How Can You Prevent Your Child From Eating Too Much Sugar?

Though statistics show that family wellness isn’t as at high a risk to sugar consumption as it has been in the past, your children do eat more than the 15% upper limit of daily recommended intake of added sugars and fats. This includes all sugars used as ingredients in wellness-damaging processed and prepared foods such as breads, cakes, soft drinks, and sweets, as well as sugar you add into things at home such as in tea or on pancakes. This percentage does not allow for naturally-occurring sugars, such as those in fruit and 100% fruit juice.

According to the CDC, children are consuming an average of 322 calories per day from added sugars. Since a pound of body fat is roughly equal to 3500 calories, keeping all other factors equal, this daily consumption of excess sugar could put your child’s wellbeing at risk of gaining one pound in weight every two weeks. In the past 30 years, childhood obesity has tripled and, aside from the immediate health effects of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and glucose intolerance (prediabetes), your children are also at greater risk to bone and joint problems, sleep apnoea and heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and several types of cancer in adulthood.

However, cutting back on the excess added sugars in your child’s diet can be done with some simple measures. Firstly, avoid making sweets a treat for your child and find creative ways of making fruit a staple treat. Instead of ice cream, for example, why not make a parfait of vanilla yogurt layered with unsweetened applesauce and fruit pieces?

Also, less obvious processed foods, like granola bars, often offer much too much sugar in the form of syrups and other sweeteners so make sure you carefully read the label. As a guideline, if there’s a long list of ingredients that you can’t pronounce on the label, chances are you shouldn’t give it to your child. If you don’t know what it is, why put it in your child’s system? For similar reasons, you should also be wary of ‘lunch meats’ like turkey as some of these packaged meats can actually contain as much as 30 grams of sugar. Finally, make sure you give your children simple, fresh food as much as possible.