Child nutrition: keeping the level of sweets under control

By Bettina Levecke Aug 1, 2011, 4:06 GMT

Berlin - If a child could decide his or her diet it would probably be very sweet with chocolate cereals for breakfast, pancakes for lunch and plenty of lemonade on the menu.

'It's the responsibility of parents to make sure their child is consuming a sensible level of sweet foods,' says Dagmar von Cramm, a dietician and author from Freiburg in Germany.

The trend towards obesity in children is a big concern in many parts of the world. In Germany for example the findings of the Robert Koch Institute's child health 'KiGGs' survey are alarming: approximately 15 per cent of German children between the ages of three and 17 are overweight.

High-fat food, pre-prepared meals and too little exercise are the causes of the problem. 'Many overweight children, however, simply eat way too many sweet things between meals and are constantly drinking sweetened juices and lemonades,' says von Cramm.

Von Cramm is a mother of three and is well aware from personal experience how important it is to teach a child how to eat properly. 'You should begin very early by training your child to eat a balanced and natural diet.'

The human body can very quickly get used to eating sweet things and will demand more. Von Cramm advises avoiding sweetened food products for babies and young infants.

A bar of chocolate can be had for only a few cents and it doesn't cost much more for a bag of sweets. Never before have sweet treats been as cheap as they are now.

'But that should not allow sweets to become part of a child's basic diet,' says Andreas Engel from Germany's child guidance institute, the Bundeskonferenz fuer Erziehungsberatung.

'Sweets should be a treat and not a form of nutrition,' says Dagmar von Cramm. She advises parents to only buy sweets for special occasions such as chocolate for a birthday or a bag of crisps for a family-focused evening.

There are also a few presumed healthy food products that contain too much sugar such as fruit yogurts, ketchup or muesli breakfast cereals.

'Many products contain a lot of sugar which parents are not aware of,' says Engel. The important thing is for parents to set a good example. 'Of course a parent should not be constantly snacking on sweet things if they want their child to eat more healthily.'

Both of the experts advise against having a sweet jar or a place where sweets can always be found. A child should not have direct and easy access to sweets. Parents should store sweets in a place where their child will not be able to get at them easily.

Children love sweet things and that will probably never change. 'It doesn't have to,' says von Cramm. 'It's the amount of sweets that are consumed which is important.'

She recommends having a clear food policy in the family. 'Sweets should be treated as something special and as a rare event.' That means not eating cake every day but only on Sundays. Biscuits and crisps should be saved for family movie evenings.

Parents are responsible for what ends up on the dinner table but they cannot control what their child eats at a friend's house or with grandparents.