FoodBanter.com - View Single Post - Inconvenient truth to teach kids about sugar

Mark Thorson

wrote:
>
> Namely: It counts as sugar (and as something to be avoided)
> even when you can't quite taste it. Of course, to many kids,
> this seems horribly unfair.

Which it is. Sugar is believed to be a risk factor
for atherosclerosis, type 2 diabetes, and possibly
Alzheimer's disease because it causes oxidative
stress in the vascular endothelium. This mostly
occurs in adults. In normal children, this effect
is greatly reduced or absent because of their high
level of a natural antioxidant, tetrahydrobiopterin.

The only reason to deny sugar to non-obese children
is to train them to have food habits that will
benefit them in middle age. This may backfire, if
on becoming adults they indulge in the pleasures
denied them as children.