How much chocolate / sweets should a kid be eating in a week?

Tim Robbins

Just posting this here as people on this forum tend to value clinical trials over pseudo science.

Just wondering are there any clinical trials or studies which provides guidelines on how much sweets / chocolate a child should be eating in a week?

My kid is eating way too much and I want to go to the wife with some good ammo on this.
Thanks

nc19

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Just posting this here as people on this forum tend to value clinical trials over pseudo science.

Just wondering are there any clinical trials or studies which provides guidelines on how much sweets / chocolate a child should be eating in a week?

My kid is eating way too much and I want to go to the wife with some good ammo on this.
Thanks

I would start with zero!!

No wonder the kids today are a gang of fattys.....

if you want to give them a treat once a week then pick a healthy one but make sure they earned it

Gran Hermano

More over lent, just for payback for when their friends discuss the conformation/communion money train.

silverbolt

my three dont eat it very often, though a couple of biscuits after dinner as "something nice" doesnt hurt. They dont have crisps overly much either and no fizzy/sugary drinks at all. As a treat it doesnt hurt every now and then but no way would it become a regular thing.

And why is this in atheism and agnoticism forum?

Tim Robbins

silverbolt wrote: »

And why is this in atheism and agnoticism forum?

It's boring having every thread to remind ourselves about the harm of religion. How about the harm of chocolate?

lazygal

Ask your dentist. Had a chat with mine about children's teeth and got stern warnings about juices, dried fruit and treats. I'm holding off on chocolate, sweets and crisps as long as possible with mine. A great treat here would be a yoghurt or homemade crumble.

stevejazzx

Tim Robbins wrote: »

It's boring having every thread to remind ourselves about the harm of religion. How about the harm of chocolate?

The answer is education about food in general.
Don't lecture on how bad sweets are - lecture on good mango is.
If that doesn't work educate on how certain foods are prepared.
If that doesn't chose a role model of the child and ask what diet that person has etc. etc.
It's hard to ban sweets (Easters coming up and we got just some chocolate eggs in the door today from friends) but the important is the little guy loves raw fruits and vegetables because that was the norm as he was growing up.

Kiwi in IE

I don't have a scientific answer for you but I don't like Little Kiwi having much sweets/crisps/processed foods. I try to stick to natural foods and ingredients as much as possible, although I am in no way a food nazi. As far as sweets go, I particularly dislike things like jellies and lollipops. If he is going to have a treat I prefer decent quality chocolate. I like baking, so a daily treat for Little Kiwi would be a bun/brownie/biscuit/dessert that is home made. He would get something like a kinder suprise or ice cream once or twice a week. I really hate when we go to friends/family and they bring out ridiculous amounts of bars, jellies, crisps etc. I don't mind if it's a birthday party but not just an ordinary day. He is allowed fizzy drinks only if we are out for a meal with him. Milk or water as drinks and orange/apple juice as a treat every now and then. I don't think children should eat crap, but I also think 'food experts' who tell you to cut out everything that tastes nice are ridiculous.

Sulla Felix

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Just posting this here as people on this forum tend to value clinical trials over pseudo science.

Just wondering are there any clinical trials or studies which provides guidelines on how much sweets / chocolate a child should be eating in a week?

My kid is eating way too much and I want to go to the wife with some good ammo on this.
Thanks

You won't really find clinical trials on such a wide topic I'd have thought. There's over a million articles on google scholar on "children + nutrition" but they're so focused as to be almost useless for general advice.
Kids would have a necessary calorie intake and a fairly large nutrient requirement. Once they're met it doesn't really matter where you get it from. You could probably feed them chocolate, protein concentrate and a broad spectrum vitamin and mineral supplement and they'd be healthyish other than some gi issues... The problem comes from kids having three square meals a day which meet the above needs, and then a bunch of sweets on top of it all.

Do you have two? One gets no sweets ever, one gets as much as they like. Report back when they're eighteen and see which turns out best. :pac:

robindch

Tim Robbins wrote: »

My kid is eating way too much and I want to go to the wife with some good ammo on this.

The rules chez robindch have evolved a little over the years -- the current ones are that (a) there's no dessert or sweets during Monday to Thursday; (b) Friday, Saturday and Sunday, she can have one small dessert with dinner, if one is offered; it's often shared with me; (c) she can have one sweet treat from a shop on Sunday *or* a book or magazine on Saturday or Sunday (she usually goes for the latter); (d) excellent questions are rewarded with a deferred piece of chocolate, while excellent questions that I can't answer are rewarded with an immediate piece of chocolate and a later bit of joint googling. Coke once a month, if she remembers (unless there are other kids present drinking soft drinks in which case, she can't realistically be excluded). Any time that we do have random chocolate floating about, she's expected to divide it up and share it with everybody equally (and usually does that quite well).

