolism is detrimental to the brain,
which consists of the smallest, the softest and most sensitive
cells in the human body, and damage to those cells can be very
detrimental indeed to overall health.

"No wonder there was a one-year-old child who cheerfully waved
his hands at his father who left for the office in the morning,
but suddenly could not recognize his parents and others around
him in the evening because he suffered from autism," said Andang.

Autism is a mental disease that emerges from a metabolism
disorder which is often not easily recognizable by parents. It
takes a long process before the disruption of the metabolism
resulting from insufficient brain nourishment develops into
autism.

Obesity or extreme thinness among children is also common
today. Various allergic diseases, skin diseases, coughs,
influenza and asthma are also prevalent among children. A
contributing factor in those illnesses is often related to an
excessive amount of junk food, according to Andang.

Soft drinks, such as one American-based, world renowned cola,
contain carbon dioxide. In addition such drinks can also greatly
boost gastric acid. When the body has too much acid, the calcium
in the body will melt down.

One of the solutions normally taken by parents to keep food
and soft drink intake at a minimum is to make sure that kids
first eat enough nutritious food before consuming any junk food.

"Ice cream, chocolate or cookies will do no harm," said
Andang. " As long as the child wants to consume fruits and
vegetables to balance his or her diet, 60 percent of the child's
intake should at least comprise fresh fruits and vegetables."

The 60 percent intake of fruits and fresh vegetables will
balance the body's need for base acid, thus preventing the body
from becoming too acidic. Fruits and fresh vegetables contain a
variety of enzymes, vitamins and oxidizing agents to rid the body
of toxic substances.

Some parents who are fully aware of the importance of fruits
and vegetables for children, and are finding it difficult to make
children eat them and instead, try to correct the imbalance by
giving the child vitamins or food supplements.

For example, to meet the child's need for vitamin C, parents
often force the pills on the children. The problem is that the
intake of vitamin C that is derived from sources other than fruit
will undergo a different process in the body. The body will not
absorb synthetic vitamin C directly even if it was extracted from
natural products.

Such vitamins have undergone chemical changes and the working
mechanism is different from the vitamins that comes from fresh,
natural food. "They (the vitamin pills) will have to be
digested," Andang explained. However, during the process of
digestion, the body will first detect the food. When a food is
considered alien or something that will cause illness, the body's
defense system will automatically reject it.

"Because without enzymes, each food that comes into the body
will be regarded as a disease, so take a vitamin together with
your meal" Andang advised.