During her interview with Diane Sawyer, Amanda Knox, the American college student studying abroad who served four years in an Italian prison for murdering her roommate, said that "everything she ever posted online, every boyfriend in her life, came back to haunt her." The stories she shared with "friends" on social media about her feeling "proud" about her one-night stands and marijuana "vice" further reinforced the images that the Italian press were creating, branding her a "seductress" and "a sexual thrill-seeker." She said that she wants "to be reconsidered as a person."

How can my friends expect their kids to have healthy eating habits when they don't! Believe me, I'm not saying that it's easy to provide a healthy eating environment at home when you have picky eaters, you're working full time or if you yourself have always eaten traditional Latin dishes that were once considered healthy and you've only recently realized that they're actually rich in everything you should be having little of: fat, sugar, and carbs! There are three lessons I've learned on instilling healthy eating habits on our kids that I'd like to share with mamás who are just getting started. 

I am so proud of my daughter Carolina! She is going to college to a top school with a full tuition Hispanic scholarship.  The journey hasn't been easy for either of us, but I am grateful that she is among the young Latinas who are beating the odds.

Her journey and ultimate success got me thinking once again about the reasons why so many of our young Latinas are underrepresented in the more challenging or AP classes, why so many continue to drop out of high school, why do so many don't even consider going  to college. Is it that they are being discouraged by peers, the system and their own parents before they even give it a try or is it all about economics?