How to cut back on junk food in your child's diet – and when not to worry
Trust me, I know how exhausting it can be to figure out how to feed your kids a healthy diet while also living in the real world as a busy working parent with limited time and means.
Sometimes, popping a frozen pizza into the oven or microwaving some frozen fish sticks is the quickest, easiest and least expensive way to get a meal on the table that your kids will actually eat. Even health experts do it from time to time.
"My littlest one will eat mac and cheese" – from a box –"every day if he could," says Kevin Hall, a senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health who studies obesity and diabetes.
These kinds of quick, convenient, ready-to-heat meals and packaged snacks now dominate the diets of American kids and teens. They're all what's known as all ultra-processed foods, that is, industrially formulated products made mostly from ingredients extracted or refined from foods. They're usually high in fat, added sugars and salt. And they often contain additives
