How Much Sugar Can Kids Have
Whether it be Halloween almost upon us or the stockings you may soon need to fill, now is a common time of year for parents to be wondering, “How much sugar can my child have in a day?”
This confusion is understandably so. Sugar is one of the most controversial and complicated aspects of nutrition these days and much in part because many families find themselves stuck between what is ideal and what’s real. We know we likely need to limit our sugar intake and cut back on how much of the sweet stuff we are offering our children. But what is our benchmark?
As I will share more on in the coming weeks when we address how to handle Halloween candy with kids and establishing healthy food parenting practices around sugar, I also want to offer some objective advice on how much sugar your child can have in a day through this post.
I realize that leading into both Halloween and the long holiday season that follows (for most of us in the States), the maximum amount of sugar we are to consume in a day is going to seem completely unreasonable, especially with our children. That’s okay. As stated, we will address how to handle such sugar rushes in the coming weeks. For now, we are addressing the guidelines around sugar from some of the leading organizations. This will give a frame of reference to return to with actionable strategies to do so when we are ready to find a new rhythm relating to sugar!
How Much Sugar Can My Child Have in a Day?
In this post, we want to both assess how much sugar kids can have while also adapting whatever our family’s current intake more towards the recommended amount. This post will help families see how!
Calculating Your Child’s Recommended Sugar Intake
There are several varying opinions on how much sugar our kids (or anyone for that matter) can have in a day. So without getting into a subjective debate on this sticky subject, let’s look at some of the overarching guidelines coming from major health-related organizations:
The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends we consume less than 10 percent of calories per day from added sugars based on one’s total caloric intake.
The World Health Organization recommends all children and adults reduce their intake of added sugars to less than 10 percent of total calories. It further recommends that a further reduction to below 5 percent of total calories may be beneficial.
The American Heart Association recommends 100 calories from added sugar per day for anyone. This is the equivalent to 25 grams or 6 teaspoons of added sugar regardless of your age, caloric intake, or activity level.
The amounts listed are not a sugar requirement (meaning a minimum amount) that we must reach in a day the way other vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients (like carbohydrates, proteins, and fats) are for our children and adult bodies to optimally function. Instead, these recommendations offer targets to aim for in our attempts to minimize intake of added sugar and reduce the amount of our overall diet that sugar-containing foods occupy - especially when considering the valuable real estate of small children’s stomachs.
How much sugar is this?
Since majority of my audience is families with young kids, we will use the example of a young preschooler here to calculate how much sugar these references values actually equal in real life.
On average, toddlers 2-3 years old need 1,000-1,400 calories a day. While I rarely ever consider calorie-counting appropriate in this age group (unless medically indicated), I know a lot of parents appreciate having some quantitative gauge for what is “enough” at this age. More specifically to sugar, parents also often benefit from being able to understand what 10% of total calories looks like, especially in small children who may eat so little and yet easily fill up on foods with added sugar.
If you want to know how portion sizes and other food groups play into an overall healthy diet, I share a suggested “portion size” guide with 30 suggested food choices for each food group in my PDF and printed Combination Cards, lunch edition. You can learn more about those resources here.
Speaking strictly for sugar here, the following calculation may be helpful to review based on a toddler’s energy needs and the target estimates for what 10% (per the Dietary Guidelines or World Health Organization) or 100 total calories looks like (based on the American Heart Associations’s recommendations).
Based on 1,000 calories per day:
1,000 total calories/day x 10% of total calories = 100 calories per day from added sugar
Using the rule of four:
100 calories per day from added sugar / 4 calories per gram sugar = 25 grams of added sugar
25 grams of sugar / 4 g sugar per teaspoon = ~6 teaspoons of added sugar per day
This means for the typical 2-3 year old, they should consume no more than 6 teaspoons, or 25 grams, of added sugar per day.