I haven't noticed that Snowflake is all that receptive to dietary research on sweeties, and tends to ignore it. Hence the rules.

I will willingly strangle shop assistants, restaurant staff and self-appointed do-gooders who give her lollipops, crisps, massive helpings of ice-cream and other crap without asking me first.

55 Glorious Misteries

at what age should you start introducing children to biscuits?

Peregrinus

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Just wondering are there any clinical trials or studies which provides guidelines on how much sweets / chocolate a child should be eating in a week?

There isn't any amount that they should be eating. Zero is fine, nutritionally.

How much is too much? Depends on the age and weight of the child, but also depends on what else the child is eating. If they are eating so much confectionery as to depress their appetite for more nutritious foods, that's a huge problem. If they are eating to make up deficiencies in the diet, that's a huge problem.

Beyond that, this is not so much about immediate damage to health as about inculcating (indoctrinating!) good eating habits. You want your kids to eat (and enjoy) fruit, fresh vegetables, etc. Ideally their need for sugar would be primarily met by fruit, and their need for fat by dairy produce and vegetable oils. If they're getting signficant amounts of sugar and fat from, e.g., chocolate, then either (a) they're getting too much sugar and fat overall, or (b) they're getting a reasonable amount, but not eating nearly enough fresh fruit, dairy produce, etc, which will establish habits that will cause them problems later in life.

The notion of using chocolate as a reward is good in the sense that it establishes chocolate as something occasional, exceptional, requiring justification. But it could have the danger that it "moralises" food - i.e. we develop the habit of eating foods to express moral judgments about ourselves ("I've been virtuous so I deserve chocolate"), and this lays the ground for destructive eating habits, and indeed eating disorders, later in life (because we subconsciously associate responsible eating habits with low self-esteem). So a ritual that, e.g, we only have chocolate on Sundays and bank holidays, we only have cake when visitors come, or whatever, might be better.

whirlpool

The answer is zero. Nobody should be eating high-sugar products if they want to remain sane and healthy. Especially not children and especially not nutrient-lacking foods.

If you're asking about government guidelines, I wouldn't be trusting that at all either.

Any amount of high-sugar products whatsoever is too much, but if you truly believe it's unavoidable (and I know it can be difficult unfortunately) then keep it to the bare minimum as best you can. Googling "Children daily sugar amount" will give you the response you're seeking, I would imagine.

smacl

What's right and what actually happens tend to be two different things in my experience, particularly with grandparents entering the fray, and at Easter when Jesus sacrificed himself so kids could stuff their faces with chocolate eggs.

My two girls are poles apart. Eldest (14) is diet concious, sporty and doesn't much like sweets. Easter eggs tend to get binned or go to the charity shop, and her only vices among the salads, lean meat, tuna and green tea are the occasional coffee or hot chocolate. Youngest is a slovenly wench, and would sit around all day eating junk food and watching honey boo boo on the box given half a chance. The trick is not to give her the chance, which means trying to limit the amount of crap that comes into the house. Exercise is the other side of the coin, so we got her a dog that needs a lot of walking, and both girls do a a number of extra curricular sports.

Getting the kids to cook meals from scratch also helps, in that starting from fresh ingredients avoids all the hidden calories in processed foods, and they'll invariably eat what they cook themselves. We also grow a lot of fruit and veg, which also adds to the fun of this process, though even with all this, it is still an ongoing struggle to keep the family (myself and herself included) in the healthy BMI zone, with regular excursions into the fat zone in the winter.

robindch

55 Glorious Misteries wrote: »

at what age should you start introducing children to biscuits?

Could do it during the baby-cooking classes in our atheist-controlled schools.

Dades

nc19 wrote: »

I would start with zero!!

No wonder the kids today are a gang of fattys.....

if you want to give them a treat once a week then pick a healthy one but make sure they earned it

And a bath once a month if they need or not! :pac:

Fat kids are a pet hate of my wife and I, with the ire firmly directed at the parents who allow it to happen. That said, I have no problem with giving my kids treats as long as they eat proper food at proper food times and continue to play/exercise like duracell bunnies all day long.

If I thought for a microsecond my kids were getting chunky/slovenly the regime would change overnight. But right now I don't see the need to withhold treats because other people's kids are fat.

