Netmums on sugar

As touched on in my previous post ‘A spoonful of sugar could make the sales go down’, sugar is being highlighted by the government as a major concern when it comes to children. The NHS states that most adults and children in the UK consume too much sugar. The government are calling sugar the new tobacco and mums are taking it a step further, with Netmums referring to Glucose Fructose Syrup as "Devil's candy".

So with the social media, the government and the NHS giving sugars a bad name, artificial sweeteners must be the way forward right? Wrong! Health fears about Aspartame (E951) have been around for some time. Some research suggests that aspartame causes cancer in lab rats, but this has been refuted, believe it or not, by the manufacturers of Aspartame. Either way this doesn’t hide the fact that sugar is just as dangerous for humans as it is for rats.

So what are mums happy for their children to drink? The advice from Netmums when thinking about kids drinks (‘Lunchbox Ideas’) is as follows:

-Water
-Milk (whole, semi-skimmed, goats or soya)
-Milkshake
-Pure fruit juice or smoothie – preferably diluted.
-Occasional well diluted high-juice squash (a note about sugar free options)

Lucky for us, Netmums have condoned squash to a certain extent. We should, however, still be thinking about what will happen if regulatory bodies continue to chip away at mums, stating that sugar will chip away kids teeth.