How Much Sugar for Kids? Understanding How Frequently to Offer Sweets
When it comes to kids and sugar, one of the most common questions I get is in regards to frequency: “How frequently should I offer sweets to my children so that sugar doesn’t feel like a forbidden fruit?”
How much sugar is too much for a kid?
This is a great question.
And I think as parents, what we’re ultimately looking for is the “right” answer. Because let’s face it: the topic of sugar and kids can be super uncomfortable for a lot of us. If you’ve had a tumultuous relationship with desserts or are healing from a disordered relationship with food and your body, the idea of allowing your own child to have sweets frequently can be, well...uncomfortable.
And if you’ve found yourself in this boat, please know you’re not alone.
Like all parents, you likely just want to get it “right”, to do the very best you can to support your child in growing up healthy and having a positive relationship with food.
But when it comes to food, there is no one “right way” to approach it. Thankfully, our children are already born with the programming they need to self-regulate their intake and to grow at a rate right for them. When it comes to our jobs with feeding, it has more to do with trusting our children to eat what they need from the foods we provide.
When it comes to sweets however, this can feel a bit trickier for parents to navigate, and for good reason! All the information out there is super confusing and often conflicting, making sweets feel like something chaotic to approach.
My aim with this post is to help empower you with the tools you need to navigate this question so you can understand what your child’s individual needs are when it comes to frequency with sugar exposure.
Because the truth of the matter is that your child’s needs around sweets may vary, depending on the circumstances and their individual needs.
Your job as a parent is not to micromanage your child’s intake or to prevent your child from accessing sweets. Instead, you can learn to be attuned to what your child’s needs may be in order to take a proactive approach in offering sweets intentionally and at a frequency that supports your child in building a positive relationship with all foods.
Let’s review this a little further below.
Understanding Parent and Child Roles With Sweets
When it comes to sweets and desserts, it’s important to have a broad overview of what your key jobs and responsibilities are as a parent.
Because when it comes to helping your child develop a positive relationship with all foods, building a trusting feeding relationship with your child is key. This involves taking a long-term view of feeding your child and understanding that how your child feels about food and eating is ultimately much more important than what they eat or the minutiae of what they eat.
So what does this break down to?
It comes to following through with your jobs when it comes to feeding and trusting your children to do their parts with eating.
What does this look like with sweets and desserts specifically?
This means taking the initiative to intentionally incorporate sweets into your meals and snacks for your children and trusting them to do their part with eating.
Trusting your child to eat at meals and snacks means:
Providing a variety of foods, including sweets
Offering foods to your children without any stipulations or rules (i.e: requiring a child to eat so much food from the meal before being allowed to have a dessert, having to eat vegetables first, etc)
Not micromanaging your child when eating or trying to limit your child from eating certain foods, especially sweets and desserts
Creating a supportive environment through which your child can learn how to self-regulate sweets. This can include avoiding negative language around sweets, offering structure by providing sweets alongside meals and snacks, etc.
Being aware of your child’s individual needs that might indicate a higher frequency of sugar exposure is necessary.
Let’s talk about some of the road blocks that can make it challenging for a parent to regularly offer sweets and desserts to their children, at least at a frequency that feels satisfying and supportive.
Because more often than not, I find that parents approach sugar with much restraint - meaning, there’s usually more of an active role to try to restrict and limit exposure to sweets, whether in the home or elsewhere versus creating deliberate attempts to legalize sweets by offering it more intentionally and proactively.
Why might this be the case?
It’s important to address the elephant in the room, especially if you’re hoping to support your child in building a positive relationship with all foods, including sweets.
This is also an important step for helping you legalize sugar in your home and for decreasing any obsession your child may be experiencing around sweets. Your child needs to feel your unconditional permission to eat what they need to feel satisfied and content, and if you’re hesitant or still on the fence about offering sweets to your child, it’s going to make it a lot more difficult for your child to feel more neutral about desserts.
So what are the common roadblocks for parents when it comes to offering sweets more frequently in their home?
Here are some of the reasons why offering sweets to your child more frequently may be more challenging for you:
You’re concerned about your child’s overall sugar intake and how this might affect their health
You’re worried about your child’s body size and how sugar might affect their weight
You suspect sugar may have a direct impact on your child’s overall behavior
You’ve received comments from family members, friends, and/or health professionals who’ve warned or shamed you for allowing your child to eat sweets
You feel overwhelmed or confused by the information currently available around sugar and children’s health
You worry about the possibility of your child becoming addicted to sugar {link to blog}
You fear your child may become out of control with eating sugar if they do get exposure to it
You have a history of disordered eating or an eating disorder, which may make it more challenging to fully trust your child with sweets, especially if desserts were previously trigger foods for you.