Akrasia

We try to not give the kids treats during the week (which becomes very difficult because of the ridiculous irish tradition that every visitor has to come with a mountain of sweets for the kids)

My little boy came home with a cream egg from his preschool yesterday. There's probably 200% of his rda of sugar in that one thing (we made him share it with his sister)

At weekends we have just about given up trying to convince Granny to stop stuffing them full of rubbish. It's like she has an uncontrollable impulse to see them eating. She's a conveyor belt of all kinds of confectionary all categorised so that she can lie to herself that she hasn't given them any 'rubbish'

It's just a tiny lollipop
But these are 'natural jellies'
Snax are mostly air
Biscuits don't count as sweets etc

endacl

Dades wrote: »

And a bath once a month if they need or not! :pac:

Fat kids are a pet hate of my wife and I, with the ire firmly directed at the parents who allow it to happen. That said, I have no problem with giving my kids treats as long as they eat proper food at proper food times and continue to play/exercise like duracell bunnies all day long.

If I thought for a microsecond my kids were getting chunky/slovenly the regime would change overnight. But right now I don't see the need to withhold treats because other people's kids are fat.

Fat kids don't annoy me. It's the parents of fat kids blocking the entrance to my estate every morning dropping their potentially-less-fat-and-would-definitely-be-healthier-if-they-walked-to-school fat kids to school. It really is a 'blame the parents' phenomenon.

These are the same parents who drive half a mile to the chipper. Supporting nurture over nature on this one. Nature doesn't generally produce jellybellys in humans. Nurture does. Although the use of 'nurture' in this context does stretch the definition.

gaynorvader

Any study I've come across says sweets are generally fine as long as you don't overdo it. What's more important than fretting over their sugar intake is ensuring that they have a healthy lifestyle i.e. regular exercise, bedtimes, meals and good hygiene. Obviously if they're eating so many sweets that's it's making them too full for dinner or too lethargic to go out to play something is wrong. As far as I recall, my parents never bought me sweets, but let me spend my pocket money on as many as I liked. I tended not to buy too much because I wanted to go to the cinema, or quasar or buy a Lego castle or a new game or whatever.

recedite

gaynorvader wrote: »

What's more important than fretting over their sugar intake is ensuring that they have a healthy lifestyle i.e. regular exercise, bedtimes, meals and good hygiene.

I agree. Also, two more tips;
1.If they don't finish their dinner; no problem, but no junk food either.
2. If eating out, never buy kids food from the kids menu; ask for a half portion of human food instead.

Bloe Joggs

I think it's possible for kids to enjoy their regular meals and enjoy a degree of healthy snacking with a little bit of imagination. Bored, unhappy, inactive kids are more likely to find refuge in sweets and still not burn it all off. Remember how addiction works, it's the irregular, random exposure to the addictive substance or activity that builds the craving so if you're going to introduce treats at certain intervals, make sure it's not done in a haphazard way and don't tease them by exposing them to the item visually. I personally believe that using sweets as a bribery tool or for "being good" is the road to disaster as it creates the wrong impression early on and presents sugar as a target, something to aim for, when good wholesome food will do the same thing after enough healthy activity.

Hotblack Desiato

I have learned something from this thread...

...that cheap easter eggs can be obtained from charity shops!

It is funny (well, sad really) that everywhere that has a 'kids menu' it's chips with everything, but usually those vile chicken nuggets. Our kids would rather eat what we're having. McDonalds is once or twice a year and they rarely finish what they get. They love fruit and veg and their favourite vegetable is brussels sprouts They do get treats but they are treats not part of their everyday diet. I think sugary drinks are the worst thing of all, empty calories that don't satisfy the appetite and very bad for the teeth too.

Peregrinus

ninja900 wrote: »

. . . and their favourite vegetable is brussels sprouts

I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but your children are weird. ;-)

silverbolt

Peregrinus wrote: »

I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but your children are weird. ;-)

i dunno, my three love cabbage and the eldest likes brocolli as well

Peregrinus

silverbolt wrote: »

i dunno, my three love cabbage and the eldest likes brocolli as well

These things are entirely in accordance with the natural order of things. But brussels sprouts? Seriously?

smacl

silverbolt wrote: »

i dunno, my three love cabbage and the eldest likes brocolli as well

I thought I loved cabbage as a kid, only to have dinner at a friends on day to realise that not everybody stir fries it with soya sauce and garlic.

gaynorvader

Peregrinus wrote: »

These things are entirely in accordance with the natural order of things. But brussels sprouts? Seriously?

My sister loved sprouts until she was about 16/17.

