I am just so angry about all these food products that have added sugar. I just realized the canadian bacon that I buy has 2g of sugar per serving. It is so hard to know if a product is adding sugar because they have to, to make the product or if they are just adding it unnecessairly....its frustrating!
Also, when I was checking myself out at a local grocery store, I looked around me and we were completely boxed in by HORRIBLE foods. In front me were these rice krispie squares the size of a brick. To the right of me was rows of potato chips, sitting on top of a fridge full of soda pop. I turned to my DH and said "and people really wonder why America is turning obese!!" And I continued to point out everything right around us that was horrible.
Its just so sad and horrible. I wish it was cheaper to eat healthier, but honestly I think people just use that as an excuse. I know I did. It really is just sad and it makes me so mad too...

I agree. I looked at a product the other day that was touted as "all natural". What they meant was it had added real sugar instead of HFCS. People really need to open their eyes and start reading the ingredient labels. Sugar is added in an astounding number of food items, and a lot of them are quite surprising. I know when I tell people that FF items frequently have added sugar to replace the fats, they are quite surprised. I recently had a conversation with a diabetic patient who had no idea that sugar is added to most spaghetti sauces. It is difficult to find some products without it (Canned beans, spaghetti sauce to name a few). And don't get me started on junk foods that have no nutritive value at all. The stuff that's marketed and fed to children is the worst. Some well-intentioned moms have no idea about the massive amounts of simple sugars and lack of whole grains in their kids' diets. My husband's two siblings have both been diagnosed as Type II Diabetics and they're really learning a lot about how to avoid eating those kinds of foods. I'm thankful for SB for enlightening me more about eating low-glycemic foods.

Since my husband was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes, I've become an avid reader on food labels, and I'm totally shocked at the amount of sugar/salt added to most foods ... foods that I'd always thought of as being pretty healthy. Consequently, I do tend to cook as much as possible from scratch, which is why I've decided to follow the SBD. I'm hoping that it will be an eating plan to suit both of us that we can continue for the rest of our lives.

At least most adults can READ a label. Kids don't.
The amount of sugar and other processed foods that kids eat is horrendous.
I blame 3/4 of the behavior problems I have at school on the foods they eat and parents blindly feed them without a second thought.
Sugar, processed flour, food dyes....it's criminal.

When parents come in for behavior conferences, the first question I ask them is "what does your child's diet consist of?" When I mention sugar, wheat allergies,dyes etc, they just shrug it off. Just the stuff in a box of macaroni and cheese is enough to set some kids off. see this article on dyes.

Thanks for sharing that article Cat. It was interesting. I hope they do ban those someday, but who knows.

I watch a Dateline special about poverty in America (I would put a link in but it's telling me I have to have 25 posts, but the title was called "America Now: Friends and Neighbor" and was hosted by Ann Curry). It was pretty powerful. One mother blamed herself for her child's diabetes because she fed him the cheap boxed macaroni and cheese sorts of meals. How sad.

Its amazing how much sugar and other bad things are in a lot of items. I made my daughter a milk shake with cottage cheese and some hot choc. mix the other day and she wanted more, little did she know there was healthy junk in there. She has asked for her ice cream each day since I made them. I would have never thought she would go for something that was not made of pure sugar, but she did and liked it. I knew stuff was bad but until I started reading more about it like reading about the south beach way I didn't realize how it was all so bad.

What is so sad about all this...the healthy food, fresh fruits and veggies or even the frozen fruits and veggies are more expensive. SOmetimes who can afford to eat at all.

Annie, You are exactly right aobut the items being more expensive. Why is that? They put less stuff in the healthy food but charge more. Also, I think a lot of people have come to rely on the fast heat up foods, and no one really knows how to cook anymore. The past few weeks of me finding this website, I learned so much as to putting together recipes without the package, and that it's not that much harder like some think to make your food taste good.

You are SO right!!! My niece (who is less than 100 pounds and wears a size 00) eats junk food quite frequently (her mother buys it for her all the time, as well as fast food) and was telling me one day that a bag of some kind of chips had this many calories and this many fat grams and so on. I looked at the bag and said "honey, that's per serving...and there's 8 servings in this bag." She looked at me, horrified, and said "I'm gonna get fat!!!"