stop giving sugar to children under 2 years of age

We already knew that sugar is not good for us, and many campaigns remind us everyday about this, there have and still are also many debates going on to help us understand the harm that sugar does to our organism and obviously even more to our children’s organisms, the problem nowadays is not how harmful it is but how muc damage it does to children.

Recent studies held out by the American Heart Association that sugar should not only be limited to children up to the age of 2 but should be absolutely avoided, infact if in adults it should not exceed the already high dosage of 25g per day, meanng 6 teaspoons in total (we must also count the sugar already present in food, including fruit), a child should absolutely avoid it.

The new directive, was infact born after a serious analysis on the obesity problem, which is becoming more and more invasive: Infact in the world there are over 640 million people who are overweight, with a series of pathologies linked to the extra weight and with a high mortality rate. This is exactly why over the last years both the World Health Organization W.H.O. and the American Food and Drug Administration have listed certain guidelines on how to behave at table to which almost all of us must adapt.

In the past days Great Britain has introduced a tax on beverages which exceed the allowed sugar limit, this tax should be effective by 2018. This tax will be used for promotional campaigns and activities in favour of healthy lifestyles. Countries like France, Mexico and Scandinavia have already undertaken the same path to make sure that their citizens consume less sweets.

With regards to Italy back in 2012 the Health minister of that time Balduzzi had proposed the introduction of a tax on soft drinks, but nothing has yet been done.

WHY MUST SUGAR BE AVOIDED?

Unfortunately sugar is present in many foods and we end up almost always exceeding the set limit, but we must also take into consideration that fruit and milk are excluded from the prohibition, on the contrary they are recommended.

The Nutritionist Miriam Vos who took part in the study debuted saying that:

“Amongst the calories that a child should assume, there is no space for Junk Food because the sugar is already present in many healthy foods”.

Furthermore the research team, underlines how beverages and snacks contain many empty calories, that do not give any sort of enefit to the organism, hence they are not like carbohydrates, vitamins, protein and calcium, so getting accustomed to a healthier way of life from when we are very young could give us benefits for the rest of our lives.

We must also remember why sugar is so harmful: