100 Years of Soda Pop Profits Contributes To The Pandemic of Diabetes

Peter Knopfler
American Chronicle
May. 02, 2006

“In the search of wealth, we destroy our health”.

Women who drink more than one can of sugar-filled soda a day might be increasing their chances of developing diabetes along with gaining weight.

A study showed that women who drank the minimum of one soda each day could increase their likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes by 85 percent over the women who drank less than one can a day.

Along with increasing the risk for diabetes, the high sugar and calorie content contained in sodas were also found to compound the risk of developing other chronic diseases such as obesity. These findings led researchers to believe the sugar found in soda and energy drinks could result in an overabundance of energy, which could trigger obesity and the packing on of extra pounds.

The Growing Number of Diabetes Cases in America

* In 2002, 18.2 million Americans were found to have diabetes

* Diabetes is the fifth-deadliest disease in the United States

* The number of people with diabetes has almost doubled over the years of 1990 to 2002

Researchers stated that school officials are now taking actions against the growing childhood obesity problem by encouraging their students to drink beverages other than sugar-filled soft drinks.

Although researchers said diet sodas with sugar substitutes did not increase the chances of developing diabetes, you should be aware that artificial sweeteners (aspartame) carry numerous problems of their own.

Diabetes is a devastating and debilitating disease and eliminating soda from your diet is probably one of the easiest preventative measures you could take against it.

Soda provides zero nutritional value and is loaded with addictive sugars. What’s most unfortunate is the amount of soft drinks kids drink each day.

Just consider these startling statistics:

* These popular beverages account for more than one-quarter of all drinks consumed in the United States

* More than 15 billion gallons were sold in 2000

* That works out to at least one 12-ounce can per day for every man, woman and child

If you or your child is still drinking soda this is something that is quite simple to stop. In my mind there is absolutely no justification to drink soda. Both sugar and artificial sweeteners are deadly to your health and will gradually rob you of it Americans drink more soda pop than ever before.

Kids are heavy consumers of soft drinks, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and they are guzzling soda pop at unprecedented rates.

Carbonated soda pop provides more added sugar in a typical 2-year-old toddler's diet than cookies, candies and ice cream combined.

Fifty-six percent of 8-year-olds down soft drinks daily, and a third of teenage boys drink at least three cans of soda pop per day.

Not only are soft drinks widely available everywhere, from fast food restaurants to video stores, they're now sold in 60 percent of all public and private middle schools and high schools nationwide, according to the National Soft Drink Association. A few schools are even giving away soft drinks to students who buy school lunches.

As soda pop becomes the beverage of choice among the nation's young -- and as soda marketers focus on brand-building among younger and younger consumers -- public health officials, school boards, parents, consumer groups and even the soft drink industry are faced with nagging questions:

* How healthful are these beverages, which provide a lot of calories, sugars and caffeine but no significant nutritional value?

* And what happens if you drink a lot of them at a very young age?

Last week, representatives of the soft drink industry, concerned that public opinion and public policy may turn against them, will staged a three-day "fly-in" to lobby Congress to maintain soft drinks sales in schools; and to educate lawmakers on the "proper perspective" on soft drink use.

The industry plans to counter a US Department of Agriculture proposal, announced in January, that would require all foods sold in schools to meet federal nutrition standards. That would mean that snack foods and soft drinks would have to meet the same standards as school lunches.

Nearly everyone by now has heard the litany on the presumed health effects of soft drinks:

* Obesity

* Caffeine dependence

* Weakened bones

But does drinking soda pop really cause those things?

To help separate fact from fiction, the latest scientific findings and asked an array of experts on both sides of the debate to weigh in on the topic. Be forewarned, however: Compared with the data available on tobacco and even dietary fat, the scientific evidence on soft drinks is less developed. The results can be a lot like soft drinks themselves, both sweet and sticky.

Obesity

One very recent, independent, peer-reviewed study demonstrates a strong link between soda consumption and childhood obesity.

One previous industry-supported, unpublished study showed no link. Explanations of the mechanism by which soda may lead to obesity have not yet been proved, though the evidence for them is strong.

Many people have long assumed that soda -- high in calories and sugar, low in nutrients -- can make kids fat. But until this month there was no solid, scientific evidence demonstrating this.

