5 Clever Hacks to Reduce Your Child’s Sugar Intake
One of our roles as parents is to take care of our homes, which includes our kid’s health. Sugar is essential in the development of our children. However, just like everything else, too much sugar in your little one’s diet will result in adverse health effects. Medical studies conducted have revealed that excessive sugar in a child’s diet pre-disposes them to conditions like diabetes, obesity, and heart diseases.
So, as concerned parents, what should we do? What actions can we take to reduce the daily amount of sugar that our children take? Well, you have come to the right place.
Here is homemakerguide.com’s list of 5 clever hacks to reduce your child’s sugar intake:
1) Read Labels when Shopping
Our journey to reduce the amount of sugar our young children are consuming begins at home. When buying food products at the local store, we need to pay careful attention to product labels.
We can personally control the amount of sugar we are feeding our children by selecting healthier food products with low sugar quantities. Doctors recommend that children should consume between 3 to 6 spoonfuls of sugar per day, depending on their ages. Regulations recommend that product labels on food provide a detailed account of its ingredients to protect consumers better.
There are more than 150 ways to describe sugar. Therefore, it is essential for you as a parent to familiarise yourself with some of the different sugar terms. If you notice sugar is listed about three times on a product, it’s best to avoid the product.
2) Change Your Breakfast Menu
A breakfast made up of food with low sugar quantities is healthy for your child
What is the probability that your child consumes their largest sugar intakes during breakfast? Think about that for a minute.
Breakfast options such as cereal, waffles with maple syrup, chocolate milk, juice, flavored yogurt, and cookies contain high sugar amounts. Now is the time for you to introduce other breakfast options with low quantities of sugar.
Alternative healthy options you can incorporate in your new breakfast menu include proteins such as eggs. You can also buy plain yogurt and flavor it yourself with honey or maple syrup. Introducing fruits into your breakfast is also another healthy option since they provide useful nutrients.
Rather than going for cereal such as Cheerios, which contains 9 grams of sugar in one serving, opt for plain oatmeal and add your preferred flavor.
3) Reduce the Amount of Sugary Drinks
Our children are incredibly fond of sugary drinks from soda to juice. Some sodas pack as much as 25 grams of sugar. Remember that natural fruit juices are healthy. In that case, since you can not eliminate them from your child’s diet, some of us might be tempted to dilute the juice with water.
In your quest to reduce sugar, do not go into overkill mode. How about you try this? Give your child one glass of juice in the morning and during the day let them drink water. Even allow them to pick their water bottle.
As for soda, it is best to eliminate soda from your kid’s diet and save it for those special occasions.
4) Regulate the Number of Treats your Child Receives
Rather than hand out candy on Halloween, hand out toys to kids
Children are little bundles of joy. Wouldn’t you agree? It is for this reason that it should be no surprise that children are highly likely to receive sweet treats from neighbors, teachers, family friends, and occasional grandparents.
Hence, it is essential to know that it would be impossible to adequately regulate the number of sweet treats they receive from others. As parents, the best we can do is to encourage others to stop gifting our children with sweet treats and instead opt for gifts like simple toys. After all, we do not want to affect the relationship between these people and our kids negatively. Right? (Alternatively, handout reusable and portable straws, or other planet-friendly gifts!)
5) Don’t Go into Overkill Mode with Sugar
We are saying that you should not make an enemy out of sugar. It is best to know the limits of how far you can go to reduce sugar consumption. As much as you are worrying on the amounts of sugar to cut, keep a close eye not to overdo it. Proper monitoring of sugar consumption ensures you and your family maintain a healthy relationship with food.
It also discourages children from developing a habit of obsessing over sweets and treats. Such behaviour leads our children to hide this sugary foodstuff from us, and they eat them behind our backs. Such a response would completely undermine all the hard work you had placed in regulating your child's sugar intake.
Conclusion
The above clever hacks on ways to reduce your child’s sugar are just some of the many ideas of achieving your goal. If you have got any more ideas, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.
Author Bio:
Lavera Stewart is a stay at home mom and wife to a loving husband. She is into fashion design and describes herself as a health freak. She loves spending her free time trying out different recipes to cook for her family and reading the occasional self-improvement book with a glass of red wine.