Actually, you were never really my good friend

After work today, I saw a pair of siblings in a convenience store, each taking a bottle from the refrigerated case -- one "banana milk" and one "apple flavored milk." They did it with such practiced ease, without even glancing at the labels, like kids who were used to drinking them. I couldn't help but ask if they drank these beverages often. The younger brother ran off to look at toys, completely ignoring me. The older sister, about sixth grade, nodded at me and said the drinks were really tasty. Then she pulled her brother away to pay, saying their mother's car was parked at the door and they had to hurry out.

I picked up the "banana milk" she had bought and read the ingredients on the label:

The homemade banana milk on the left has only two ingredients, while the convenience store banana milk on the right contains nearly twenty ingredients, and more than half of them are things we don't understand at all. Whether or not their purposes are beneficial to the body, why don't parents make drinks like this for their children when it only takes forty seconds to prepare? They could even teach the children to help, letting them take part in simple cooking.

And these so-called good friends -- can they really become children's good friends? Shouldn't we pay at least a little attention to the friends our children spend time with? As for the ingredients in these drinks, if we don't even read them, we can't speak of understanding them, let alone knowing them -- so how can we let them become our children's good friends?

Of course, modern parents are all very busy, and it's not such a terrible thing for children to occasionally buy drinks outside. Still, when it comes to food safety, we should also think about what we can do ourselves to put a little more effort into our family's health.

Blending a glass of papaya milk or banana milk takes only forty seconds; peeling an apple and cutting a watermelon takes less than three minutes. Who are children's real good friends? Real good friends are the food and drinks parents make at home.

Forty seconds -- honestly, there's no excuse.