Many parents lack basic knowledge about proper nutrition. At the supermarket, I see parents purchasing juice boxes, fruit snacks, and cereal bars that they probably think supplies their children with the nutrients needed to sustain life. I witnessed my own mother in-law filling her fruit basket with the same three fruits over and over again: apples, bananas, and grapes. What parents fail to realize is that juice boxes contain high amounts of sugar and acid that rot the teeth and adds at least 120 calories per serving. The chewy fruit snacks also stick to the teeth causing tooth decay and add on additional empty calories. The cereal bars contain dyes, added fat for flavor, and processed flour that raises blood sugar level

A sedentary lifestyle of watching TV, playing video games, and computer surfing reduces the amount of calories children burn throughout the day causing weight gain. Parents continue to feed their children three meals a day plus snacks, but fail to encourage them to exercise. Most parents spend over 40 hours a week working and then come home to the kids, eat dinner, do house work, and go to bed. Most parents themselves do not get enough exercise. Unless children take part in after school sports or other physical activities such as dance, they too go home, eat dinner, do homework, play on the computer (while snacking), and go to bed. I noticed this in my extended family when I went home last November. They don’t make time for exercise, but always make time for snacks and TV. One day I witnessed, my nephew and niece eat blueberry muffins with a juice box for breakfast, macaroni and cheese with a hot dog for lunch, and my sister in-law take them to McDonalds for chicken nuggets and fries for dinner. I made a complaint to my mother in-law who told me that they had healthy snacks at her house. She gave them a bowl full of grapes and Cheerios for snacks (S. Henkel, Personal Communication, November 2003). My niece and nephew are too young for all day school, so when they got home after lunch, they sat in front of the TV playing video games for about six hours. Great entertainment and good for hand eye coordination, my mother in-law informed me (S. Henkel, Personal Communication, November, 2003). No surprise to me that the kids are overweight. At the age of five

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