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Published: Monday, 23 March 2015 07:22

Written by News Editor

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A new Change4Life campaign launched by Public Health England encourages parents to cut down the amount of sugar their children consume by making one or more simple swaps. It says that sugar can have ‘a devastating impact upon dental health’ as well as allowing fat to build up inside the body. This can lead to heart disease, some cancers or type 2 diabetes later in life.

The campaign launches following a new survey amongst Netmums users who were polled on their views on sugar. The results highlight that nearly half (47%) of mums surveyed think their family has too much sugar in their diets and two-thirds of mums (67%) are worried about the amount of sugar their children consume.

Children who are overweight or obese when they are young are far more likely to become overweight or obese adults. Recently published data highlights that approximately 1 in 5 children aged 4 to 5 years old and 1 in 3 children aged 10 to 11 years old is overweight or obese.

The campaign also stresses that sugar can have a ‘devastating impact upon dental health, an integral part of overall health’. Tooth decay was the most common reason for hospital admissions for children aged 5 to 9 in 2012 to 2013. Twenty-eight percent of 5 year olds in England have tooth decay and of these, 24% have 5 or more teeth affected. When children are not healthy this affects their ability to learn, thrive and develop.

While guidelines state that no more that 10% of a person’s daily energy or calorie intake should be made up of sugar, at present, children aged 4 to 10 years are consuming up to 50% more than this. Children aged 4 to 10 get:

• 17% of their daily sugar from soft drinks
• 17% from biscuits, buns, cakes, pastries and fruit pies
• 14% from confectionery
• 13% from fruit juice
• 8% from breakfast cereals

Change4Life recommends 4 simple sugar swaps for mums to choose from, tackling different ‘sugar occasions’ in the day:

• The breakfast swap: sugary cereal for plain cereal, like a wholewheat biscuit cereal
• The drink swap: from sugary drinks to sugar-free or no-added-sugar drinks
• The after school swap: for example from muffin to fruited teacake
• The pudding swap: for example from ice cream to low-fat lower-sugar yoghurt

To understand the sugar issue from mums’ perspective, Public Health England partnered up with Netmums and the University of Reading to deliver a ‘Family Sugar Challenge’. A unique activity that involved 50 families, 24 of which were selected based on their geographical location for the initial analysis. The diets of the families were analysed in terms of sugar content, before and during the Change4Life’s sugar swaps. This early analysis yielded surprising results:

• on average the families were consuming 483g of sugar a day at the beginning of the challenge
• their sugar intake was reduced to 287g per day when making sugar swaps
• this meant an average daily saving of 196g of sugar per family each day, or 49 sugar cubes

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