Low Sugar Cereals Help Children Eat in Healthier Manner

A new research has said that kids who are given low-sugar cereals eat in a healthier manner even if they are allowed to put some sugar in their meals.

The study examined the food choices of 91 children aged 5 to 12 years at a summer camp. The 91 participants were divided into two groups and were given the choice of three high-sugar cereals or of three low-sugar ones.

The researchers report that kids in the high-sugar group ate as much as 24.4 grams of refined sugar in two servings as compared with 12.5 grams of refined sugar in the low-sugar group.

The latter group was also more likely to put fresh fruit on their cereal than the kids who ate high-sugar cereals. "This result suggests that a parent who is concerned that a child will not eat enough of a low-sugar cereal in the morning could provide a small amount of table sugar as well as fresh fruit for the child to add to the cereal," the authors write. "This strategy would be preferable to purchasing a pre-sweetened high-sugar cereal that typically contains 2.5 or three teaspoons of sugar per serving."

The details of the study appear online in the journal Pediatrics and will be printed in the January 2011 edition of the same journal.


Source: Medindia