![\"soda\"](\"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/pop.jpg\" "\\"pop\\"")
<\/p>\nThe quick answer: WAY too many.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmpty calories\u201d is a term that describes calories from foods that provide little nutrition beyond energy.\u00a0 Empty calories in the diet come\u00a0from solid fats and added sugars.\u00a0 Examples include: soda, cakes, and candy.<\/p>\n
With the old food guide pyramid, the term moderation was used to guide us in incorporating some tasty \u2013 but not so nutritious \u2013 foods into our day.\u00a0 But what exactly does moderation mean?\u00a0 With obesity on the rise, MyPyramid goes a step further to provide a specific upper limit for the number of calories that should come from discretionary calories \u2013 a complex word that means empty calories.<\/p>\n
Researches found 40% of total calories kids consumed were from empty calories.\u00a0\u00a0It is recommended that we only get\u00a08% to 20% of our calories from empty calorie foods.<\/p>\n
Kids eating 2,000 calories a day are given an upper limit of 267 empty calories \u2013 that\u2019s about the calories in a snickers bar.\u00a0 The research showed kids ate on average 2,037 calories, 798 of those calories were from empty calories.\u00a0 That\u2019s equivalent to eating two candy bars along with a 20 oz. bottle of soda.<\/p>\n
The biggest contributor of empty calories\u00a0was sugar-sweetened beverages (soda and fruit drinks).\u00a0They\u00a0provided 173 calories\/day.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The next largest contributor were\u00a0grain desserts, including cakes, cookies, donuts, pies, crisps, cobblers, and granola bars,\u00a0that provided 138 calories\/day.<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s a parent to do?\u00a0 To start, provide a healthy eating environment in your home with meals and snacks centered around grains, fruits, vegetables, low fat milk, meats and beans.\u00a0 Next month, I’ll provide detailed tips on how we can positively influence what our kids eat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The quick answer: WAY too many. \u201cEmpty calories\u201d is a term that describes calories from foods that provide little nutrition beyond energy.\u00a0 Empty calories in the diet come\u00a0from solid fats and added sugars.\u00a0 Examples include: soda, cakes, and candy. With the old food guide pyramid, the term moderation was used to guide us in incorporating some tasty \u2013 but not Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":8346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,780],"tags":[442,443,145,51],"class_list":["post-2641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e","category-nutrition-2","tag-calories","tag-empty-calories","tag-healthy-eating","tag-kids","cat-42-id","cat-780-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/chocchipcookie1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2641"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11423,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions\/11423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}