All of these fears are valid and important to be aware of.
You’re not a bad parent for experiencing any of these concerns. If fact, having these concerns shows how much you care and your desire to raise a healthy child.
Diet culture has demonized sugar and sweets, making these foods much more complicated than they need to be, as misinformation around these foods and how to approach them only creates more chaos and confusion.
I want to help you move past these fears so you can support your child in building a healthy relationship with sweets.
Because the reality is, you might be able to control and limit the sweets in your home, but this doesn’t set your child up for success in a world where sweets readily exist. Taking the big picture view is necessary for understanding the importance of moving into a proactive role in legalizing sugar in our home and being intentional about offering sweets more frequently, rather than acting as a gatekeeper that is limiting and restricting sweets at all costs.
I want to specifically address a couple common misconceptions as it relates to offer sweets more frequently, and that includes:
Will a higher frequency of sugar exposure cause children to become unhealthy?
Can kids be trusted to eat sugar and sweets? (Won’t they just want MORE sugar with the more they get exposed to it?)
Let’s dive into this briefly, because it’s important to help you work through the information clutter and help you feel more confident in moving into a proactive role in offering sweets more frequently to your child.
Is Frequent Sugar Exposure Bad for My Child’s Health?
First, let’s look at the first question here: will a higher frequency of sugar exposure cause your child to become unhealthy? Sugar has often been the culprit of many diseases, including type 2 diabetes in children.
Fears that stem from uncertainty around sugar’s impact on health can lead parents to strictly control sweets and engage in restrictive feeding practices with their children - not to hurt them in any way - but from a place of well-intention.
No parent wants their children to grow up unhealthy or to struggle, physically, emotionally or mentally. Yet with the plethora of information out there, including overwhelming fear-mongering around sugar, cutting out or minimizing sugar may seem like the best option.
Interestingly, there is no nutrition research that justifies cutting out sugar entirely. Many research studies promote the idea that a minimal intake of sugar is associated with better health. But take a look at this excerpt from Christy Harrison’s book, Anti-Diet:
“The way the general public (and even some health professionals) interpret this emerging science, it’s as if everyone in the lowest quintile of sugar consumption was eating zero sugar. But that’s not the case at all. In fact, according to the evidence we have to date linking sugar with cardiovascular disease, the people in the quintile with the lowest added-sugar consumption (who, remember, have the lowest risk of getting or dying from heart disease) consume an amount of added sugar equivalent to eating some sweetened foods at every meal and every snack, and having dessert every day.”
I love the breakdown of this because it normalizes a frequent and regular consumption of sweets while squashing the myth that poor health is the result of a higher sugar intake.
In our dieting culture, a low sugar intake has come to mean literally eat no sugar, when in reality, what’s quantified as a low sugar intake associated with the lowest disease risk (at least in the research studies we have) is having some form of added sugar with every meal and snack plus dessert.
It’s clear that our perception on sugar intake and health has been warped by diet culture, and the reality is these beliefs can cause us to limit our children’s exposure to sugar to an amount that is below reasonable expectation.
As a result of this, it’s easier to offer children sugar at a much lower frequency than what they reasonably need to feel satisfied with it and to learn how to self-regulate their intake of sweets in a world where sugar abounds.
What does this mean?
Generally, sweets aren’t offered frequently enough to not feel like a forbidden fruit.
Kids might see them occasionally, but not enough to truly believe and understand these foods are an indefinite part of their future. In fact, lack of exposure to sugar can be a contributing factor to an obsession with sweets and sugar for children.
It’s important to remember the effects of restricting or too tightly controlling any foods, particularly sweets.
When kids don’t get enough exposure to sweets, they’re more likely to overeat them at the times they do get access to them. This is where I tend to see children overeat desserts at birthday parties or holidays where sweets are available.
They may go crazy and actually overeat sweets in one sitting because they don’t trust they’ll get to have them again anytime soon.
When sweets feel sacred, they’re more likely to be coveted, hoarded, sneaked, and overeaten. Whereas a child who gets regular exposure to sweets has a better capability to eat according to internal cues of hunger and satiety.
Eating in this manner is better for your child's health over the long-run and also supports a decreased risk of disease and health complications. Not only will your child’s health be okay when you offer sweets more frequently, they’ll also have a decreased risk of disordered eating and overall better self-esteem and trust in themselves.
If you’re still not convinced and needing more information to help decrease any fears you have around frequent sweet exposure and your child's health, be sure to check out this post here: “5 Myths About Sugar and Kids: Sugar and Diabetes Myth Vs Fact”
Trusting Children to Self-Regulate Sugar Intake
A second common concern I hear from parents around this concept of offering sweets more frequently is fear this might trigger an urge for a child to eat MORE sweets.