Akrasia

recedite wrote: »

I agree. Also, two more tips;

2. If eating out, never buy kids food from the kids menu; ask for a half portion of human food instead.

this
My 4 year old's favourite food is Salmon, he always orders it whenever we're out

Akrasia

Peregrinus wrote: »

I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but your children are weird. ;-)

My Son loves brocolli and my daughter who just turned 3 eats all the veg first and often leaves the meat.

They think they like chips because it's considered 'party food' (it's what they're given at every birthday party that they go to) but they rarely finish those meals but will happily polish off a lovely bowl of stew or plate of bacon and cabbage

I Heart Internet

silverbolt wrote: »

And why is this in atheism and agnoticism forum?

School/chocolate patronage - same thing.

robindch

My daughter, aged seven, loves steak cooked blue - gets a odd looks from some waiting staff, but got a huge high five from one French guy too

MrPudding

Dades wrote: »

That said, I have no problem with giving my kids treats as long as they eat proper food at proper food times and continue to play/exercise like duracell bunnies all day long.

If I thought for a microsecond my kids were getting chunky/slovenly the regime would change overnight. But right now I don't see the need to withhold treats because other people's kids are fat.

This is pretty much how we roll. My two oldest kids are ridiculously active. As a result we are fairly flexible on treats, though eating proper food at the proper time is a requirement.

They have both commented that a lot of their friends have a much stricter regime of treats, and my response is that is the regime they will have if they stop the activities they currently do. That seems to be working so far.

One thing that does concern me though, is bad habit formation. Take my daughter, as an example, she runs about 60k and swims about 15k per week. As a result she looks very athletic, which she really likes. Whilst we provide the meals at home when she is at school or with friends she eats pretty much whatever she wants. She is 15 and when she is out with her friends, some of whom are very body conscious, she will have a pizza and a couple of cokes while they have a salad and a glass of water. My worry is, if she decides to ditch the sports, but does not adjust her eating habits, she may get into a spot of bother... Not quite sure how to approach that. It is not so much of an issue now, but in a couple of years when she heads off to uni and is living by herself, it may be an issue.

MrP

robindch

MrPudding wrote: »

It is not so much of an issue now, but in a couple of years when she heads off to uni and is living by herself, it may be an issue.

Encourage cycling as a normal means of getting from one place to another? I'm doing around 600k a month at the moment and it's great at keeping off the flab, not to mention keeping car costs down and at this point, it's usually as fast and sometimes faster than driving almost anywhere within the M50.

I also use the Strava mobile app to keep track of progress -- it's great at encouraging one to keep the monthly average where it should be, even to the point of hopping onto the bike and going for a random 30k cycle in the evening. I've lost over 15kg in the last couple of years with this strategy without too many changes to my diet or anything else. A cycling/running club might help too - positive use of social pressure.

MrPudding

robindch wrote: »

Encourage cycling as a normal means of getting from one place to another? I'm doing around 600k a month at the moment and it's great at keeping off the flab, not to mention keeping car costs down and at this point, it's usually as fast and sometimes faster than driving almost anywhere within the M50.

I also use the Strava mobile app to keep track of progress -- it's great at encouraging one to keep the monthly average where it should be, even to the point of hopping onto the bike and going for a random 30k cycle in the evening. I've lost over 15kg in the last couple of years with this strategy without too many changes to my diet or anything else. A cycling/running club might help too - positive use of social pressure.

That is really cool. I need to do something like that. The kids are in swimimng and running clubs, so they are sorted. As I am sure you know, there is a balancing act in that, keeping them interested without making it a chore with a goal to get them hooked so they keep it up even after leaving home. That is the tricky bit.

MrP

Bloe Joggs

Cycling is great from a fitness point of view but with the way people are driving lately, it's also dangerous. I'm seeing a lot more cars running straight through red lights, sometimes 3 or more seconds late. There are lots of chancers out there so you need to really have your wits about you on the road.

Polarix

Peregrinus wrote: »

I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but your children are weird. ;-)

Nicest veg there is, especially with a bit of natural butter and sea salt

Brian Shanahan

Tim Robbins wrote: »

It's boring having every thread to remind ourselves about the harm of religion. How about the harm of chocolate?

Chocolate doesn't kill people. People masticating kill people.

Polarix

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Chocolate doesn't kill people.

A neighbour once had her dog poisoned by someone who used chocolate to get the dog to eat it. Very profound I thought.

recedite

Bloe Joggs wrote: »

..so you need to really have your wits about you on the road.

Who me?

