Children unwittingly gorge on five doughnuts a day in ‘hidden sugars’

CHILDREN are eating the equivalent of five doughnuts a day as a result of “hidden sugars”, a coalition of obesity experts has warned.

Research from the Obesity Health Alliance shows the average child is eating as much sugar as if they were hav- ing 20 chocolate biscuits or five slices of cake a day. The group of 39 charities, royal colleges and medical experts last night called for urgent changes to “reformulate” foods, to reduce the sugar in convenience foods and soft drinks.

Last year the government childhood obesity strategy pledged to reduce sugar content in foods by 20 per cent by 2020. It comes alongside a sugar tax on manufactured drinks from April 2018. Government advice says sugar should account for no more than 5 per cent of daily calories. But the research shows the average 11 to 18-year-old consumes 73.2g of sugar a day, more than twice the recommended 30g daily.

The alliance said children were filling up on high levels of hidden sugars from soup and breakfast cereals, without their parents realising how unhealthy such foods were. Dr Modi Mwatsama, from the alliance, said: “Most parents would never hand 20 chocolate biscuits a day to their children, but with so much hidden sugar in our food and drink it can often be hard to know just how much children are consuming. That is why we are calling on the food and drink industry to comply with the Government’s reformulation programme.”

The alliance includes the Royal College of Physicians, Cancer Research UK, the National Obesity Forum and Diabetes UK. It said hidden sugars were aiding record levels of child obesity, with one in three obese or overweight by the time they left primary school.

Foods such as tomato soup, baked beans, ready meals and breakfast cereals contained high levels of sugar, figures calculated from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey showed. One can of Sainsbury’s cream of tomato soup contains almost 24g of sugar.