Updated on August 7, 2024.
It's always exciting when kids come for a visit. You get to plan fun activities, devise sleeping arrangements, and serve up delicious treats. But when you’re choosing drinks, snacks, and meals, it’s important to check nutrition labels before you buy. Why? Many popular, kid-friendly foods can be loaded with added sugars.
Some sugars occur naturally in foods. A medium banana, for example, contains 14.4 grams of natural sugar. But added sugars don’t occur naturally. They’re sugars that manufacturers add when they’re processing food to make the product taste sweeter. They include:
- Raw sugar
- Syrups like high-fructose corn syrup, maple syrup, malt syrup, and agave syrup
- Honey
- Dextrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, sucrose, and other ingredients ending in “-ose”
Note that many fruits, vegetables, and unsweetened milks naturally contain fructose or lactose. These are not considered to be added sugars.
Eating too many added sugars raise the risk of some health issues in children. These include:
- Abnormal cholesterol levels
- High blood pressure
- Obesity
- Diabetes
- Heart disease
- Fatty liver disease
- Dental issues
To help prevent this, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that kids aged 2 and older get no more than 25 grams of added sugar each day. That’s equal to about 6 teaspoons. To put it in perspective, one can of soda contains about 10 grams of sugar.
We know you want the best for young ones. So whether you're prepping for an entire weekend together or simply want to have snacks on hand for surprise visits, be smart about these items in your shopping cart:
Yogurt
Some yogurts can be a part of a healthy diet, like protein-packed plain Greek yogurt. But other yogurts—including the flavored, fat-free products popular with children—often contain added sugars to make up for the lack of fat. Sometimes, it can amount to almost 20 grams per serving, or nearly a full day’s worth of added sugar.
If you’d like to serve yogurt to kids, choose plain and then add fruit for a dose of sweetness, vitamins, and fiber. Berries, bananas, pineapple, and kiwi are tasty options.
Granola bars
Since they often contain ingredients like nuts and oats, the bars you find at the supermarket—like granola bars, breakfast bars, energy bars, and cereal bars—may seem like healthy choices. Many are loaded with added sugar, however, often in the form of chocolate or high-fructose corn syrup.
Still, when you’re feeding kids, it’s hard to beat granola bars for convenience and price. So, shop wisely. Read packaging and look for short ingredient lists featuring foods with names you recognize. Check nutrition information and note the amount of added sugars, too.
If time allows, you can also make your own granola bars or energy balls. This allows you to control exactly how much sugar goes into the recipe, and you can customize the ingredients to the kids’ liking.
Canned fruit
There’s no question that fruit can be a healthy choice for kids. But add too much sugar to any fruit product, and suddenly its nutritional value becomes much murkier. Take canned fruit or fruit cups, for example. When the fruit is packed in syrup, it can add 15 grams of sugar per serving.
What to do instead? Whenever possible, serve up fresh or frozen fruit. Freeze-dried fruit is another healthy option, since it retains much of its nutrition during the freeze-drying process. If you’re still tempted to buy canned fruit, look for items that are packed in water or 100% fruit juice.
Juice
Juice is good for you, right? Not so fast. To make it more appealing to kids, manufacturers often add syrup, fruit juice concentrate, or other sweeteners. Some kinds of fruit juice even have as much added sugar as a can of soda.
If you serve juice, always choose 100% fruit juice and follow the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics:
- Babies under 1 year old shouldn’t be given juice.
- Children between ages 1 and 6 should have no more than 4 to 6 ounces each day of 100% fruit juice.
- Kids between ages 7 and 18 should be limited to 8 ounces of 100% fruit juice daily.
Sports drinks
So, you passed on the juice and decided to go with a sports drink. Unfortunately, these seemingly good-for-you beverages can also pack 20 to 40 grams of added sugar.
When you’re choosing sports drinks, resist reaching for brightly colored drinks that claim to be filled with vitamins. Their artificial colors and flavors essentially make them pricey sugar water. The same goes for sweetened drinks like sweet tea. Instead, read labels and choose low-sugar products. Or better yet, just offer kids water or milk instead.
