Parents urged to cut back on sugar

It comes as a survey, carried out by Netmums, found two-thirds of parents are worried about the amount of sugar in their children’s diets and nearly half believe their family consume too much sugar.

Health guidelines advise that 10 per cent of a person’s daily energy or calorie intake should be made up of sugar, but the Department of Health fear children aged four to 10-years-old are consuming far more.

Children aged between four and ten get 17 per cent of their daily sugar from soft drinks; 17 per cent from biscuits, buns, cakes, pastries and fruit pies, 14 per cent from confectionery, 13 per cent from fruit juice, and 8 per cent from breakfast cereals.

Public Health England’s Change4Life campaign will offer parents “sugar swap” tips including swapping ice cream for yoghurt and sugary drinks for sugar-free drinks and has been welcomed by a number of organisations including York Council.

Coun Linsay Cunningham-Cross, York Council’s cabinet member for health and community engagement, said: “We know from past campaigns that making simple swaps works and makes a real difference.”

Public Health England (PHE), ahead of the campaign launch, worked with Netmums and the University of Reading to advise 50 families on sugar swaps and found on average their sugar intake was reduced by 40 per cent over a month.

Professor Kevin Fenton, national director of health and wellbeing at PHE, said: “Reducing sugar intake is important for the health of our children both now and in the future. We are all eating too much sugar and the impact this has on our health is evident.”

Eating and drinking too much sugar can lead to obesity which can cause heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes in later life. It can also have a serious affect on dental health, with the National Dental Epidemiology Programme for England discovering tooth decay was the most common reason for hospital admissions for children aged five to nine in 2012-13.

Figures released by the Health and Social Care Information Centre last month found more than one in five children in reception class were classified as overweight or obese, while over a third of those in year 6 were overweight or obese in 2013/2014.

Parents can apply for a sugar swap pack by searching Change4Life online.