When writing their book, Goulding and Zinczenko discovered that you’re likely to underestimate your serving size and caloric intake by 40% and it certainly doesn’t help that the food industry continues to spend billions in advertising to get the public to eat more. According to the authors, your kids will see over 5000 food advertisements this year alone, and most of these will aim to sell them calorie-laden foods that undermine their physical wellness, as well as their emotional wellbeing and self-esteem.
Goulding adds that the food that you and your family eat in restaurants and for school dinners is more unhealthy than you realise, which has also contributed to obesity and type-2 diabetes rising in children four times over in the last 30 years. For example, after the 60s food manufacturers began substituting sugar with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), because it is cheaper. Nowadays, this HFCS is in everything from your cereal to your pasta sauce, and people in the Western world consume 317 empty calories from 82 grams of added sugar every day. Manufacturers and marketers are forever adding new food substances, which make it hard to know exactly what is in your food, and according to one study from UNC, people consume an average of 450 calories a day from beverages, which means that your drinks alone are adding on an extra 23 pounds a year.
Goulding says ‘Parents don’t know that the average kids’ meal at Outback Steakhouse packs 93 grams of fat, more than double the recommended daily allowance. They don’t know that it takes two trips to the top and back of the Empire State Building to burn off two pieces of KFC’s extra crispy chicken (810 calories!).’ Therefore, Goulding advises making your own dinner as much as possible, as cooking something like spaghetti and meatballs mixed with a green salad can save you 360 calories and 23 grams of fat from the fettuccine alfredo and Caesar salad you’d eat in a restaurant. After all, you shouldn’t put anything in your body unless you know exactly what it is.