First of all, remember this recommendation is referring to ADDED sugar. While sugar is sugar is sugar (see a great infographic for names of added sugar here), we want to be evaluating foods where there is excessive ADDED sugar in our kids diets (being those that are not naturally occurring in foods from sources like fruits, vegetables, and dairy). For most kids, naturally occurring sources of sugar are not of concern compared to the amount of added sugar that might be sneaking into their diet and contributing to their overall intake of ADDED sugar.
Monitoring Your Child’s Recommended Sugar Intake
How do you know how much, “no more than 6 teaspoons, or 25 grams, of added sugar per day” is?
That’s a great question.
Nutrition Labels
The first and most obvious answer should be to look at the nutrition label. However up until now, identifying added sugar in a product wasn’t always obvious to the average eye. That’s because we have had to look at the nutrition facts where it says “sugar” and estimate how much of that total sugar comes from added sugar. Thankfully, change is on the way to make identifying added sugar more obvious and explicit! You can read more about the current versus new nutrition facts label here.
Many food manufacturers have already begun to adopt the “new” nutrition facts label (since the initial compliance date was set for 2018). While we are still awaiting all food products to comply with the new nutrition facts label, it can be helpful for parents to understand how to compare two products based on the nutrition facts label, even if/when the new labels are universally adopted.
As shown in the following examples of yogurt, you can compare the sugar content on the nutrition facts labels. This shows you that there is a difference in the TOTAL sugar content. Where does that come from?
In the the “new” nutrition facts label, you will be able to see that the 18 gram differential between the plain and vanilla yogurt indeed comes from added sugar. This will be much easier to identify soon due to improvements in our nutrition facts labels. For now, however, if you have a product like this where the added sugar isn’t explicitly shown, you next can go to the ingredients list to see: if/where added sugar is coming from.
Unsweetened Yogurt
Sweetened Yogurt
Ingredients Lists
Ingredients lists are another way to inadvertently assess if there has been sugar added to a particular food. By looking at the ingredients list for items like these, you can identify if sugar has been added. Until the “new” nutrition facts labels are in full effect, this helps you evaluate if the amount of sugar listed on the nutrition facts label as “total sugar” may reflect the food item itself, or also added sugars. A perfect example of this is plain versus vanilla-flavored yogurt.
With the first image above, we see under the ingredients list that no added sugars are listed. This means that of the 12 g of sugars listed on the nutrition facts, all are naturally occurring sugars from yogurt. These are NOT considered added sugars nor included in that above mentioned “10% of total calories, 6 teaspoons, or 25 grams, of added sugar per day.”
With the other image above, we see how vanilla yogurt has in fact been sweetened with the added sugar listed on the ingredient list: organic sugar. This is further reflected on the nutrition facts label, having 30 g of sugar (compared to the 12 g naturally occurring in plain yogurt). Depending on where the added sugar falls on the ingredient list, we can also better understand how much of the product is added sugar. For example, a yogurt that’s first ingredient is added sugar has more sugar by weight than any other ingredient. A yogurt that’s last ingredient is added sugar, conversely, has the least amount of added sugar of any ingredient listed. The first would be thus the most sweet and the latter the least sweet.
Turning Knowledge into Know How
Through only one simple example such as that shared above, we can quickly see how in 1 cup of vanilla yogurt there is an additional 18 g of added sugar! Yikes! When we compare that to the “10% of total calories, 6 teaspoons, or 25 grams, of added sugar per day,” we can quickly see that one cup of flavored yogurt alone meets almost the entire day’s allotment of added sugar. Add any bit of sweetened granola to that and we have already exceeded our overall sugar intake for the day in our first meal of the day.
This information isn’t intended to scare you though. It is intended to empower you! As they say, knowledge IS power and now you have the know how to turn over a package and monitor if/whether and how much added sugar is in any given food (with a label) in your home or at the store. You don’t have to cut out sweetened yogurt cold turkey nor become neurotic about monitoring sugar in the foods your family buys. You are, however, encouraged to become mindful of where added sugar is in your daily diets so that you can be more mindful about where it matters for your family, and where it doesn’t. I will share more on how to do this in upcoming posts, but let the above example be one that opens your eyes a bit. Since yogurt is a common preferred food in many families with small kids, let it be an impetus for where you might consider making initial changes to reducing added sugar in your family’s diet.
