Too Much Sugar!

By david pacey from LEEDS, West yorkshire – Sugar Cubes, CC BY 2.0, Link

Who here has ever been offered some candy or a piece of cake, you know you shouldn’t eat it but you can’t help yourself. You gobble it down and it tastes amazing! It might taste amazing right now but 20-30 years from now you will really regret eating it. Sugar is in everything we eat, even stuff that seem healthy. Sugar has many bad effects on our body, but we can’t stop eating it! We eat at least three times as much sugar as we’re supposed to daily which is leading to obesity in kids and adults. In the U.S many kids are obese and more people are becoming obese because of sugar and high fructose corn syrup. People are having way too much sugar, we need to cut back on sugar and eat more healthy starting now!

Although sugar tastes amazing, it’s not good for you. Sugar has many negative effects on your body. It damages your brain, your joints, your liver, your heart, it even makes your skin older and more wrinkly. Sugar causes Heart Disease, Heart Attacks, Strokes, Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, obesity, and a higher risk of Cancer. When you eat a lot of sugar it will make you more sad when you are an adult, it will also be eaten by bacteria on your teeth causing your teeth to rot. Your probably thinking just stop eating sugar but that’s hard because when you eat sugar your brain feels good and releases a chemical called Dopamine, but when your eating fruits or veggies your brain doesn’t feel as good and releases little Dopamine. This is one reason why people are addicted to sugar.

Sugar is hiding in everything we eat! Some things that seem perfectly healthy have more sugar than you think for example, a peanut butter and jam sandwich has 18 grams of sugar in it. The American Heart Association says that every day your only supposed to eat 25 grams or in other words 6 teaspoons of sugar. More than 70% of the U.S eats at least 22 teaspoons of sugar, sometimes even more everyday! Right now 13% of our diet is added sugar, that is so crazy! Natural sugar from fruit and stuff also has an effect on your body but it isn’t as bad as having sugar spoonful from spoonful. One day I recorded how much sugar I had for breakfast. I had 72 grams, that what just from 3 pumpkin muffins! 72 fits in 25 almost three times I had way too much sugar.

Lately, people have started to battle against obesity. One reason people are becoming obese is because of chocolate milk. The chocolate milk they are having has 28 grams of sugar in it. That is 3 more grams than they are supposed to have and if you add the grams of sugar they have already had then you get something like 80 grams a day! One reason why the chocolate milk has so much sugar in it is because it contains high fructose corn syrup.The syrup is basically plain sugar so people have tried to come up with new chocolate milk but in many cases kids don’t like it. People think the important part about the milk is that it contains calcium but it also contains a lot of sugar. “If somebody proposed giving kids caramel apples so they would eat more apples, my guess is that most people would look at them like they’re crazy,” says Brent Walmsley. He’s the one who started an organization called SugarWatch.

Sugar is a big reason why kids are becoming obese. The obesity rates have gone up like crazy! From 1980-2008 it went from 6 out of 100 people to 20 out of 100. Right now 1 out of 3 kids are obese and the rates are still rising. Obese kids are more likely to have health problems and as an adult have more severe problems and get worse. No one wants to be obese, so if you exercise, eat healthy, and not watch too much TV then you should be fine.

You might be wondering how to prevent eating sugar, here are some ways. You can check the nutrition label and on the back, look for the word sugars and once you find it there should be a number next to it telling how many grams of sugar it is. Some of it is probably natural sugars so check if anywhere else it says added sugars. You can also check the ingredients section and if you see words like beet, honey, and high fructose corn syrup and many other names then you know there is sugar in it

To sum up , some people rely on sugar to feel better but really it’s hurting them. We have 16 more teaspoons of sugar then we’re supposed to and sometimes more. Stuff like honey nut cheerios have 9 grams of sugar! That is more than ⅓ of how much we’re supposed to have! Kids are becoming obese across the U.S because of one reason, SUGAR! We really really need to stop eating too much sugar. I tried to eat less sugar and I ate around 60 grams, that is better but not enough. Some people think sugar is delicious but would you want to be unhealthy and overweight but eat treats or be healthy and strong but not eat as many treats. Today I challenge you to try and eat around 30 grams of sugar, I know I’m going to try!

