Children love sweets because at the very childhood other taste buds like salty, bitter, hot, and sour do not grow properly. For this reason, they only crave sweet food. For the same reason parents when want to reward their children for good behavior they give sweet treats and when grandparents want to lighten up the little faces of their grandchildren, they also prefer sweet foods.

Children like all those sweet foods like cakes, chocolates, ice cream, sweet drinks, candy, etc. Now it is summertime and children are running behind ice-cream trucks or searching the refrigerator for sweet drinks to combat the heat of the summer. But, all these foods and beverages have extra sugar and syrup added to them when they are processed or prepared. We know this added sugar by different names – corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, honey, raw sugar, molasses, and so on.

A representative of the American Academy of Pediatricians explains the health consequences of this added sugar problem and what can be done to reduce kid’s consumption of sugary drinks in a Montessori center in Pasadena, CA. According to them, consuming too much sugar may lead children to obesity for the rest of the life. There is a higher risk of insulin resistance prediabetes and Type2 diabetes. Too much sugar also affects the child’s mood, activity, and hyperactivity level. It affects kid’s behavior because their blood sugar level is like a roller coaster, up and down all day long. It affects the child’s dental condition. Eating too much sugary food all day long may create cavities in a child’s teeth because sugar aggravates the bacterial infection.

Childcare caregivers advise parents that neither they can, not they should stop their children’s sugar consumption completely. They also tell that according to the new guideline of American Heart Association Recommendations, sugar intake of children aged between 2-18 years can be kept in between 25 grams per day. Children younger than 2 years should take no sugar at all.

How to reduce the sugar intake of children:

A dietician of a Montessori school in Pasadena, CA says that serve plain water and milk when your child feels thirsty. Avoid soda, sports drinks, fizzy drinks, sweetened milk, bottled fruit juice, etc. because all these drinks contain a high amount of sugar, color, and preservatives – all bad for a child’s health. Do not keep all these things at your home so that your children get a chance to drink that. Encourage them to eat fresh fruits and vegetables to quench their thirst as they contain a high amount of fluid, and other necessary minerals and vitamins.

Make homemade juice using natural fruits like melon, mango, lemon, orange, kiwi, etc. all these fruits also contain sugar, but those are organic and emit energy when they get digested. Make different types of milkshakes with the help of milk and other fruits like strawberries, bananas, ripe papaya, etc. instead of sugar use dates to make the drink sweet. Milkshakes are good because milk contains the natural sugar lactose, along with calcium, protein, vitamin D, and other nutrients. Encourage them to drink 8-10 glasses of plain water daily. If they do not like the taste or smell of plain water add a few drops of lemon, orange or pineapple juice makes it tangy and flavored. Satisfy your child’s sweet tooth with whole fruit.