 Our children are in trouble because we've outsourced the job of feeding them. The average American diet consists of about 70% processed food. That's food that's produced by companies who prioritize short-term profits over the long-term health of our children. As the processed food industry expands, many other parts of the world are also beginning to follow this trend. Now, one of the biggest problems is that surprisingly large amounts of salt, sugar and fat are hidden in these foods in order to extend their shelf life and enhance their flavor so that they'll be more likely to sell. By far, the majority of the excess salt and sugar in the average American child's diet comes from processed food. Almost everything you find on the supermarket shelf that has been packaged, canned or bottled falls into the category of processed foods. These include things like breakfast cereals, granola bars, cookies, crackers and sweetened drinks. Even some brands of the foods you might consider to be inherently healthy can turn out to be heavily processed like yogurt or cheese or even pasta sauce. One way to differentiate a highly processed food from a less processed one is to look at the number of ingredients listed on the label. If the food has a long list of ingredients, the food is most likely highly processed, especially if those ingredients are not easily recognizable to you. Now, the bottom line is that when we can, we should choose foods that are less processed for our children. The best option is almost always the kind of food that we prepare and serve to our own families in our homes. When we cook, we get to decide what is going into our children's bodies and, unlike the processed food manufacturers, we have a strong interest in the health of the people who are going to be eating the food that we make. Now, not everybody can afford to buy fresh whole food ingredients all of the time, but if we do the best we can with the resources that are available to us, we can begin to have more control over where our food comes from and also how it's prepared, and we can make sure that only reasonable amounts of fat, sugar, and salt go into the food that our children are eating. In the long run, a diet of mostly home-cooked foods prepared by someone who cares about the people eating that food will almost always be healthier for the whole family.