Category: Health, Student Posts | 1 Comment

April 24

Anne Frank: Life in the Secret Annex

The year is 1942, you are settling down ready to write in your journal when you hear people nearby, you become frightened thinking they have discovered you. You get enough courage to peek through the blinds. Outside a kid has come home from school to find their family taken away, another person comes home from shopping to find their family was taken too. But worst of all, some Germans were taking away families giving them little time to pack. All of this was happening because they were Jews. Anne Frank was a Jew too, she hid away from the Germans in a secret building called the Secret Annex. She hid for 2 years before she was found and later killed. Even though she was just a girl her story of bravery was fascinating.

Happy times

On June 12th, 1929 Anneliese Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt Germany, she had an older sister Margot Frank. Her parents Edith and Otto Frank were Jewish. In 1933 Edith moved with Anne and her sister to her mother’s home, while their dad, Otto Frank moved to Amsterdam. Edith, Anne, and Margot later followed him. During that time Adolf Hitler was growing control of Germany and invading other countries. Otto worried that Hitler would gain control of Amsterdam and tried to go to the U.S with his family but they couldn’t.

Dangerous Years

In 1919 Adolf Hitler came to power, the problem was that he hated Jews. Even if your grandparents or aunt was a Jew and you weren’t, you would still be considered a Jew. There were special rules for Jews, stuff like no going to the beach. You can only go to a Jewish school. If you were caught disobeying then you would be shot. Later he immediately sent any Jews he could find to a concentration camp where they would be murdered and be killed. It was a gruesome time. The Franks were in trouble, non-Jewish people hunted down Jews for money, the Franks could trust no one! Some people tried to escape but that didn’t work they were surrounded. In the end, many Jews would have to hide from the Germans but even that was dangerous because they could be found. This was also dangerous for non-Jewish people, if they were caught helping a Jew then they would be killed or sent to a camp.

The Secret Annex

The Franks went into hiding in the secret annex. The secret annex was in the building where Otto Frank [her dad] worked, the entrance was hidden behind a movable bookshelf. It was very spacious compared to the hiding spots other Jews lived in. It had four floors with seven people living there, the Franks had one floor to themselves. At first, Anne shared a room with Margot, but then when came he moved into Anne’s room and Margot moved into her parents. The seven people living in the secret annex include Mr. and Mrs. van Pels, Peter van Pels, Fritz Pfeffer, and the Frank family.

Discovered!

On August 4th, 1944 the police discovered them, it had been more than two years since the Franks had first arrived. Everyone was caught by surprise, they were all arrested along with two helpers. Anne was sent to the Westerbork concentration camp along with her sister Margot and her mother, they were later moved to Auschwitz. In the end, Germany surrendered and the people in the concentration camps were freed, but it was too late for Anne, her mother Edith, Margot, Mr. and Mrs.van Pels, Peter van Pels, and Fritz Pfeffer they all had died. Anne’s dad Otto Frank was the only one who survived, everyone else who lived in the secret annex died. No one knows if the people in the secret annex were betrayed or not and if they were no one knows who did it.

Conclusion

Anne’s story is just one example of hiding, there are billions of other stories of these scary times. The concentration camps were a horrible thing, it ruined wonderful people’s life like Anne’s. But like she said, “ What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it from happening again.” We can keep all those people in our heart, and in our mind, we can remember to prevent those stuff from happening again. Her diary was published in an amazing book titled Anne Frank diary of a young girl, you can even go see the secret annex where she hid in Amsterdam. Her life was short but every second of it was important.

Anne Frank original diary written in during World War two.

By Anne Frank – https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/anne-frank/htmlsite/artifact_1_0.html, Public Domain, Link

Category: History, Student Posts | 1 Comment

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Mrs. McKelvey's 3rd Grade