"I think it's safe to say though, as a blanket statement, that everybody would do better if they ate no sugar or processed carbs at all; ate less UNprocessed carbs such as fruits and whole grains; and more vegetables, quality protein foods and natural fats."

I'll give you a loud low carb amen to that Doreen! This is precisely what I'm doing with my 2 daughters right now because they are too young to low carb (7 and 8). They still get sugar and processed carbs once in a while (at school, of course), but overall I've cut most of it out. Because they have my genes, I've always been a bit concerned that they may be at higher risk to develop type II diabetes like I did, so I'm doing my best to teach them to eat right now in hopes that we can prevent that in the future. I don't present it to them as a "diet" but rather tell them that they need to learn to feed their body healthy fuel. Kind of like putting junky gas in your car makes your car run bad, putting junky food in your body makes IT run bad. Hey....for their age, the analogy works well.