When you start to identify the foods in your fridge, pantry, or freezer with added sugars, consider which ones you could begin to make different purchasing decisions on. It is rarely realistic or recommended to switch every preferred food in your home overnight, particularly if you have apprehensive eaters with only a few preferred foods. Instead, when you are at the store next, pick one or two items each trip where you don’t operate on autopilot to buy the items you always get. Instead, intentionally look beyond the marketing claims on the front of packages that are intended to sell to you (not educate you!). Such claims often mislead consumers into believing an item is low in sugar or only “naturally sweetened” (which still can be ADDED sugar in the forms of honey, maple syrup, etc.). You know how to monitor for added sugar beyond these marketing claims and can begin to identify added sugars in items like granola bars, cookies, crackers, breads, breakfast cereals, packaged oatmeal, granola, jams and spreads, and any other foods with a label. By flipping over the package and evaluating the nutrition facts label and ingredients list, you can compare and contrast the amount of added sugar that comes from any given food to begin to piece together what contributing sources are in your child’s and family’s diet in order to make small, gradual changes to reduce how much added sugar you eat.
Modifying Your Child’s Recommended Sugar Intake
Sugar is one of the easiest ingredients in foods for us as adults to vilify or inadvertently glorify in the way we treat it. Whether we use language that insinuates a value associated with it (like it being "bad”) or use it as a bribe or reward for our child eating a “good” food (again unnecessarily assigning value to foods), we often attempt to shape our children’s appetite and intake for added sugar through unhealthy, non-productive measures.
Instead, the best way for us to modify their intake of added sugar (which for most kids means minimize!), is to recreate how and when it is offered.
Rather than using language or imparting our own struggles with self-control around sweets with our kids, we can create family-wide approaches to redistribute our overall diet to account for some sugar-sweetened foods without them becoming the majority of our diet. This automatically sets the stage for which foods we eat most often and which ones, like those with added sugars, we eat less of.
Many dietitians refer to this as a 80/20 or 90/10 food philosophy, meaning that 80-90% of our diets are made up of nutrient-dense foods from food groups like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats. The remaining 10-20% of the diet leaves room for those foods that offer little to no nutritive value such as sweet foods like candy and ice cream or salty, high fat foods like chips and french fries.
Without a single label, this shows your child how these foods fit. They aren’t the basis of what our bodies need and eat each day but they can healthfully be part of what a family chooses to eat and enjoy. This percentage may ebb and flow of course, as during weeks like that of Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas, but we can always aim to return to this as our goal.
If your family’s diet does not currently reflect this ratio of nourishing versus less nourishing foods, you can begin to make small, simple swaps to begin promoting more foods with nutritive value in place of those that are not. To review, here are a few ways you can begin to work towards less added sugar in your family’s diet:
Continue to soak up information that can shape your eating habits. If this article sparked an interest for you about added sugars, check out the Sugar Swap Guidebook shared here by my friends and peers, Mary Ellen and Dana. Mary Ellen also has a great resource on artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols, and natural sweeteners here.
Adjust what you buy as the nutritional gatekeeper of your home. Using the above label reading suggestions, choose one to two foods per week that you will begin to make an intentional effort to shop for lower-sugar alternatives in.
Opt for homemade items, when able, to control the amount of added sugar in everyday snack or meal options. This is a great resource from my friends and peers, Kacie and Heather, titled, “No Sugar, Still Sweet” with delicious, kid-friendly recipe ideas.
I will speak specifically to Halloween candy and our habits around offering sweets in the coming weeks, but here are a few other ideas you could consider implementing: