My wife and I want to gorge on chocolates each time we contained a nuclear meltdown. We need sugar in our coffees. We want jam-filled doughnuts and sugary icing on cakes, milkshakes and a triple-scoop sundae with fudge and peanut butter chunks. Oh, yes—nice sugary, nutty goodness and caramelized nuggets.
On the other hand our elder son Joel is a sparkly four year-old blessed with the insatiable appetite of a foodie and an inexhaustible supply of laughing gas. Mix them up and you get dynamite.
Lob in a dose of sugar and you get a nuclear meltdown.
Caution! Symptoms of an imminent meltdown include but are not limited to the following:
1. Alights from school bus babbling away to a loud and often incoherent speech;
2. Appears wide-eyed and stupefied even though no Martians have yet landed;
3. Darts about as if fire ants have invaded his pants;
4. Picks a random reason to delay going back home, like wanting to play catch with an infant at the playground who was barely crawling;
5. Clings instead to a steel column like a koala when you deny him the playground.
Alas, with clockwork consistency, that was what we got each time someone celebrates a birthday in his class. That meant loads of cake, cream, chocolates, candy rice, lollipops, cookies, brownies…
And the base ingredient of them all—the bright, illustrious, refined sugar.
Okay, okay, I know. There’s plenty of stuff online debunking this “myth”. But we’re keeping to it because we’ve been charting it closely and we’re pretty convinced there is something those articles might have missed. After reviewing 7 articles claiming to have debunked the sugar-high myth, we’d like to share a couple of observations.
For a start most of these articles have one thing in common: they claim it isn't right to think that sugar causes hyperactivity, so don’t go worrying about it. For kids whose hyperactivity isn’t congenital, we agree that sugar isn’t likely to give it to them. If it would our gentle, cola-loving friends would’ve been whirring Tasmanian devils.
Next, different articles cited 2 common sources—a research carried out in 1994 by the University of Iowa involving children who allegedly had sugar sensitivity and those who didn’t, and another study in 1984 involving children diagnosed with ADHD. Looking at this objectively, we noticed that the 1995 study involved only 48 children and the 1984 study involved only 16.
In all, a sampling of 64 children is hardly adequate evidence to debunk the sugar myth. Besides, one of the studies had a caveat: it wouldn’t completely rule out that sugar might have an effect on some children. Yet we’re surprised at how many articles had used them to back their claims.
Conversely, a study conducted by Yale University in 2015 suggested that increased sugar intake led to increased levels of adrenalin, which triggered restlessness and inattention in children diagnosed with ADHD. Survey size? 1,649 middle-school students.
And guess what? A study by King’s College London in August this year suggested a link between a high-fat, high-sugar diet during pregnancy and the development of ADHD in the child.
So who do we believe?
The correlation between diet and hyperactivity began in 1973 with allergist Dr. Benjamin Feingold advocating the removal of food additives (e.g. dyes and artificial flavours) from children’s diets for fear that they might lead to hyperactivity. This meant that if your child ran amok after consuming party food, sugar might not be the only culprit.
Perhaps it is prudent to refrain from succumbing to generalisations and blaming every behavioural problem on a single trigger. Hence, in keeping with the wise advice we’ve received from various sources, we try to observe and moderate.
In our case it wasn’t just the parties. Desserts and homemade snacks included—sugared biscuits, ice-cream, waffles and syrup, and—you’d be surprised—fruits. Yes, fruits that are high in fructose. Not all the time, but often enough for us to draw some co-relation. We believe it might have something to do with the quantity and the mood the child is in. So in observing his diet and disposition we’d have to abstain from certain foods and introduce them in controlled amounts.
I know, it’s hard, dreary work.
But we prefer to err on the side of caution. Give the sweet stuff as a treat, but it’s best not to do it with abandon just because a couple of a scientific studies indicated that it’s probably okay. Remember, it’s the other way round; studies often state the insufficiency of evidence to prove it’s a problem. They never concluded it isn’t one.
For this I reckon there’re two reasons: (1) the human body is mind-blowingly complex, and (2) your child is as unique as any individual can be.
One size simply doesn’t fit all.
Photo credit: Mrs Teepot via Foter.com