The average consumption of added sugars in Spanish children is “more than double” (55.7 grams/day) of what the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends, which is 25 grams per day.. This is revealed by a study carried out by the Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology of the University of Granada.
This research work, published in the scientific journal 'Nutrients', has had a sample of 1,775 adults with children between the ages of 7 and 12, and has aimed to estimate the intake of added sugars and analyze the nutritional density of foods that contribute these sugars to the diet of minors.
To carry out the research, the authors built an index to evaluate the nutritional value of the foods under study, reflecting the nutrient density present in each serving of each food (NDIS), and a daily nutrient intake index (DNII ), calculated based on the daily amount consumed of each food.
Thus, the study reveals that the average consumption of added sugars in Spanish children is “well above” the WHO recommendations, and that “more than half of the added sugar comes from foods with low nutritional density.”
According to the results, they consider it “very striking” that parents have an “acceptable or good” perception of certain foods with a low nutritional density and that provide a high content of added sugars per serving.
65% of the added sugars consumed daily by Spanish children come from foods and/or products with low nutritional density: white sugar, jams, sauces, sweets, cocoa powder, soft drinks, ice creams, cookies, fruit nectars, pastries and industrial pastries, chocolate bars, biscuits and homemade pastries, energy and/or sports drinks.
The other 35% comes, on the contrary, from foods and/or products with higher nutritional density. Medium density, dairy desserts, vegetable drinks and sweetened or flavored yogurts; and high-density, packaged shakes with at least 90 percent milk, breakfast cereals, and fortified infant formulas.
good and bad foods
Jesús Francisco Rodríguez Huertas, Professor of Physiology at the 'José Mataix Verdú' Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology at the University of Granada, and María Dolores Mesa-García, Professor of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the Biosanitary Research Institute of Granada, have detailed the results of the study and have explained which foods contain too much added sugar and, therefore, must be excluded from the daily diet.
For example, Rodríguez Huertas has pointed out, first of all, that milk and milk derivatives, such as natural yogurts, “continue to be an important food in children's diets”. “It is one of the foods that do not provide additives and is a food with a high nutrient density. If it weren't for milk, it would be difficult for the Spanish population to reach the recommended intake of some nutrients, including calcium and vitamin D,” he assured.
However, he has warned of the close relationship of milk with cocoa, which “has added sugar and that we should reduce yes or yes”. Mesa-García has urged, in this sense, to reduce cocoa in milk from an early age to accustom children to “less sweet flavors.”
The expert recalled that fruit and all those products that contain free sugars are also recommended, that is, those that are naturally present in food. Likewise, it has given its approval to the juices (“not the nectars, which do have added sugars”).
Mesa-García has asked to make a distinction between those products that contain added sugars but also other nutrients, such as breakfast cereals, shakes with at least 90% milk or vegetable drinks.. In his opinion, in the case of these products, consumption must be reduced, although it is not necessary to completely eliminate them from the daily diet.
In the most rejectable group, there would be those foods that “contribute more added sugar and that also do not have an adequate nutritional density”. “We have to be careful with them and include them in the diet only occasionally,” explained the expert.
In this classification are “industrial pastries, cookies, cocoa powder, chocolate bars or sweets”. “That is where we have to emphasize and we have to teach parents that these foods are not demonized, it is not that they have to be removed from the diet, but that they have to reduce their consumption and they have to be aware that they have than to be only occasionally”, he pointed out in this regard.
On the other hand, she has also been “surprised” with the results of homemade preparations such as cake, which also have a large amount of added sugars despite not being industrially manufactured.. “It seems that what we have at home and we make is healthier. But if we are adding sugar, no matter how much we are adding it, it is added sugar,” he detailed.
Experts have also censured the consumption of sugary drinks by children, who sometimes drink them “as if they were water.” “This is something that worries us a lot, because they have hardly any nutrients, they provide very few, and we have to contemplate them as hydrating drinks, but in very specific cases, because really, I insist, the nutritional contribution is very low,” the experts have warned.
The same applies, as they have detailed, with isotonic drinks: “Children do not have to drink this type of beverage because for the sports practice they usually perform, the time spent and the intensity, normal water, bottled water or tap water would be enough.”