Reporting in The Lancet, a British medical journal, a team of Harvard researchers presented the first evidence linking soft drink consumption to childhood obesity. They found that 12-year-olds who drank soft drinks regularly were more likely to be overweight than those who didn't.

For each additional daily serving of sugar-sweetened soft drink consumed during the nearly two-year study, the risk of obesity increased 1.6 times.

Obesity experts called the Harvard findings important and praised the study for being prospective. In other words, the Harvard researchers spent 19 months following the children, rather than capturing a snapshot of data from just one day. It's considered statistically more valuable to conduct a study over a long period of time.

Researchers found that schoolchildren who drank soft drinks consumed almost 200 more calories per day than their counterparts who didn't down soft drinks. That finding helps support the notion that we don't compensate well for calories in liquid form.

Caffeine Dependence

The stimulant properties and dependence potential of caffeine in soda are well documented, as are their effects on children.

Ever tried going without your usual cup of java on the weekend? If so, you may have experienced a splitting headache, a slight rise in blood pressure, irritability and maybe even some stomach problems.

These well-documented symptoms describe the typical withdrawal process suffered by about half of regular caffeine consumers who go without their usual dose.

The soft drink industry agrees that caffeine causes the same effects in children as adults, but officials also note that there is wide variation in how people respond to caffeine. The simple solution, the industry says, is to choose a soda pop that is caffeine-free. All big soda makers offer products with either low or no caffeine.

That may be a good idea, though it raises the question of whether soda machines in schools should be permitted to offer caffeinated beverages or at least be obligated to offer a significant proportion of caffeine-free products.

It also raises the question of how one determines a product's caffeine content. Nutrition labels are not required to divulge that information. If a beverage contains caffeine, it must be included in the ingredient list, but there's no way to tell how much a beverage has, and there's little logic or predictability to the way caffeine is deployed throughout a product line.

Okay, so most enlightened consumers already know that colas contain a fair amount of caffeine. It turns out to be 35 to 38 milligrams per 12-ounce can, or roughly 28 percent of the amount found in an 8-ounce cup of coffee. But few know that diet colas -- usually chosen by those who are trying to dodge calories and/or sugar -- often pack a lot more caffeine.

A 12-ounce can of Diet Coke, for example, has about 42 milligrams of caffeine -- seven more than the same amount of Coke Classic. A can of Pepsi One has about 56 milligrams of caffeine -- 18 milligrams more than both regular Pepsi and Diet Pepsi.

Even harder to figure out is the caffeine distribution in other flavors of soda pop. Many brands of root beer contain no caffeine. An exception is Barq's, made by the Coca-Cola Co., which has 23 milligrams per 12-ounce can. Sprite, 7-Up and ginger ale are caffeine-free. But Mountain Dew, the curiously named Mello Yellow, Sun Drop Regular, Jolt and diet as well as regular Sunkist orange soda all pack caffeine.

Caffeine occurs naturally in kola nuts, an ingredient of cola soft drinks. But why is this drug, which is known to create physical dependence, added to other soft drinks?

The industry line is that small amounts are added for taste, not for the drug's power to sustain demand for the products that contain it. Caffeine's bitter taste, they say, enhances other flavors. "It has been a part of almost every cola -- and pepper-type beverage -- since they were first formulated more than 100 years ago," according to the National Soft Drink Association.

But recent blind taste tests conducted by Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore found that only 8 percent of regular soft drink consumers could identify the difference between regular and caffeine-free soft drinks.

The study included only subjects who reported that they drank soft drinks mainly for their caffeine content. In other words, more than 90 percent of the self-diagnosed caffeine cravers in this small sample could not detect the presence of caffeine.

That's why the great popularity of caffeinated soft drinks is driven not so much by subtle taste effects as by the mood-altering and physical dependence of caffeine that drives the daily self-administration.

And the unknown could be especially troublesome for the developing brains of children and adolescents. Logic dictates that when you are dependent on a drug, you are really upsetting the normal balances of neurochemistry in the brain. The fact that kids have withdrawal signs and symptoms when the caffeine is stopped is a good indication that something has been profoundly disturbed in the brain.

Exactly where that leads is anybody's guess -- which is to say there is little good research on the effects of caffeine on kids' developing brains.

Bone Weakening

Animal studies demonstrate that phosphorus, a common ingredient in soda, can deplete bones of calcium.

