Episode 26: Sweeteners in our Children's Food

Episode 26: Sweeteners in our Children's Food

Hey there, and welcome to The Easy Feed Podcast! This time, we will explore a topic many parents are curious about: sweeteners in our kids' food and whether they're safe.As a mum, I understand the importance of making well-informed decisions about what our little ones consume. So, shall we get started?

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Links
https://nourishwithkarina.com/feedingbabies
https://nourishwithkarina.com/3-week-feeding-kids-reset

Highlights:

Introduction (00:00.462)
Sweeteners in Food and Beverages: A Hot Topic (00:30.766)
Understanding Sweeteners and Health Risks (02:51.79)
Consumer Beware of Artificial Sweeteners (05:10.446)
Avoiding Artificial Sweeteners in Dietary Products (07:30.894))
Training Children's Taste Buds: A Concern (09:51.918)
The Dangers of Dietary Sweeteners (12:16.366)
Nutritional Guidelines and Awareness (14:31.47)
Healthy Sweetening Strategies (16:51.758)
Understanding the Impact of Sweeteners (19:12.686)

Show notes

READ TRANSCRIPT

Show Notes

Hey there, and welcome to The Easy Feed Podcast! This time, we will explore a topic many parents are curious about: sweeteners in our kids' food and whether they're safe. As a mum, I understand the importance of making well-informed decisions about what our little ones consume. So, shall we get started?

In this episode, we discuss:

1. The Sweetener Surge : We'll delve into the widespread use of artificial sweeteners in today's food products, particularly those marketed towards children, and the concerns surrounding their long-term effects.

2.Understanding the Sweetener Spectrum: Differentiate between artificial and nutritive sweeteners, exploring their compositions, uses, and potential health implications.

3. Unpacking Health Risks : uncovering the potential health risks associated with their consumption, including gut microbiome disruptions and immune system impacts.

4. Navigating Parental Choices Get actionable advice on how to navigate the grocery aisles, decipher food labels, and make conscious choices that prioritize your family's well-being and nutritional needs.

If you are concerned about how sweeteners can affect your child's health, and wish to make informed decisions about their nutrition, then this episode is for you. To learn more about nourishing your kids, and gain access to valuable insights and resources.

Learn more about my membership program, head over to: https://nourishwithkarina.com/membership

