I totally agree with everything being said, but the educator in me just has to correct a small error. Trish sugar and too much food will NOT EVER cause juvenile diabetes. Juvenile diabetes ( an old term, now called type 1 Diabetes) is a genetic disorder pure and simple. If you're gonna get you're gonna get it, what you eat won't make an iota of difference. What you are referring two is type 2 Diabetes, the major cause (but not total) cause of which is bad eating habits and weight issues. And yes Type 2 Diabetes is becoming a HUGE (pardon the pun) issue in our young, in a world first a three year old obese child was diagnosed with it recently...it is at epidemic proportions in our country and we have have one of the highest rates of both obesity and type 2 Diabetes in the world....horrifying and embarrasing statistics.
Sorry to sound pedantic about the classification but us type ones who were diagnosed as kids through no fault of our own constanty batlle this sort of misinformation and people we term "food nazis" who make ilinformed comments about how we must have had too much sugar as a child and how bad ourparents must have been etc. Kind of a touchy subject for us type ones but having said that I totally agree, Coke and other sugary and processed foods should be used with caution in children and given as a treat not as an everyday thing. I coiuld tell you some horror stories about young people with type 2 who have continued their unhealthy ways and have lost limbs due to gangrene, gone blind due to vascular disease and died early due to heart and kidney failure. I am only 37 and I have personally buried 5 type 2 friends in the past two years from this, all of whom were younger than me.