And two recent human studies suggest that girls who drink more soda are more prone to broken bones. The industry denies that soda plays a role in bone weakening.

Animal studies -- mostly involving rats -- point to clear and consistent bone loss with the use of cola beverages. But as scientists like to point out, humans and rats are not exactly the same.

Even so, there's been concern among the research community, public health officials and government agencies over the high phosphorus content in the US diet. Phosphorus -- which occurs naturally in some foods and is used as an additive in many others -- appears to weaken bones by promoting the loss of calcium. With less calcium available, the bones become more porous and prone to fracture.

The soft drink industry argues that the phosphoric acid in soda pop contributes only about 2 percent of the phosphorus in the typical US diet, with a 12-ounce can of soda pop averaging about 30 milligrams.

There's growing concern that even a few cans of soda today can be damaging when they are consumed during the peak bone-building years of childhood and adolescence. A 1996 study published in the Journal of Nutrition by the FDA's Office of Special Nutritional noted that a pattern of high phosphorus/low calcium consumption, common in the American diet, is not conducive to optimizing peak bone mass in young women.

A 1994 Harvard study of bone fractures in teenage athletes found a strong association between cola beverage consumption and bone fractures in 14-year-old girls. The girls who drank cola were about five times more likely to suffer bone fractures than girls who didn't consume soda pop.

Besides, to many researchers, the combination of rising obesity and bone weakening has the potential to synergistically undermine future health. Adolescents and kids don't think long-term. But what happens when these soft-drinking people become young or middle-aged adults and they have osteoporosis, sedentary living and obesity.

A study revealed that those who drink soda, a huge percentage of the world’s population, might have a higher risk of developing esophageal (throat) cancer (ACE). The study showed a strong link between the accelerated rate of people drinking carbonated soft drinks and the growing number of cases of esophageal cancer over the past 20 years.

Some statistics related to the steady rise in carbonated soft drink consumption include:

* During the past half-century, the number of carbonated soft drink drinkers rose more than 450 percent and jumped from 10.8 gallons in 1946 to 49.2 gallons in the year 2000.

* Over the last 25 years, the cases of ACE have exceeded 570 percent among American white males and the rates have continued to rise.

A significant biological explanation showed that the increased dose and length of esophageal exposure to acid led to episodes of gastric distension that triggered acid reflux.

The study also broke down the consumption of carbonated soft drinks (CSD) to minutes of acid exposure and discovered that the average soda drinker consumed over 32,000 additional minutes of acid exposure a year. Other statistics have exposed a rising trend of ACE cases in countries with a per capita intake of CSD that exceeded 20 gallons.

Conclusions from the study prompted researchers to say further emphasis is needed upon the importance of diet patterns on health trends.

Throat cancer is a particularly hard cancer to beat--more than 90 percent of patients with invasive esophageal cancer die within five years of diagnosis--and this is just one more reason why you should really avoid drinking soda.

SUGAR AND CANCER

The profits of doom.

Several studies have pointed out the link between sugar and increased rates of cancer. Soda is loaded with sugar, which not only feeds cancer cells, but also throw off insulin levels leading to damaging effects on your health. Eliminating soda from your diet is an absolute necessity to prevention of cancer.

Normalizing your insulin levels is one of the most powerful physical actions you can take to improve your health and lower your risk of cancer along with other long-term chronic health conditions such as obesity and diabetes. Fortunately, it is also the variable most easily influenced by healthy eating and exercise.

And if you think you are immune to the damaging effects of soda because you drink diet versions, then you need to read and investigate more.

What did the researchers find about the children's drinking and eating habits?

Sweetened beverages made up over 50 percent of the children's daily liquid intake. Children with the highest consumption took in over 300 calories more each day than children with lower intake. The children with the highest sweetened drink consumption ate more than 60 percent less fruit than those with the lowest sweetened beverage intake.

The researchers speculated that the level of sweetened beverage consumption could be used as a marker for poor dietary habits and low fruit consumption.

American Journal of Public Health August 2002; page 92

I suspect many of you aren't surprised by the following statistics, but as a person who has not had any soda for many years (30 years), I just about fell off my chair in reaction to these numbers:

Most sodas include over 100 percent of the RDA of sugar. The recommended daily allowance of sugar is 10 teaspoons, which is still too high of a level of consumption.