Introduction (00:00.046)
We're all listening to the Easy Feed podcast, episode number 26, Sweeteners in our children's food. Are they safe? Hi there, I'm Karina Savage and with over 20 years experience feeding children, including my own, I've learned all the secrets that busy mums need to get their children eating better and actually enjoying healthy foods. So a huge welcome to the Easy Feed podcast.
Sweeteners in Food and Beverages: A Hot Topic (00:30.766)
Welcome back, welcome back. It's so great to have you. I hope you're really, really well. I hope you had a beautiful Easter weekend and you have gotten back into this short week well. Anyway, today we are talking about a hot topic. I was actually on Channel 7 Sunrise this morning. And for those of you that are not in Australia, that is, I think the greatest breakfast morning show on television. Not biased.
that we chatted this morning on artificial sweeteners because sweeteners have absolutely exploded in our food, in our beverages, which means drinks. Over the last 20 years they've really exploded and the question is, are they actually safe for us? Our food authorities would have us believe that they're safe because they are
allowed to be put into our food that are marketed to our children as well, which I think is a real concern, not only to our health, but to our children's health. So whilst they're deemed as safe and are in our foods, are they actually safe? And that's what I want to dive into a little more today, because when you look at the research, when you look at the different sweeteners, whether they're the artificial sweeteners or the non -nutritive sweeteners, there's a whole range of sweeteners out there.
I beg to differ that they're safe and I think that we should be really mindful about how much of these sweeteners we're consuming or our children are consuming. For many years now, people have used these diet soft drinks and diet products with sweeteners in them to help manage their weight. And interestingly, the World Health Organization came out last year, they did a
big review of all of the studies and the literature around weight loss and sweeteners. And they found that sweeteners do not help people to lose weight or keep their weight off. So there's no recommendation there for the use of sweeteners. And in fact, they did have warning around their potential health risk to people consuming significant amounts of sweeteners because
Understanding Sweeteners and Health Risks (02:51.79)
Yeah, there's, when you start digging, there's some pretty alarming stuff that pops up around sweeteners and health risks and I'll go into those later. So what are sweeteners? Well, sweeteners can either be, or they're generally synthetically made and you can really, I guess, separate them into two camps. You've got the artificial sweeteners and those are things like the Spartane or Iksacarine, otherwise known as Equal.
or sucralose, which is in like Splenda. and then you've got the non -nutritive sweeteners, which are often sugar alcohol. So things like erythritol or steveol or xylitol or mannitol or sovetol. So you've got two different types of sweeteners, but really at the end of the day, in both of those kind of camps, there are sweeteners that are definitely linked to health concerns. Now these sweeteners are often hundreds to
thousands times sweeter than sugar. And so they're only needed in small amounts, but the thing is they're still potentially harmful to us, especially if we're consuming multiple products across the day that are sweetened with these ingredients. And same thing for our children. Our children are consuming lots of no added sugar, muesli bars, or
More sugar, tomato sauces or Zupa Dupas that are no added sugar. And you think, yeah, they're the healthy option, but then they've got this sweetness in them. So are we actually doing the right thing by our children by consuming these low sugar, no added sugar products? We're told that we need to reduce our children's sugar intake and granted, yeah, I'm one of these people that says, you know, don't have too much sugar, but I'm also all about having a little bit of sugar and not being completely.
no sugar because that doesn't work either long -term, especially from a psychological perspective. But with that message sometimes comes perhaps that those no sugar products that are chosen to, you know, fit with that low sugar lifestyle. But at the end of the day, I think we really need to be second guessing our purchasing behaviors around those low sugar, no sugar.
Consumer Beware of Artificial Sweeteners (05:10.446)
usually about, so my kids love some of them. There's some ones at the moment, the no -shoe ones, that they love them and it says on the packet low sugar, like 2 .6 grams of sugar per bar, but then you flip the label around and you see the gazillion ingredients in there and erythritol is one of those and that's one of those sweeteners that you've linked to health problems and so I'm definitely not going to be buying them for my children. I'm definitely not going to be, I mean I actually looked in my cupboard
