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Can Health Drinks and Breakfast Cerals Make Yoour Child Stronger, Taller or Smarter?

The market for health drinks like Boost, Bournvita, Complan and breakfast cereals like Kellogg’s are booming. Is it because their claims about making our kids stronger, smarter, taller are genuine or is it because we parents are blinded and fooled by their flashy advertisements and lured by their shiny packaging?

Parents of my young patients always asked me as to which health drinks they should prefer for their kids. And I always insisted that they should rather rely on good home-made, healthy food and not on packaged health drinks. Even though my patients trusted every bit of advice I gave them, I could see that they got totally confused when I told them this. How could they not give a health drink to their child, when everyone else does?

Giving health drinks to children has become a global phenomenon, thanks to the smart heads in the R&D of these companies, who come up with witty and catchy by lines and brainwashing advertisements. We cannot blame them entirely, as there are a large number of parents who give health drinks to their kids not becuase they are well informed, but just because they want to stay ahead in the status race with other parents. This artcle in Times of India should be good eye opener for every one of us

Read this- http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/News-sick/entry/taller-smarter-fitter-kids-or

More articles to come on, how the so-called health drinks are taking their customers for a ride as they do not even have the RDA of nutrients that they claim to have on their labels? How the fine print and the smartly placed * fools most of the parents who spend a good amount of their fortune in vain believing that they are doing good to their child’s health?

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