Who, really, has a clue how much sugar their children consume? Chocolate bars, bags of sweets, even slices of cake, are one thing; but a total amount, in grams or teaspoons? I haven’t a clue, I’m afraid, not being obsessive about reading nutritional labels or a whizz at calculating the sweetness of a home-made meal in percentage terms.

Which meant I took a recent warning from Public Health England that children in the UK are exceeding the recommended sugar intake of an 18-year-old by the time they reach the age of 10 with a pinch of the white stuff, albeit the salty kind. I usually cook from scratch; I almost never succumb to whingeing for supermarket treats; and – shudder – I don’t dish out the fizzy drinks except on very rare occasions.

I thought it would show how little sugar he ate

Keeping a sugar diary for my seven-year-old son would be a doddle, I assumed. If anything, he’d look too angelic and I’d have to slip him some Haribo.

How wrong I was. It takes Lucy Upton, a paediatric specialist dietician who has seen what he’s spent the week eating, mere seconds to burst my bubble. “At first glance, you’d say that looks like a balanced diet. But it’s how the sugar accumulates,” she says.

Squirts of ketchup up the sugar in his diet (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

There isn’t a single day when he eats less than the recommended maximum amount, which for seven- to 10-year-olds is 24 grams, or six teaspoons.

Danger zones range from the obvious post-Christmas fallout mince pie and slice of cake, to spurts of tomato sauce or the cans of baked beans I crack open without thinking I’m serving up processed food. Then there are his school lunches, a blank zone where anything goes in my deluded imagination.

Agave syrup is, I found out, still sugar

I know without being told which day was worst: Saturday, thanks to that breakfast of waffles and syrup, which apparently clocked in at nearly 30 grams. “I smiled when I saw it was agave syrup. Perhaps because of the wellness trend, lots of people assume it’s better than plain old sugar, but it’s all just sugar,” warns Upton, whose calculations excluded naturally occurring sugars in fresh and dried fruit or dairy products. “We’d never tell people to limit the amount of fresh fruit or vegetables they serve children,” she adds.

Seven days of sugar

Monday
Breakfast: bacon sandwich (4g)
Lunch: pizza (2g) with potato wedges and sweetcorn. Jam and coconut sponge (22g)
Dinner: Itsu sushi (10g). Portion of strawberry and banana crumble (8g)
Snacks: pear, one shortbread biscuit (4g)
TOTAL: 50g

Tuesday
Breakfast: baked beans (5g), scrambled egg, 1 rasher bacon, tomato, one piece of toast and peanut butter (2g).
Lunch: rice, peas, sweetcorn, tomato sauce and jelly. (15g)
Snacks: mince pie (19g), apple, orange.
Dinner: spelt and vegetable broth. Two water biscuits with peanut butter.
Total: 41g

Wednesday
Breakfast: cereal: Shreddies, Cheerios and Weetabix. (5g)
Lunch: spinach and chickpea dal curry with rice. Chocolate cake. (8g)
Dinner: tofu and broccoli rice stir fry.
Snacks: apple, small piece of fruit cake (16g, not counting the naturally occurring sugars from dried fruit).
TOTAL: 29g

Thursday
Breakfast: cereal: Shreddies, Cheerios and Weetabix (5g). One piece of toast with peanut butter. (2g)
Lunch: vegetable sausage (1g), roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding. Fresh fruit salad.
Dinner: Quorn spaghetti bolognese. Half a mince pie (9.5g)
Snacks: one-and-a-quarter hot cross buns. (20g), apple.
TOTAL: 27.5g

Friday
Breakfast: cereal: Shreddies, Cheerios and Weetabix. (5g)
Lunch: fish fingers, chips, beans (5g). Banana flapjack (12g)
Dinner: homemade tomato soup, bread (2g). Macaroni cheese with tomato ketchup (3.5g)
Snacks: small packet of Haribo sweets (8g)
TOTAL: 35.5g

Saturday
Breakfast: half a piece of bread (1g), two waffles (15g) and four teaspoons of agave syrup (12g)
Lunch: half a sausage roll. Two pieces of cheese on toast (4g)
Dinner: chickpea and tomato curry with rice.
Snacks: Hot chocolate (17g if made with water). Portion of raisins (8g) and nuts.
TOTAL: 57g

Sunday
Breakfast: two pieces of toast with jam and peanut butter (12g)
Lunch: vegetable stir fry Dinner: tacos and black beans with cheese and tomatoes. Portion of plum crumble and cream (18g)
TOTAL: 30g

The recommended daily maximum of sugar is 24 grams

Everyone needs to be involved

This isn’t to conclude I’ve completely failed in my maternal duties, however. Upton doesn’t want to “guilt trip” me into a radical dietary overhaul. Everyone, from food manufacturers to schools, should be helping parents get a grip on what their children are eating, Upton thinks.

Fizzy drinks are an extremely rare treat (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

One person doing just that is Dominic Green, a food industry consultant who advises schools on the Government’s school food standards. He checks those lunch menus for added sugar and stipulates that schools should serve fruit as a dessert at least twice a week. That said, he warns that sugar remains a “grey area” because those school food standards “don’t restrict sugar in a recipe”.

The news that 10-year-olds are consuming an average of 52.2 grams of sugar a day has prompted one government department to offer dedicated teaching resources for the core subjects to try to promote healthier eating habits among schoolchildren. English lessons, for example, will include healthy recipes from around the world, while maths classes will use problems suggesting healthier swaps for sugar.

One lunch box contained the equivalent of 48 teaspoons of sugar

Teachers are alert to the scale of the challenge. One reception teacher told me she once opened a kid’s packed lunch to find it contained the equivalent of 48 teaspoons – that’s 192 grams – of sugar. “And he was already challenged weight and attention-wise,” she added.

One primary school headteacher, who asked not to be named, said they already used a “cross-curricular approach” to teach about diet and healthy lifestyle choices, adding: “As educators, it is our role to inform children about healthy eating. But we find it tricky to find out the sugar content of many foods, such as bread.”

Finding out exactly how much sugar is in things like bread an be very hard (JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images)

I’m slightly scared to give my seven-year-old the dietician’s verdict on his week, as – believe it or not – he actually already tries not to eat too much sweet stuff and I don’t want him to turn into a teenage anorexic.

Make one change at a time

So what can I do? Upton says I should make “one change at a time”.

She doesn’t believe in “good and bad foods” but urges I adopt the “80:20” rule, which would limit treats to one-fifth of the week. I resolve to make baked beans from scratch (sorry, kids) and keep an eye on those school desserts. I doubt I’ll ditch the weekend waffles but I might try whizzing up some frozen fruit to substitute for the syrup. Sometimes, at least.

This article was first published on iNews, see the original here: https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/food-and-drink/sugar-diary-children-recommendation-254752