required to go into the studios this morning just to see if there's anything else that I can throw into the bag. I actually went to Woolies last night and it was kind of embarrassing because I had this basket absolutely chock full of crap food basically, pardon the pun, pardon the language, but it was full of like diet soft drinks and Atkins like, you know, peanut little cups and treats and you know, all these stuff that
I was just like, this is like bad. So there was another one there touching me, but maybe I was a little bit too sensitive on that. There was another one there judging me. But anyway, I was there, I got all the stuff and then this morning I was like, is there anything else that I can grab just to show? And I did, I grabbed a tomato sauce that was a, it was a Heinz 50 % reduced salt and sugar and that had one of those sugar polyols in it. I think it might've been sweet and tall.
And then I think that was about it because I've been really trying hard to avoid purchasing Louis products since I did this big review. I was a number of months ago. And in fact, I've also recorded a podcast on artificial flavors, colors, preservatives. So you might want to check that one out too. If you're interested in this episode, you'd be interested in that one too.
And I did do some research on sweetness for that, but even prior to that, I started to become cautious of these because yeah, I just think that there needs to be a lot more research that goes on and look at the end of the day. One study will show this, one study will show that. And you know, especially if the research is funded by, you know, these artificial sweetening companies, it's so dodgy and so biased. And I think we need to really.
Avoiding Artificial Sweeteners in Dietary Products (07:30.894)
take those results with a grain of salt anyway. So on the whole, the evidence to me is pretty strong that we should be avoiding artificial sweeteners. Not only those synthetic artificial sweeteners, but the non -nutritive sweeteners as well. So when I say artificial sweeteners, I mean the ones like in diet, Coke, Pepsi Max, those types of things. So you've got aspartame, you've got asulfamine, you've got
Your saccharin, your sucralose, which is in like your prime drinks and some of your low sugar chocolate milks. You've got those Mr. Muscle drinks. You've got heaps of, you know, supposedly healthy, low sugar diet alternatives, but they all are loaded with these artificial sweeteners, all these non -nutritive sweeteners like xylitol or erythritol, like remedy kibbutzsche's got erythritol in it or stevia glycoside.
Often with steveol and stevia and monkfoot, they put it with erythritol and erythritol is one of those ones that is shown to clot your blood and increase your risk of heart attack and stroke. And so, yeah, I think we need to be watching our purchase behaviors, especially with those artificial sweeteners or non -nutritive sweeteners. So sometimes they're not written as aspartame or saccharin or sucralose. They're actually written as numbers.
So if you see anything like with a nine five in front of it, nine five one, nine five four, nine five five, I'd leave it on the shelf because it's going to have one of those artificial sweeteners. The non -nutritive sweeteners or things like erythritol, stevia or sorbitol, they actually need to be written as the word so they won't have a number attached to those. So you'll actually see that written in the ingredients list.
And they'll tend to be at the end of the ingredients list because ingredients are always listed from the largest ingredient in the product down to the smallest ingredient in the product. And so because these sweeteners are so, so highly concentrated in sweetness, they'll be one of the last ingredients in the product. But this is another issue because even though we're buying these, you know, low sugar, sugar -free products,
Training Children's Taste Buds: A Concern (09:51.918)
We're training our taste buds or our children's taste buds, which is more concerning because they're kids and their taste bud development and their taste preferences as kids, they carry those with them into adulthood. If we're training our kids taste buds to prefer or have lots of those sweet foods, chemically, artificially sweetened or not, then they're likely to have more of those sweet foods as an adult and either they're going to be
eating a lot more sugar as an adult, which is not healthy. Or they're going to be having all these sweeteners as an adult, which is also not healthy. So either way, giving our kids, even if it says low sugar or no sugar, giving our kids lots of those is not going to work in their favor because either they're going to eat more sugar in an adult or they're going to have problems related to having these sweeteners as an adult or risk having problems, I should say. Because the evidence is pretty bad. The more you look, the more you find.
The more Alanna and Juara and this is not I am sharing this with you guys because I want you to be informed. I want you to know how to nourish your kids. And look, you know, I've got a whole membership on me. This is just, you know, one snippet of what I share in my membership, but it's, it's about making sure that we are as parents. Informed and nourishing our kids as best we can. And obviously life is busy and my kids will still hit me up for things that have these sweeteners in them.