Doesn’t more frequent exposure equal a higher appetite for these foods? Can kids really be trusted to eat and self-regulate a higher frequency of sweets without it somehow disrupting their cues?
The good news here is that your child can absolutely be trusted to eat and self-regulate their intake, including a variety of sweets (yes, sweets, too!).
The key here is having permission to do so. You see, children are born with the internal programming to eat according to hunger and satiety cues. They don’t view food in a hierarchy or with polarization of “good versus bad” foods. Their criteria for eating is much simpler: Are these foods satisfying? Appealing? Enjoyable?
Until a child experiences a sense of scarcity or deprivation around food, or is introduced to a polarized perspective with foods, their internal regulators are wholly intact and their guiding map for their appetite and food intake.
Some people like to point at animal research studies, as some have shown that food can be addictive, particularly sugar. (You can actually read a separate post all about this here: “Sugar Addiction Myth: Is My Child Addicted to Sugar?”
When we look closer at these research studies supposedly showing animals being driven to eat sugary foods, we find something very interesting. Animals who were actually deprived of food or only allowed intermittent access to sugar were essentially driven to eat more of these foods when exposed to them. In reality, what we really see happening is deprivation being a core trigger for binge eating.
Another way to look at this is by considering how we respond to things when they’re new and exciting.
I mean, let’s take Thanksgiving dinner for example. It’s an enormous spread of foods that we commonly will only see all together once per year. No wonder we tend to overeat - simply for fear of missing out on all the great foods we may not see (or eat again) for another whole year! Now, what if we literally ate Thanksgiving dinner every single night of our lives. My guess is you wouldn’t be as thrilled about seeing a plate of turkey and stuffing, right?
More exposure over time wears off the novelty of food, especially sweets and desserts.
Now, this doesn’t mean your child won’t still feel excited about eating sweets (which hey - that’s not a bad thing, actually totally normal!).
It just means when desserts are no longer a novelty for your children, they’re better able to eat for internal reasons (according to their cues) rather than fear of missing out (externally driven reasons).
Just think back to our Thanksgiving dinner example - if pumpkin pie was on the menu every single night, it wouldn’t be so thrilling after awhile. Sure, you’d eat it if you were hungry for it, but not simply because the opportunity presented itself.
Kids operate in the same way.
When they trust sweets are an indefinite part of their future because they are exposed to them frequently enough, this will nip the drive to eat sweets simply because the opportunity is there.
In fact, I see this in my own children and with the families I work with all the time, where kids will start to leave bites of their desserts behind on their plates and are better able to self-regulate what they need because there’s no fear of deprivation around these foods.
So to summarize, here are some benefits of offering sweets more frequently to your children:
You will help normalize sugar and sweets for your children, allowing them to better learn how to self-regulate their food intake
Decreasing risk of disordered eating and binge eating sweets
Promote body trust and higher self-esteem
Prevent feelings of scarcity and deprivation around sweets
Decrease risk of an unhealthy obsession with sweets
How Frequently Should You Offer Sweets to Your Kids?
Before we look at some factors that can help you decipher how frequently to proactively offer sweets to your children, let’s first define what it means to offer sweets more frequently and what it doesn’t mean. I’m all about clearing up any confusion, so let’s dive into this first so there’s no misunderstanding.
Taking a step to offer sweets for your child more frequently means you’re:
Creating a safe and supportive environment by offering regular meals and snacks
Intentionally incorporating sweets alongside your child’s meals and/or snacks
Moving into a proactive role by putting sweets on the menu with other foods
Adding desserts with meals and/or snacks before your child even has to ask
Giving your child unconditional permission to eat the amounts and portions they need from the foods you provide, including the sweet part
Not micromanaging or policing your children while they eat
Avoiding polarizing language around sweets and desserts
Not using sweets as rewards
Offering sweets more frequently for your child does not mean:
Giving in to their every requests for candy and sweets
Giving free rein of the pantry
Letting your children eat sweets whenever they want
Letting your children eat whatever sweets they want
Not caring about your child’s health
So now that we’ve cleared out some of the clutter and confusion around offering sweets more frequently to children, let’s get into the nitty gritty.
How frequently might your child need to get sweets?
We’ve established this most likely is more frequently than what you might currently be offering.
Generally, offering daily is not only an appropriate frequency but often necessary to help subside any anxieties your child may have about sweets not being available.
