Fri, Jan-10-14, 06:07
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Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: UK
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Quote:
From The Mail
London, UK
10 January, 2014
Mother switched her boys to a 'healthier' diet - and found they ate even MORE sugar than before
- World Health Organisation’s recommended daily allowance (RDA) is 90g of sugar per day
- Amanda Cable managed to push her sons' sugar content up to 152 grams each day
Rushing around the room in a wide-eyed frenzy, knocking over the nest of tables on which my canapes had been neatly arranged and upon which my dismayed guests had rested their flutes of champagne, my son Charlie, then 11, was making New Year’s Eve 2012 a night to remember for all the wrong reasons.
Worse, it was all my fault. Earlier in the evening, I had served a sweet-and-sour chicken Chinese takeaway — a family favourite — to Charlie, his twin brother, Archie, and their sister, Ruby.
My husband, Ray, and I had had the same, and we’d all tucked into chocolate pudding afterwards.
Every mother will recognise this scenario.
An indulgent meal as a treat, followed by an over-excited child who, quite literally, bounces off the walls.
But Charlie’s reaction to sugar was more than just excitement. It was toxic.
And, from watching my son carefully, I could see that his worst episodes of bad behaviour and hyperactivity took place after he’d had a sugar binge.
So, that very night, I decided to reform my family’s eating habits. Out with the sugary cereals and sweet treats, and in with wholegrains and cereal bars.
I even ditched cow’s milk for the soya alternative.
Such a change in diet was the only thing I could think of that might put Charlie on a more even keel — and improve my entire family’s health in the process.
After all, if an occasional sugar splurge could have such a dramatic impact on him, what was it doing to the rest of us?
So imagine my horror on reading yesterday’s findings that many of the ‘healthy’ alternatives I’d started to buy were actually doing my family more damage than before.
Indeed, doctors and academics are so horrified by the hidden sugar epidemic they’ve dubbed sugar ‘the new tobacco’.
The World Health Organisation’s recommended daily allowance (RDA) is 90g of sugar per day — 22.5 teaspoons.
Charlie’s typical menu before gave him an overall daily total of 121.3 grams of sugar — a whopping 30-odd teaspoons.
But I now realise the so-called healthy diet is even worse. Thanks to sugars hidden in them, I have managed to push his sugar content up to 152 grams each day — the same as 38 teaspoons.
Charlie’s behaviour had been deteriorating since just after he turned ten.
As a toddler, it was far easier to control his diet, and rather than sugary drinks, he would have only water or milk. The tantrums were few and far between.
But as he grew older, he wanted what the other boys at school were having. Brand-name cereals, cartoon-branded juice drinks, and so on.
I capitulated. And I’m ashamed to admit that every day he would eat the following: Coco-Pops for cereal, peanut butter on crumpets as a snack and a Fruit Shoot drink after school.
And while I tried always to prepare healthy dinners, if I didn’t have time to cook from scratch, I would resort to ready-meals.
It wasn’t ideal, but I made sure that I chose the very best, high-end options. Surely it couldn’t do much harm?
But by the age of 11, these treats were taking their toll on Charlie’s behaviour. Making him spend just 45 minutes reading or doing homework would leave him angry and temperamental.
Copybooks were often thrown across the room (by him) and our dining-room table was regularly banged in frustration (me and him).
So our new regime began. The chocolate breakfast cereal was out and I brought in what I thought was a healthy alternative — oat-based cereal flakes.
We ditched the white bread sandwiches and started having veggie soups and wholemeal bread for lunch. Ready-meals were ditched for home-cooked meat and vegetable stir-fries that used delicious shop-made sauces.
I thought I would win the war on sugar. How wrong I was.
Talking to registered nutritionist Angela Dowden, I have learned the bitter truth about my children’s sugar intake.
These so-called healthy options contain so many hidden sugars that my son’s diet is actually worse than before.
‘A little sugar won’t do any harm,’ Angela tells me. ‘But some foods lower their fat contents, enabling manufacturers to bill them as “healthy”, and then add sugar to make them taste better.
‘It’s only when you inspect the food labels, which most parents don’t, that you realise you are being misled.
‘The recommended daily limit of sugar for an adult female is 90g, which is the same as for a boy of 12, like Charlie. But the lower you can get your sugar intake, while still enjoying your diet, the better.’
Amanda was shocked to discover that a can of Heinz soup contains 14.9g of sugar
Angela found that swapping the obviously sugar-loaded cereals, like Coco-Pops, which has nearly five teaspoons per 40g bowl with semi-skimmed milk, for the same amount of Special K Oats and Honey Cereal with ‘healthy’ soya milk, still delivered 2.65 teaspoons of sugar.
‘It may be sold as “healthy”, but Special K Oats and Honey Cereal still has 19g of sugar per 100g. NHS guidelines suggest that anything containing over 22.5g of sugar per 100g is “high”. So while this isn’t technically over, it’s close — and not the healthy option people think,’ says Angela.
‘It’s wiser to choose porridge. Better still, scrambled egg with mushrooms or tomatoes is a lower-sugar start to the day.’
So what about our new healthy lunch with cheese sandwiches ditched in favour of vegetable soups, with tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches made with wholegrain bread.
Charlie’s favourite soup was Heinz tomato. But I am stunned to discover that this contains 14.9g of sugar, per 300ml can — equivalent to almost four teaspoons.
Worse was to come. While I thought I’d picked a truly healthy sandwich, Angela tells me that it contains more than a teaspoon of sugar, thanks to the wholemeal bread.
My healthy drinks also got the thumbs-down. Our new breakfast drink was a pre-packaged orange, mango and passionfruit smoothie, which I thought would help our vitamin intake without adding too much sugar.
Wrong, as Angela tells me: ‘It contains 19.5g of sugar in a 250ml serving, which is four teaspoons of sugar. That’s more than a fifth of the daily RDA in a single drink.’
I’d also swapped the lunchtime Fruit Shoot drinks for a glass of Tropicana fresh orange juice. I need not have bothered.
‘A 200ml glass of orange juice contains 20g of sugar — almost exactly the same as the 22g of sugar within the Fruit Shoot,’ says Angela. ‘That’s five teaspoons in just one glass. You are far better sticking to water or milk. One small glass of fruit juice in one day is enough.’
Charlie’s original after-school snack was peanut butter on a crumpet, which contained more than a teaspoon of sugar. I’d ditched the peanut butter — too many additives and syrups, I thought — for the more natural-seeming honey, served on a bagel. What a mistake.
Angela says: ‘There’s a massive 11g of sugar in just two teaspoons of honey. It’s pure sugar. And added to the 5.1g of sugar which is part of every bagel recipe, you are loading Charlie with more than three teaspoons of sugar in just one snack.’
And while I had been feeling smug that I no longer have any sort of posh ready-meal in my supermarket trolley, I would have been better off sticking with them.
I had replaced them with shop-bought stir-fry sauces with fresh meat and veg to make quick dinners feel more ‘home-made’. What an error! These sauces are packed with sugar, too.
Angela says: ‘While overall this is a healthy meal, you could choose a better option by checking the label. Those with sweet chilli contain more sugar. Your favourite black bean sauce contains 7.7g sugar per half jar — almost two teaspoons.’
So, despite my best efforts, Charlie has still been consuming 38 teaspoons of sugar per day — almost 16 more than his allowance.
I am horrified by these results. By opting for home cooking, what I had thought were low-sugar breakfast options and snacks, I was actually doing more harm to my children’s health than good.
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