Sugar intake in kids: What can we learn from research?
Written by Rachel de Barros Oliveira, Ph.D. Candidate McGill University
Many kids have tons of candy in their homes right now since Halloween was last week. Parents might question how much to give them and at what age they should start/ Should we give sugar to our kids or not and why this is so important?
But before I can dive into sugar for children, I want to explain a little bit more about the senses and their implications.
As we know, we all have 5 fundamental senses of taste:
Sweet (to provide us energy)
Bitter (survivor mode – prevents ingestion of toxic things)
Umami (to provides us proteins – important nutrient)
Salt (provide us electrolyte balance – essential nutrient)
Sour (survivor mode – preventing the ingestion of spoiled food).
Sugar is an important sense of taste because it makes us recognize food which can give us more energy.
Evolutionarily speaking, this is so important that it has its own brain pathway from the gut to the brain, to recognize and motivate its consumption. In other words, when we eat something sweet, our brain receives a signal that says: “This is sweet and can give us more energy, we need to eat more!”
Despite being a fundamental sense of taste, high sugar consumption has been associated with obesity and a decrease in dental health. In 2021, Kanoski and collaborators found that early-life sugar consumption can impact neurocognition by altering the gut and the brain pathway. In his work, he found that consuming more sweets is related to a change in the gut microbiota and that is related to poor memory performance in rats.
So, if it is something that we are wired to like, why is sugar so bad?
In the wild, sugar is critical to survival, but in our society, we changed how we use sugar. Instead of using it to survive, we often use it as a reward or a pleasure, more than for its nutritional value.
And how this impacts you and your children?
There has always been a debate about when to introduce sugar to infants and if this was really necessary or not. The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025 (DGA) says that sugar should be introduced only after 2 years old. It also states that we should be mindful of the sugar quantities that sometimes we forget (like the ones inside bread and cakes).
But is 2 years old a good age to introduce sweets? Well, Reed, Bobowski, and Mennella in 2016 argue about that. They explain that the ability to taste something sweet is there since we are babies and if allowed, babies will always prefer sweet solutions over pure water.
It is also in early life that kids are developing food preferences and that expose them to a highly sweet diet can impact their preferences in the future. The problem with a high intake of sugar is not only obesity, but the higher risk to develop cardiovascular disease, hypertension, obesity-related cancers, and dental caries.
What can we do about that? As parents, we can try to minimize our children's exposure to sugar, especially industrialized and sugar-added foods. The DGA states that sugar should be added only after 2 years old, but that does not mean that it should be added. The longer we wait to introduce sugar-added foods, the better will be for their own taste development.
Let’s not forget that is not like they can’t eat sugar at all, but it should be a balance with overall less industrialized and sugar-added foods and more real food as fruits.
What about you? Have you ever tried to substitute a cup of sugar-added orange juice for one real fruit? How do you and your family cope with sugar in general?
What if my child eats too much sugar?
If your child is consuming sugar in an unhealthy way - speak with your pediatrician about this - there are some evidence-based ways you can help your child learn how to listen to their physical hunger and fullness signals.
An interesting method is Intuitive Eating (google scholar results here). This is a non-restrictive, non-judgemental way of eating that is based on listening to how your body feels, consuming what you feel like consuming and not feeling guilty.
This may sound counterintuitive but humans are actually born with a natural ability to eat until they are full, and only eat when they are hungry. External eating cues (school lunch time, being taught to clear your plate or you can’t leave the table) and restricted access to pleasurable food (one piece of candy a week, no dessert until you finish your dinner) can actually lead to overconsumption and dampening of hunger/fullness signals. Believing that you won’t get this kind of food again for a while, can lead to stuffing your face (think having pumpkin pie once a year and stuffing your face because you know you won’t have it for another 365 days) - the same thing can happen on a smaller scale to your child when desserts are restricted.
Intuitive Eating creators Evelyne Tribole and Elyse Resch include a chapter in their book on Raising Intuitive Eaters - that is all based on science & research studies. They suggest cooking healthy foods, with different side dishes and dessert and placing them on the table at the same time. YES AT THE SAME TIME. Let you child fill their plate and eat until they are full. At the beginning of your child’s return to intuitive eating it may seem that they go towards the sugary foods, remember this goes back to feeling it’s limited. Once your child starts trusting that they CAN really eat what they want, their choices are more balanced, eating from main dishes, side dishes and dessert however they please. Focusing on whether your child is hungry or full vs eating “healthy” and reducing intake can make a big difference.
To learn more from the specialists - check out their website and books!