How Much Sugar Is Your Toddler Eating?

bellamysorganic - How Much Sugar Is Your Toddler Eating

The chances are you know that added sugars in the diet are not great for infants and small children – or adults either for that matter! Yet, unless you are extremely fussy with the types and brands of food you are buying and serving to your family, some extra sugars are bound to slip in.

In fact, we know that Aussie kids aged two to five years are getting up to 30 per cent of their daily calories from extra food. These extras are the cakes, muffins, biscuits, snack foods and treats that they should be eating occasionally only – and are all foods packed with added sugars. So, if you are unsure of exactly how much sugar your little one is consuming, it might be time to pay closer attention.

Types of sugar in food

There is a big difference between naturally occurring sugars found in dairy (lactose) and fruit (fructose) and added sugars. Added sugars can come via a range of ingredients including glucose syrup, rice malt syrup, honey, gels and sugar itself. The issue with added sugars is that they are associated with more processed foods in general and are often adding sweet foods to the diet. The sweeter the foods we consume, the more we are likely to want. As such when young children consume overly sweet foods, it programs their palates to seek more sweet food – shifting their dietary preferences away from the nutrient rich vegetables, proteins and dairy which they should be eating.

Amounts of sugar in food

As a rule of thumb, small children should consume no more than 20g of added sugars in their diet each day. This leaves very little room for processed foods in the diet whatsoever. Foods that commonly add sugars into the diets of small children include biscuits, even plain sweet ones, sauces such as tomato sauce, fruit drinks including juice and cordial, snack bars and treats. Often daily treats of baby muffins, banana bread, chocolates, lollies and cakes pack in 20 to 30g of sugar per serve. It is for this reason that they should be included in the diets of small children at most once each week.

Tips for checking sugar intake

When it comes to checking how much sugar is in your child’s diet, choosing packaged foods which do not list sugar on the nutritional label or ingredients list is a step in the right direction. Another tip is to look for products which contain less than 10g of sugars per 100g, or less than 5g per serve. And of course the less sugar the food contains, the better.

If you are particularly interested in keeping the sugar in your child’s diet low, it might be worth calculating how much they are consuming via a diet program such as ‘My Fitness Pal’. This way, you can check for yourself, as in the below example, how much sugar your child is consuming. Remember, milk and fruit does contain some sugars and these sugars can be included in a healthy diet – however dairy foods should not be flavoured and fruit should be consumer in its natural form to keep the intake of sugars as low as possible.

Typical Kids Diet	Sugars (g)	Low Sugar Diet	Sugars (g)
Weet-Bix and Sugar	10g	Egg on toast or Organic Oats	0g
Muesli bar	5g	Corn cakes with cheese	0g
Fruit juice	20g	Water	0g
Sandwich	0g	Sandwich	0g
Fruit	10g	Fruit or Fruit Snacks	10g
Muffin or banana bread	25g	Sushi roll	5g
Meat and tomato sauce	5g	Meat and low sugar sauce or Broccoli Beef and Brown Rice Baby Food	<2g
Potato	0g	Potato	0g
Peas	0g	Peas	0g
Ice cream	20g	Greek yogurt and berries	10g
TOTALS	95g		27g*