The other day at work a co-worker mom asked me advice about her 10 yr. old daughter. She informed me her daughter was about 4'7" and weighed 110 lbs. She said the doctor didn't say anything during their recent visit. She asked me if I thought her daugher was overweight. I said yes, but do not mention the word diet and encourage movement. Her mom said, ok, we are going to get back to swimming, she loves to swim. We did a quick review of her daughters daily intake. She does't drink sodas and her mother has limited the amount of snack foods in the house. The calorie culprit: Juice. Yes, juice calories can add up and add up fast. She informed me that she had noticed her daughter had gained the extra 20 lbs recently and it coinsided with her regular purchases of juice boxes. I asked how many she drank in a day and she told me 5 sometimes. That is an extra 300 calories a day in juice alone.
So look at the math: it takes 3500 extra calories to gain a pound. If a child consumes this much juice every day, in two weeks the child will have consumed an extra 4200 calories. Yes, more than enough to gain a pound.
Am I saying don't drink juice, not at all. I am saying be aware. We have juice and water in the house and my sons like juice. But the first thing they see when they open the refridgerator is the giant water container (Brita, the kind that holds about 2 gallons of water) that they use to fill their cups.
Now go take a look in your fridge and see what you see first, chances are your child/children see it too.
For those of you that may be interested here is a link for a children's BMI calculator. It may be helpful. BMI stands for body mass index and the number looks at height and weight only, so muscle weight is not factored in.
http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/usefultools/l/bl_bmi_calc.htm
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