If you are still drinking soda this is something that is quite simple to stop. In my mind there is absolutely no justification to drink soda. Vending machines can increase sweetened beverage consumption by up to 50 or more cans of soda per year, obviously more profit.

Women with type 2 diabetes, which is associated with obesity, were 17 percent more likely to develop breast cancer than those without diabetes, according to a study.

Researchers have suggested that elevated levels of insulin in the blood of diabetics may promote breast cancer. Insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas, allows blood sugar (glucose) to enter cells and be converted to energy. During insulin resistance, the process becomes impaired and the body becomes less sensitive to the effects of insulin. More insulin must then be released to compensate.

A healthy diet, regular exercise and weight control can help to prevent diabetes, according to researchers. Diabetes Care June, 2003;26:1752-1758

Eating too much sugar and too many grains, which are converted to sugar in the body, will cause your blood sugar level to rise. If your blood sugar levels remain elevated, even mildly, over a period of time, your risk of diabetes will increase. If you end up with diabetes, your risk of cancer also increases, as the study shows.

Fortunately, diabetes, especially in children, is tremendously easy to treat by restricting all grains and sugars from the diet and increasing exercise.

Making these changes in your lifestyle will help to optimize your insulin levels. As some people may know, blood sugar is only the symptom in most diabetics; the real challenge is to control your insulin levels. Once the insulin levels are stabilized it is common for the blood sugar to come back to normal levels.

Exercise works by increasing the sensitivity of insulin receptors so the insulin that is present works much more effectively and your body doesn’t need to produce as much.

Most people, especially doctors, tend to not appreciate how powerful exercise is. However, I believe it needs to be viewed like a drug--you have to be very careful with the dose. If the dose is not high enough, it will not work.

One of the keys in using exercise to normalize insulin levels with secondary benefits of weight loss and normalization of blood sugars is to make certain minimum thresholds are met. It is my experience that most people are not exercising enough.

Cutting out grains and sugar from your diet is also extremely important. According to a study, women who consume a high dietary glycemic load may increase their risk of colorectal (colon) cancer. Glycemic load is a measure of how quickly a food's carbohydrates are turned into sugars by the body (glycemic index) in relation to the amount of carbohydrates per serving of that food.

The study consisted of 38,451 women who were followed for almost eight years. The participants filled out questionnaires about their eating habits, so researchers could examine the associations of dietary glycemic load, overall dietary glycemic index, carbohydrate, fiber, non-fiber carbohydrate, sucrose, and fructose with the subsequent development of colon cancer. Researchers found that women who ate the most high-glycemic-load foods were nearly three times more likely to develop colon cancer.

This study shows that not only can a diet rich in sugar boost the risk of type 2 diabetes and contribute to obesity, but it may also lead to colon cancer. Journal of the National Cancer Institute February 4, 2004;96(3):229-233

Here we have it, published in the official journal of the Cancer Institute. They are finally recognizing what the Nobel Prize did over 70 years ago, by awarding the prize to Dr. Warburg in Germany for discovering that sugar caused cancer. If you are obese you are far more likely to have cancer. Normalizing your insulin levels is one of the most powerful physical actions you can take to improve your health and lower your risk of cancer.

SODA POP PROFITS INCREASE GLOBAL HEALTH RISKS

It is vital to understand what insulin actually is. Insulin is something all humans have as without it we would go into hyperglycemic coma and die, but many of us have insulin levels that are too high.

The pancreas releases insulin--produced by beta cells--after you eat carbohydrates. This causes a rise in blood sugar. Insulin ensures your cells receive some blood sugar necessary for life, and increases glycogen storage. However, it also drives your body to use more carbohydrate, and less fat, as fuel. And, insulin converts almost half of your dietary carbohydrate to fat for storage. In other words, when we eat too much carbohydrate, we're essentially sending a hormonal message, via insulin, to the body (actually, to the adipose cells). The message: "Store fat."

Not only do increased insulin levels tell the body to store carbohydrates as fat, they also tell it not to release any stored fat. This makes it impossible for you to use your own stored body fat for energy. So the excess carbohydrates in your diet not only make you fat, they make sure you stay fat.