And I think at the end of the day, you know, if they're having a bit here and a bit there, then that's the best you can do. Well, I mean, of course you could keep it out completely, but if they're having a little bit here and there, that's not going to be as risky as having the low sugar, no sugar products multiple times a day. And usually by low sugar icebox, low sugar sources, diet soft drinks, as I said, even those kombucha drinks, some of those are the null added sugar with chocolate milks and
Rogat as well, you can get no sugar. Rogat at the Yoplait that has the artificial sweetener in it as well. So that, that got a gig on Sun Eyes this morning because yeah, they're just real number of foods that have all of this stuff in them that could be potentially dangerous. So I'm all about having a little bit of the real proper stuff, the real food, the ingredient that your grandmother would know what it meant.
The Dangers of Dietary Sweeteners (12:16.366)
and just having less of it rather than having more of these diet products, which A, your grandmother wouldn't know what bad ingredients it was and B, we still don't know how harmful it could be. Look, there's links with one of the sweeteners, sucralose, being linked to changing your DNA. Saccharin's been linked to cancer. As I said, the erythritol has been linked to blood clotting and increased risk of heart disease and stroke. So there's stuff out there that's pretty scary. And when you look at
you say American guidelines and food authorities, their terminology is grass, generally regarded as safe. And I'm thinking that doesn't really make me feel that secure or happy about either my son or my kids consuming those ingredients. Another bad thing about these sweetness is they change your gut microbes. They worsen.
your gut microbiota and the balance of gut microbes, the good bugs and the bad bugs. So they will increase your risk of gut problems. And they also increase your risk of gut bloating and symptoms of gas and wind and whatnot. Because often if it's like the sugar alcohols, for example, sorbitol, they don't get to adjust and absorbed well. And so they end up in the large bowel where they get fermented by your gut microbes and they can produce a lot of gas.
and bloating. And so if you are prone to a bit of an irritable bowel or your child is prone to being pretty gassy, then these non -nutritive sweeteners, these sugar alcohols are likely to firmly exacerbate any gut symptoms. And as I said, they can actually change your gut microbes and they can actually change your immune health and actually worsen it. And your gut microbes are responsible for what
how you metabolize and digest food or I should say the rest digest and metabolize food. So if we are changing our gut microbiome or the environment in our gut for the worse, then that's going to have a negative impact not on our immune health, but our risk of diseases and conditions such as those that I've talked about. So yeah, it's a nightmare. Like I really feel very struggling passionately and
Nutritional Guidelines and Awareness (14:31.47)
The more I talk about it, the more I want to talk about it. Look, I had after the segment this morning, I've already had some really positive feedback about the segment. I had a doctor contact me on Instagram saying, you like that's the best segment I've seen. Yeah. I don't know if it was ever or in a long time on, on sunrise and commending me on giving such a clear succinct, you know, explanation around sweetness. And I think raising awareness because.
Because our food authorities allow them in our food. We just think they're okay. And we've been so conditioned by the whole, well, it used to be low fat and actually Matt Shervington, one of the co -hosts, he said to me, it used to be low fat and now it's low sugar. And I was like, yeah, I know it's, we just need to have a balance of all the food groups. Eat healthy, keep it simple, keep it basic, keep it whole foods. None of these synthetic, rubbish ingredients that we're putting into our bodies that we don't know what.
really they're going to do to us long term. I don't care how many studies say they're good or bad. If they are fake and synthetic and they don't come from food, then really are we really supposed to have them? And you might say to me, yeah, but stevia extract comes from food, but yeah, but they will often usually put it with erythritol. And that's the thing that, you know, when you put erythritol in a test tube with blood, it clots your platelets and increases your risk of having a heart attack. And so no, thank you. I don't want stevia mixed with erythritol. So
Yeah, you just got to be really, really careful. I'm barely breaking you out right now. I don't mean to make you feel guilty about what your child eats. I just want you to be informed and know that you can always make changes. So for example, I had two yogurts there today on TV. We had a diet one, which had all the rubbish in it. And then we just had a regular yoghurt, had a bit of sugar in it. I'm like, better to go for the regular yoghurt. We had...
a couple of diet, low sugar, usually nice. And then I had some regular mizuba, so some better ones. So I had the Carmans, the Carmans basic ones. And then I had the taste ones and they actually have no added sugar. They are sweetened with dates. So, and I also actually on the segment, I did have a section where we talked about using natural sweetness, using honey, using maple syrup.
