Following pressure to offer healthier foods for kids ? McDonald?s announced changes to its Happy Meal boxes, adding apple slices, reducing the serving of french fries, and offering reduced fat or reduced fat chocolate milk. However, are these changes really all that ?health-conscious??
  What?s in the box?
A soft drink, milk, chocolate milk, or juice.
Sliced apples.
French fries.
A hamburger, cheeseburger, or chicken nuggets with dipping sauce.
The problems here: -The appetite suppressing hormone ?Leptin? is proportional to body fat, meaning that fat is actually a better appetite suppressant than carbs. Less fat in your meal means less Leptin, making fat-free products more likely to stimulate appetite than suppress it. Saturated fats aren?t a problem; the key is to use natural, unprocessed fat — like daily fat provided that it is safe. The soft drink is still there, meaning the artificial sweeteners and fructose syrup is still there. Consuming too much glucose at once overwhelms the body?s capacity to process it. When glucose enters the bloodstream, the body releases insulin to help regulate it. Fructose however, is processed in the liver ? and when too much fructose enters the liver at once, it starts making fats and sends them into the blood as triglycerides ? putting you at risk for heart disease.
Does that sound like something you?d want to feed your kids? What should you do instead? Try some natural alternatives:
Give kids apples, nuts, fruits.
Water instead of soft drinks.
Avoid foods rich in mercury, like tuna.
Use filtered water.
Eat organic.
References: 1.  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240531119039999045764699828325218… 2.  http://www.ajcn.org/content/91/3/535.abstract