PopePalpatine

Stop horsing around. :P

recedite

This outfit is purely worn for safety reasons;

Research carried out by Bath University revealed that drivers leave a much wider berth when passing a female rider with long hair. Traffic psychologist, Dr Ian Walker donned a long wig to see whether there was any difference in passing distance when drivers thought they were overtaking what appeared to be a woman on a bicycle. When wearing the wig, drivers gave him an average of 14 centimetres more space when passing. Wearing the bikini version of the skinsuit above is likely to get the same reaction.

But wearing it around the house with a horses head is inexcusable, unless you've just consumed too much chocolate

Hotblack Desiato

Polarix wrote: »

A neighbour once had her dog poisoned by someone who used chocolate to get the dog to eat it. Very profound I thought.

Chocolate itself is poisonous to dogs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog

Dogs are highly susceptible to theobromine poisoning, typically from ingestion of chocolate. Theobromine is toxic to dogs because, although the dog's metabolism is capable of breaking down the chemical, the process is so slow that even small amounts of chocolate can be fatal, especially dark chocolate.

Polarix

ninja900 wrote: »

Chocolate itself is poisonous to dogs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog

There you go, even more ironic. The vet said it was rat poison, she found some of it along with the chocolate. Some real classy folks out there in neighbour land.

robindch

recedite wrote: »

Research carried out by Bath University revealed that drivers leave a much wider berth when passing a female rider with long hair.[...] When wearing the wig, drivers gave him an average of 14 centimetres more space when passing.

Two weeks back, I was cycling out the Merrion Road from the city center to Dun Laoghaire. A lady cyclist passed me out, just going very slightly faster and parked herself in front of me. Didn't pay much attention until a passing car honked a few times cheerfully, so I looked around to see a guy with a huge grin on his face pointing at the other cyclist, at which point I noticed that her short skirt had ridden up her shapely bum, to reveal the top end of a pair of sheer black tights and a g-string. How on earth do you deal with that? Tell her? Get slapped or called a perv? Anyhow, I passed her out as soon as I could, but she passed me out at the next lights, then I passed her out and we played leapfrog until I turned off just after Blackrock.

Hope she didn't cause a crash.

#firstworldproblems

Hotblack Desiato

robindch wrote: »

and we played leapfrog until I turned off

Ahem.

silverbolt

our five year old at one oclock this morning decided to help herself to chocolate in the press

robindch

ninja900 wrote: »

robindch wrote: »

and we played leapfrog until I turned off

Ahem.

She could have been wearing a Freudian slip too

Misty Moon

There's a book called Pure, white and deadly by John Yudkin (published 1972) - all about sugar, I haven't read it yet but it is supposed to be very interesting. So not the most recent scientific study but I think it still stands as a very important work. It was largely dismissed at the time, I believe, as fat had been chosen to be the "baddy". There are free PDFs of it available if you google a bit and it seems to have been republished recently, too. I heard about it a few years ago and was reminded of it a while back when watching the BBC documentary "The men who made us fat" (on youtube, very interesting to watch).

I don't have kids so haven't had to wrestle with the issue of what to feed them. My sister (who lives in France) got fed up of trying to figure out the labels of some of the sweets and biscuits her kids always wanted to buy a few years ago and switched to using good dark chocolate - they'd each get a square of that in a piece of baguette as a treat. It's yummy, I still do that sometimes. Nowadays, there are usually a couple of those bars of chocolate in the house and the kids (if they ask) are allowed to have one square each after dinner. But not before they've had a proper dessert of yoghurt and/or fruit.

I quite like Michael Pollan's food rule about junk food, too. Everything is allowed, so long as you make it yourself. So homemade cakes and stuff rather than just buying something.

lynski

smacl wrote: »

I thought I loved cabbage as a kid, only to have dinner at a friends on day to realise that not everybody stir fries it with soya sauce and garlic.

mine will eat cabbage or sprouts like that but my daughter begs for cauliflower in the supermarket, loves avocados and not a good meat eater. all 3 eat industrial quantities of fruit and think peanut butter is a food group.

moderation in all, could never see myself giving them or allowing them daily access to the ice cream van like other children I see on the estate; just like the other atheist parents living here while all the catholic children get to go to the ice-cream van for crap everyday or almost everyday. hehehe

Brian Shanahan

lynski wrote: »

think peanut butter is a food group.

But it is. Isn't it?

iguana

Peregrinus wrote: »

These things are entirely in accordance with the natural order of things. But brussels sprouts? Seriously?

My brothers and I all love brussel sprouts. Family fueds have started over one being stolen off someone else's plate. My little guy loves them too but he prefers carrots.