Hard to read and misleading food labels combined with a lack of awareness are contributing to a sugar overload and adding to the obesity burden
Birthdays are not celebrated by cutting and apple, a long drive with your children does not end with eating salad and nuts are best left for squirrels. The happiest most celebratory movements in our lives are defined by the taste of sugar. you may not be the kind of parents who knots their kids with cake-ice-cream cola but what about all the others things you thought of as “healthy” but are loaded with the sweet stuff? Just this week, a controversy erupted after an influencer posted about the high sugar content in a popular malt drink for kids. But the list of products that are sold as healthy but include a high sugar content is unsavory and long: package juices, instant soups, packaged milk shakes, granola bars, flavoured yoghurt, malted drinks, breakfast cerell, bread, instant oatmeal, condiments like mayonnaise, dips and ketchup.
In short: sugar is everywhere sneaking up on your kids where you least expect it.
The American heart associations sugar recommendation state that children should consumes less than 6 spoons or 24 grams of added sugar per day for an adult, World health organisation guidelines recommend around 12 teaspoons or roughly double.
Now compare this with the person hundred grams list of ingredients in a popular chocolate milkshake. though it claims to have high amount of iron and calcium, the labels in fact shows that it has 30.2 gram of total sugar per serve. A zero fat catch up to includes 16.21 gm of total sugar per 100 gm of serving. Similarly, malted ‘health’ drinks are sold to consumers on the protest that they improve a child concentration and immunity and aid growth by providing vital nutrients instead for every serve total sugar range from 21.8 gram to a shocking 49.8 gram.
Not to be left behind, fruit juices are pitched as high in dietary fibre, substituting the vitamins and minerals that a consumer can get from eating an actual fruit when in reality most are just drinks with sugar content as high as 10 – 15 gram per 100 ml of serving.
Dr Arun Gupta, child health activist and convener of public health advocacy group nutrition advocacy in public interest (NAPi) says that the easy availability of ultra process foods UPF and use of attractive packaging and alluring, false promises life added minerals and vitamin drop consumers to buy products as an alternative to normal home-cooked food.
What’s more the labels are incredibly hard to read “the labelling at the back of the pack that includes the list of ingredients is in a much smaller type also these are based on per serve of 100 ml per gram instead of the total quantity of the product” he says. So, for example a popular biscuit brand uses large picture of almonds, milk or oranges in the front of pack. But if you look at the ingredients list you find that the biscuits contains sugar listed under many different name (see box) and chemicals that give the taste, texture and smell of the fruit, not the fibre or the nutrient content, he explains.
This result of consuming products with ‘hidden sugars’ specially targeted at children, is telling. according to UNICEF’s world obesity Atlas for 2022, India is predicted to have more than 27 million obese children’s representing one in 10 Obese children globally, by 2030.
Delhi based Nutritionist Priyanka Jaiswal says her patients are getting younger by the day “I have seen 3 year old who cannot walk because of obesity one child weighed 25 kg instead of 12-15 kg which is normal at this age,” she says teens who are suffering from obesity because of a diet that has high concentration of sugar and sodium can fall prey to lifestyle disease like Type II diabetes, fatty liver and high cholesterol. a child as young as five came for diet advice because she was suffering from thyroid, Jaiswal says.
Dr Anupam sibal, Apollo hospitals group medical director and senior pediatrician, says over nutrition as a problem among urban children and adolescence has increased significantly since the pandemic where consumption of processed foods when up and exercise was reduced.
“the hospital gets patients as young as 10 months old who are overweight and phase development issues because of this” he says.
It does not help that most school canteens stock milkshakes, granola bar and bread as “food” tiffins are not much better. “we need to change the narrative and go back to consuming foods cooked at home like yoghurt, salad, fruits. Parents opt for package food because of lack of time and easy availability but we need to awareness that these are harmful. parents also need to walk the talk and show a degree of discipline,” Dr Sibal advises.
Nutritionist Smita Suresh points out that ironically most people are looking for healthy food at the grocery aisle. “people want to eat healthy so nearly or products have repackaged themselves to falsely claim health benefits,” Suresh, who has taken workshops with school students, says that educating children on what they are consuming is crucial.
NAPi has been advocating for a front of the label packaging regulation that would clearly call out products high in sugar, sodium and fat as done by Israel, Mexico and Ecuador (See box). but the issue has been on the back burner since last year. the group has also suggested that the Union health ministry define “healthy foods” through the lens of nutrition and create labelling for until such time as preventive steps are taken to desargonise is food labeling or make it mandatory for it to be placed on the front of the pack Doctor Gupta’s advise is this, “if the product has more than 5 ingredients, avoid it.”
Some important points:-
- If ingredient on the labels ends in ‘-ose’ like fructose, dextrose, sucrose, glucose, maltose, it’s just another type of sugar.
- Watch out specially for high fructose corn syrup. Compared with regular sugar, it’s cheaper and sweeter, and is more quickly absorbed into your body. It can lead to insulin resistance, obesity, type2 diabetes and High BP.
- Many people think that “natural” sugars like honey and agave are healthier but while they do have some nutritional benefits, they contain more calories.
- Fruitn juices, even those with no added sugar lack fibre content, leading to rapid rise in blood sugar.
- In 2013 Ecuador, introduce a traffic light system of labelling for carbonated drinks where red was used in the product had a higher that recommended content of sugar, sodium or fat yellow for medium and green for low content.
- Chilli 2016 and Mexico 2019 use black and white octagonal labelling at the front of the back to warn consumers.
- In 20-20 Israel mandated red warning labels on the front packaging of food products that contain value above the recommended threshold for saturated fat sodium and sugar.
Source TOI…