But within this context, it’s important to consider other factors as well:
First, what’s going on with your child? Is your child showing high interest in sweets? A high interest in sweets may look like:
Asking repeatedly for more sweets
Asking repeatedly about a specific type of sweet (candy, popsicles, etc)
Hiding or hoarding sweets
Child is sneaking sweets, eating them in secret and lying about it
Wanting more of a certain sweet after eating given portion
Child might appear distressed or visibly upset when sweets aren’t available
These are just some examples of cues to look for that would indicate your child has a higher interest in sweets, therefore needing a higher exposure to sweets.
Remember, this may feel counterintuitive, because the tendency is to withhold sweets and tighten the grip on them when we see our children showing a higher interest in sweets. But in actuality, our children showing a higher level of interest in sweets is actually an indication they need more frequent exposure to them, not less.
Another important factor to consider when determining how frequently to offer sweets to your child is to consider outside circumstances: what is happening around your child’s environment that may naturally increase their interest in sweets?
This includes things such as birthday parties, candy-centered holidays (think Halloween, Easter, etc), or even events at school where a higher influx of sweets will be present. In these situations, your child’s interest in sugar is going to peak, simply due to the fact that it’s part of their surroundings. So when we can anticipate these situations are coming, we want to make the intentional effort to offer sweets more frequently, knowing our children will most likely be thinking about them while being exposed to them.
So in summary, you want to observe what is happening in your child (signs of a higher interest in sweets) and the surrounding environment your child is in to help you decipher when a higher frequency of sugar exposure is necessary to support self-regulation of sweets in a healthy way.
A child’s interest in sugar may waver over time, so being aware of what’s happening can help cue you in in how to take the lead with a proactive approach to sweets.
What might frequent sugar exposure may look like?
Now again, it’s important to clarify what it means to proactively offer a higher frequency of sweets. Be sure to reference the section above. It does not mean just giving your child the candy bag and letting them go to town.
Remember, kids do best with a supportive approach to food, and that absolutely includes sweets.
So a supportive approach to offering sweets more frequently for your children means intentionally including sweets more often within the context of their meals and snacks so they can trust these sweets are part of their indefinite future.
When they start to see them more frequently alongside other foods they’re already used to seeing, it will help the fixation, preoccupation and obsession around them decrease. For some children, the decrease happens slowly, for others, it happens more quickly. What’s most important is to be consistent in offering repeatedly and frequently over time.
Here are some specific examples of how you can incorporate sweets more frequently for your children, in a manner that offers both support and structure:
Here are some examples of what increasing the frequency exposure to sweets in your home for your children might look like:
Offering the same sweet your child is showing a high interest in multiple times in one day alongside meals and snacks (this can be especially helpful during times of a high influx of candy, like around Halloween, Easter, etc - where you’re offering candy with meals and snacks multiple times throughout the week)
Offering sweets back to back (for example, giving a sweet with afternoon snack and then again at dinner. This can be helpful to implement if you caught your child sneaking sweets or secretly eating.)
Switching it up, offering it at random times your child wouldn’t expect within the context of the meal and snack routine (For an example of this, check out my blog post here: “I'm a Dietitian and This is Why I Let My Kids Eat Candy For Breakfast”
Offering and intentionally putting it on the menu
Offering designated times where a greater quantity of sweets is offered, like offering a plate of cookies as part of a snack and allowing your child to decide how many to eat
These are just some ideas to help you get started, and ultimately, you can find what works best with your family.
The most important role is to move into this proactive role of offering sweets more frequently and being intentional about doing this when you notice: 1) Your child showing a higher interest in sweets, and 2) Circumstances around your child that may involve a higher influx of sweets.
How to Get Started With Offering Sweets More Frequently
If you’re just diving into this approach and feeling slightly overwhelmed, take it one step at a time.
A good place to start is where you and your family are and with what you’re currently doing. How frequently are you offering sweets now?
Maybe consider offering sweets one step more frequently than you’re currently doing. Try offering something your child is showing interest in alongside a meal or snack. Remember, even offering daily at a meal or snack time is more than okay, and offering it alongside meals can give your child the supportive approach they need to help normalize sweets.
If you’ve previously taken a restrictive approach to sweets and are looking to normalize this in your home for your children, know you’re taking a brave step forward to helping your child build a positive relationship with all foods.
It’s not uncommon for children to get really excited about eating the sweet portion of their meals when sweets have been liberalized in the home. You can read more about this here: “My Child Eats Too Much Sugar: Learn About the Dessert Pendulum Effect”
I hope this helps give you some confidence in how to approach sweets with your child and how to decipher how frequently to offer.
This may take some trial and error to figure out what works best for your family, and that’ s okay! Give yourself plenty of grace through the journey - it’s about progress, not perfection. For more support, connect with me today, and know you’re not alone through this journey. You’re taking brave steps forward to support your children in building a positive relationship with all foods.