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"Here&amp;#039;s a fun statistic for you: 40-percent of the calories consumed by American kids in the course of the day are empty calories. In other words, 40 percent of those calories come from such dietary staples as soda. Or chips. Or some other snack food that might have very well been the bulk of your child&amp;#039;s lunch that day.   A study that appeared last week in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found the primary sources of energy in a kid&amp;#039;s diet nowadays to be &amp;quot;fruit juices, with the sugar sweetened beverage contributing to nearly 173 calories,&amp;quot; according to The Money Times.&amp;quot;About 433 calories came from solid fats and 365 from added sugars.&amp;quot; All that&amp;#039;s in a 2,200-calorie-per-day diet.  The problem? Other than the obvious one, of course, is that kids are establishing many of their lifelong eating habits right now. If grab-and-go meals and potato chips and soda are their lunchtime mainstays at 13, the chances they&amp;#039;ll carry those habits into adulthood are increasingly strong.  Interestingly, the study also found that the sources from which kids were getting their calories \u2013 good or otherwise \u2013 depended largely upon their ethnic backgrounds. Black and white kids, for example, derived more of their calories from fruit drinks than from milk, the primary source for Mexican-American children. Yeah, yeah: fruit juices are good for you, right? Ask a dentist about that.  No matter how dire sounding this report might be however, it doesn&amp;#039;t mean we can&amp;#039;t add a little more guilt to your already-growing load: children&amp;#039;s food choices are largely determined by what they eat at home. Our current crop of young adults \u2013 Generation Y \u2013 are probably eating fewer whole foods than any generation until now. Why? They&amp;#039;ve grown up in homes where cooking assumed a far less important place in our day-to-day routines. Speaking of which, anyone have any take menus on hand? It&amp;#039;s time for lunch. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.delish.com/cooking/nutrition/news/a13619/how-much-sugar-are-your-kids-c/>