High levels of insulin can cause major damage to your body. The most recognized of these is diabetes. In addition, hypertension, obesity, high levels of cholesterol and other lipids, heart disease, kidney disease, female infertility and neuro-degeneration are all causes of eating too many carbohydrates, resulting in high insulin levels.

If you want to use more fats for energy, the insulin response must be moderated. Diets high in refined sugars release more insulin thereby allowing less stored fat to be burned.

Insulin is the key to the vast majority of chronic illness as I expressed above. Fortunately, it is the variable most easily influenced by healthy eating and exercise. The future health of our country undoubtedly depends upon healthier eating. That means you must, in order to stay healthy, eliminate grains and sugars from your diet.

Many people struggle with this grain/sugar restriction. We have been using Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) to successfully treat emotional stresses, including food cravings such as those related to sugar and grains, for some time.

Although often overlooked, emotional health is essential to your physical well-being. No matter how devoted you are to a healthy lifestyle, it is nearly impossible to reach your goals if emotional barriers stand in your way. EFT uses a combination of kinetic energy input and positive affirmations to release you of your emotional “blocks.”

For more information on insulin’s many effects on health, be sure to read Dr. Rosedale’s classic and highly informative insulin lecture.

It puzzles me why the simple concept "sugar feeds cancer" can be so dramatically overlooked as part of a comprehensive cancer treatment plan.

Of the 4 million cancer patients being treated in America today, hardly any are offered any scientifically guided nutrition therapy beyond being told to "just eat good foods." Most patients I work with arrive with a complete lack of nutritional advice.

I believe many cancer patients would have a major improvement in their outcome if they controlled the supply of cancer's preferred fuel, glucose.

By slowing the cancer's growth, patients allow their immune systems and medical debulking therapies -- chemotherapy, radiation and surgery to reduce the bulk of the tumor mass -- to catch up to the disease.

Controlling one's blood-glucose levels through diet, supplements, exercise, meditation and prescription drugs when necessary can be one of the most crucial components to a cancer recovery program. The sound bite -- sugar feeds cancer -- is simple. The explanation is a little more complex.

The 1931 Nobel laureate in medicine, German Otto Warburg, Ph.D., first discovered that cancer cells have a fundamentally different energy metabolism compared to healthy cells.

The crux of his Nobel thesis was that malignant tumors frequently exhibit an increase in anaerobic glycolysis -- a process whereby glucose is used as a fuel by cancer cells with lactic acid as an anaerobic byproduct -- compared to normal tissues.

The large amount of lactic acid produced by this fermentation of glucose from cancer cells is then transported to the liver. This conversion of glucose to lactate generates a lower, more acidic pH in cancerous tissues as well as overall physical fatigue from lactic acid buildup. Thus, larger tumors tend to exhibit a more acidic pH.

The cancer is "wasting" energy, and the patient becomes tired and undernourished. This vicious cycle increases body wasting.

It is one reason why 40 percent of cancer patients die from malnutrition, or cachexia. Hence, cancer therapies should encompass regulating blood-glucose levels via diet, supplements, non-oral solutions for under nourished patients who lose their appetite, medication, exercise, gradual weight loss and stress reduction. Professional guidance and patient self-discipline are crucial at this point in the cancer process. The quest is not to eliminate sugars or carbohydrates from the diet completely but rather to control blood glucose within a narrow range to help starve the cancer and bolster immune function. Rapid fluctuation of blood-sugar levels is unhealthy because of the stress it places on the body.

In other words, there is a "window of efficacy" for glucose in the blood: levels too low make one feel lethargic and can create clinical hypoglycemia; levels too high start creating the rippling effect of diabetic health problems.

The 1997 American Diabetes Association blood-glucose standards consider 126 mg glucose/dL blood or greater to be diabetic; 111 to 125 mg/dL is impaired glucose tolerance and less than 110 mg/dL is considered normal.

Meanwhile, the Paleolithic diet of our ancestors, which consisted of lean meats, vegetables and small amounts of whole grains, nuts, seeds and fruits, is estimated to have generated blood glucose levels between 60 and 90 mg/dL.

Obviously, today's high-sugar diets are having unhealthy effects as far as blood-sugar is concerned. Excess blood glucose may initiate yeast overgrowth, blood vessel deterioration, heart disease and other health conditions.

To be safe, I recommend less fruit, more vegetables, and little to no refined sugars in the diet of cancer patients.

