Sweet tooth sneaks up on sugar-free boy
● When Stefanie Balkind’s son Isaac was a baby, he ate plates filled with healthy staples like oats, plain yoghurt and avocado.
“I would be so careful with even the amount of banana I would put in the oats in case it was too sweet,” Balkind said.
Now five, Isaac pesters his mother for chocolate or biscuits after dinner. Balkind refers to his cravings as an addiction.
Balkind, of Johannesburg, feeds Isaac and his brother, 11-month-old Oliver, minimal processed foods, but the difficulties she faces are highlighted in an article published in this month’s South African Medical Journal.
A journal report said 78% of baby food products have high sugar content, deriving about 20% of calories from sugar.
“There should be no more than six teaspoons (25g) of sugar a day for children,” said Karen Hofman, the article’s senior author and a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Public Health.
The article said South African children consumed twice that amount, putting them at risk of tooth decay, heart disease, diabetes and obesity. About 13% of children in SA are overweight, twice the global average.
Balkind has no idea when Isaac acquired a sweet tooth but assumes it stemmed from treats given to him outside of home because she “would never dream of giving [her sons] juice or food with processed sugar”.
Low-carb advocate Tim Noakes recommends that parents never expose their children to any kind of sugar, which he calls the “most addictive drug on the planet”.
“But it’s incredibly difficult,” he said. “Children [who don’t desire sugar] go to school and other kids ask, ‘why are you so weird?’ ”
Hofman’s study highlights cereals and puréed desserts as some of the worst offenders and advises parents to avoid “natural” fruit juices. “Natural sugar in liquid form lacks the dietary qualities found in fruit,” she said. “It’s as toxic as a sugary carbonated drink. Juices often say ‘no added sugar’ but there are natural sugars that are not good.”
Parents could give children plain toasted oats instead of cereal; water or milk instead of sugary drinks; and soft fruits, like bananas or peaches, instead of juice.
Long-term solutions included better labelling, with a possible model emanating from Chile, where labels warn if a product exceeds the recommended intake of sugar.
Balkind said: “By looking at the nutritional table, you would never know what’s good or bad, or high or low. Products need to make it easier to understand, and not have us research what’s in everything.”
Even if labelling improves, sugar on store shelves seems to be an unstoppable force.
“I hope Oliver doesn’t go through it, but I don’t even know what I can do to stop it,” Balkind said, adding that she was just as conscious of his diet as she was of Isaac’s.
“Sweets are … so available, they become a part of your life so easily, even as a parent who cares so much about it.”
Noakes said: “It’s essentially impossible to get people off of sugar unless they stop eating processed foods.”