If your child flunks a test, botches a project, forgets her backpack, or can’t lose weight, the reason could be what she ate or didn’t eat for breakfast. One out of every four of our children skip breakfast daily and the numbers are increasing each year. One in every two of us eats breakfast only on occasion. We skip breakfast because we want to lose weight, aren’t hungry, or because we complain that we don’t have enough time.

Your child might feel fine at first, full of energy and raring to go for the first few hours after he wakes up. That counterfeit burst of energy comes from a mind and body revved from a good night’s sleep. However, your child will pay for the neglect later. In fact, by afternoon, even if children eat relatively good lunches in an effort to boost lagging energy levels, they never regain the energy they would have had if they’d taken five minutes to eat breakfast.

Children (and adults, too!) who eat breakfast think more clearly, remember more, are more creative, react quicker, make fewer mistakes, and have more energy than their breakfast-skipping friends. They are better nourished, healthier, less likely to battle depression or feel overwhelmed by stress and they consume less fat and more fiber than do breakfast skippers. Children who eat nutritious breakfasts also get more vitamins and minerals. For example, while up to 80% or more of girls don’t consume enough calcium, those that eat breakfast are the ones most likely to meet their daily quota for this bone-building mineral.

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1. Why are our kids drinking so much soda pop?
Soda is everywhere. More than 2.8 million vending machines spew out more than 27 billion soft drinks a year at video stores, gas stations, schools, and more. They are cheap drinks in fast-foods restaurants, movie theaters, virtually everywhere. They’re sold in 60% of public schools. Some school districts even receive money from soda pop companies to sell certain pops exclusively in their vending machines. And our kids are being bombarded with the best and most clever advertising in the world. While pop manufacturers spent $549 million advertising pop last year, the National Cancer Institute spends less than $1 million encouraging people to eat more fruits and vegetables. It’s no wonder our kids are drinking pop and leaving their broccoli on the plate.

2. How many soft drinks are our kids drinking today?
Manufacturers pumped out 15 billion gallons of soda pop last year, or 54 gallons for every man, woman, and child – that’s more than 19 ounces a day. This is twice as much as we consumed back in the 1970s. While this averages about 1 ½ cans per person per day, many of us aren’t drinking any at all, while our children are drinking more than their share. According to USDA, American children between the ages of 12 and 19 consume about a half quart of pop a day or 3.5 quarts a week.

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Q: My kids battle a weight problem and although I think they eat pretty well, their father is tall and weighs 220 pounds. Could their weight be due to genetics?
– Katie in Kansasville

A: Yes, overweight does beget overweight. Children have an 80% chance of becoming overweight if both parents are overweight, a 40% chance if one parent is overweight, and only a 7% chance if both parents are lean. However, obesity rates are escalating far too fast for this epidemic to be caused by genetics. In short, genetics may increase a child’s susceptibility to obesity, but those ticking genes only explode into a serious weight problem with the help of habits. Most kids battling weight problems consume more calories than they burn. They’re eating more fat, sugar, and processed calories and are moving less than any generation since the dawn of humankind.

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