This suggests that regulating sugar intake is key to slowing breast tumor growth.

An epidemiological study in 21 modern countries that keep track of morbidity and mortality (Europe, North America, Japan and others) revealed that sugar intake is a strong risk factor that contributes to higher breast cancer rates, particularly in older women.

Limiting sugar consumption may not be the only line of defense.

Personal Comment:

Nearly all of us are addicted to sugar. There is not one single food item that is generally more damaging to health. The problem is that most of us are addicted to it.

Unless many people in the United States cut back on their food intake and exercise more, one in three U.S. children born in 2000 will become diabetic, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Moreover, black and Hispanic children are at an even higher risk, as close to half of them are likely to develop diabetes.

It is estimated that about 17 million Americans--close to six percent of the U.S. population--have diabetes, including undiagnosed cases. The condition can lead to many serious problems including blindness, kidney failure, amputation and heart disease.

Based on the CDC predictions, 45 million to 50 million Americans could have diabetes by 2050, and it would be unlikely that the medical community could keep up with numbers that high.

The number of cases of diabetes, which is caused largely by obesity and lack of exercise, tripled from the mid-1960s to mid-1990s and is expected to rise 165 percent by 2050.

While type 2 diabetes used to be called adult-onset diabetes because it generally occurred in middle-aged people, the condition is now affecting younger patients.

In the study, researchers analyzed data from a survey of about 360,000 people from 1984 to 2000, from the U.S. Census Bureau and from a previous diabetes study.

It was found that 39 percent of the girls aged 2.5 to 3 years and 33 percent of the boys are likely to develop diabetes.

Among Hispanic children, 53 percent of the girls and 45 percent of the boys are likely to develop the condition, compared with 49 percent and 40 percent for black girls and boys, and 31 percent and 27 percent for white girls and boys.

Diabetes is also a problem worldwide, as the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the number of cases of diabetes globally will double from 140 million to 300 million by 2025.

However, type 2 diabetes can be prevented by losing weight, exercising and following a sensible diet.

Walking 30 minutes a day and losing a little weight could cut a person’s risk of diabetes by 58 percent, according to a previous study.

Last year the New England Journal of Medicine published a study that showed that 25 percent of obese children under 10 years had either blatant or pre-adult onset type 2 diabetes. Please don't confuse this type of diabetes with the type that is typically acquired in childhood; type 1 diabetes is pancreatic failure and requires insulin therapy to prevent death.

However, these children were developing a chronic degenerative disease that was typically not seen until one reached 50 or 60 years. Type 2 diabetes used to be called adult onset diabetes, but we are now going to have to rename that disease completely as it is an epidemic in children.

But we are in the midst of a diabetes epidemic in the United States. Diabetes has increased by 70 percent in 30 to 39 year olds, and it appears the epidemic is also affecting our youngsters.

Fortunately, we have a solution as in the vast majority of patients type 2 diabetes is completely reversible.

Two years ago, the top medical journal, NEJM, proclaimed that in fact one can “cure” type two diabetes with diet and exercise.

This solution will be relatively challenging to implement in a child, but they really do not have any choice. It is literally a life and death situation for many of these children.

It is hard to imagine them living much beyond 40 or 50 years without developing diabetic complications that result in stroke, heart attack, blindness, or kidney disease.

Dietary modifications are able to reduce the rate of diabetes by nearly 60 percent and following the nutrition plan is key. The other major factor would be to increase omega – 3 fats. Exercise is also unquestionably a big key here, and these children desperately need to stop watching TV and start exercising one hour per day.

Personal Comment:

I have always been suspicious of the soda pop industry. The promotion of a product that creates addiction in our society, with outrageous health implications, all for the sake of making millions of dollars. Today’s statistics are frightening. Children between the ages of 11 and 15, went from 11 % obesity in 1995 to 26% today. These children will be lucky if they live over 50 and most will spend the last 20 years of their life under 24 hour medical supervision. This is truly a heavy price to pay for a few billion dollars. Shame on us as a collective society for not taking better care of ourselves and our children. Shame on us as a collective group, spending more money on our cars than we do on our children’s health. Shame on us, all of us for not making the effort, and having the vision, to leave this world a better place than we received.

If our children are our future, what is our destiny?

Peter Knopfler.