Healthy Sweetening Strategies (16:51.758)
Using dates, cranberries, dried fruit, fresh fruit to sweeten things. Because not only are you bringing natural sweetness, but you're also bringing other vitamins. And if you're throwing in fresh fruit or dried fruit, you're bringing in fiber. So it's always better to sweeten food with food ingredients, foods or ingredients that you know, you know are actually, well, I should say foods that you know are natural, are healthy.
And yes, they're high in sugar, but you just have a bit less of them. So it's always better to go natural and a bit lower, little bit of real sugar, real stuff, rather than more of the fake stuff. So the next time you're in the supermarket, grab that muesli bar pack, flip it around and just look, look for words like sugar, glucose, they're the no basic, real sugars that I would encourage you to choose, but...
then I would look to the sugar per serve and try and keep it around five grams of sugar per serve or less. Okay. So you would look to the ingredients list first to make sure that it's actually real. Like it might be honey, it might be sugar, it might be glucose syrup. So make sure it's firstly real sugar and then try and keep it below five grams per serve. The cereals and you could also probably apply this to music bells as well. I would try and keep it
always look per hundred grams and aim for less than 20. I mean, if you can get less than 15 grams of sugar per hundred grams, you're doing really well. I mean, Weebix is three, Oats is zero, so they're amazing, but often kids cereals are really laden with sugar. So yeah, look at the sugar per hundred grams and aim for under 20 or under 15 if you can. And so that's for breakfast cereals and muesli bars. But with muesli bars, if you want to look per se as well, then try and aim for under five grams.
Try to make sure that that sweetness comes from a real food, not an Aretha Rutole or the Spartame or a Sucralose or any of those, you know, Sucralose is in Prime Imaging Drinks or Prime Drinks. So just be really mindful of those too. So stick to whole food ingredients that you know, try to keep the ingredients as short as possible. So for example, those taste misubas that I talked to, sorry, the Tasty T -A -S -T -A. There's a...
Understanding the Impact of Sweeteners (19:12.686)
five ingredients in that measly bar, which is amazing compared to some of the other ones I was talking about, which have like about 25 ingredients. You'll be really surprised too. We'll talk about other foods and other bread crumbs. You'll be super surprised if you flip around a packet of bread crumbs and look at just how many ingredients are in some bread crumbs. It's a phenomenal. So just take a quick squiz at the ingredients list and then look at the sugars. Try and keep it low.
And just remember if you're, if you're a home, you can always use natural sugars to sweeten. So you can use dried fruit and honey and maple syrup and those things that we talked about with drinks for adults. I would always use like a soda water or sparkling water rather than a diet or a sugar free. And look, if you really craved a bit of, you know, Coca -Cola or Pepsi or something, I would actually just have a little bit of the real stuff.
rather than a lot of the fake stuff because a little bit of the real stuff is going to be less harmful to your health than a lot of the fake stuff. So those people that are guzzling, you know, two or three cans or bottles of diet drinks a day because they need the heat and they think it's okay because it's diet and sugar, sugar -free. Just be really careful because it could potentially be causing you more harm than you realize. So where possible, just try to reduce it.
If you can't get it out completely, just reduce it. Or sometimes swap for those other drinks such as, you know, soda water or sparkling water. Okey dokey, I will wrap it up there. I hope that's been an affirmative little 101 on sweetness. I do apologize. I'm sorry. I don't mean to freak you out. If I rewind 12 months, I'm sure my cupboard was, I've met my fill with these low sugar, no sugar products. And so, you know, please don't feel guilty about
what is in your cupboard because I was there too. It's just the more informed you become, the more freaked out you become by sweetness. So I've strategically ousted them out of my pantry and fridge and I've actually just replaced them with the stuff that's got a little bit of sugar in it and just try to balance it out with the healthier stuff. So as I said, I've got all of this information and healthy snacks and how to feed kids basically 101 in my membership. So feel free to check out the show notes. You can head to my website nourishwithkarina.com .org slash membership. Check out the membership. It is open to new moms, new members. I would love to welcome you into the group. It's such a fun group. We have such fantastic chat in our private Facebook group and our calls are so fun. Our monthly Zoom calls, we cover so much ground. So.
Yeah, love you. Love you to check that out. Please join. We'd love to have you. And I will chat to you next week. I hope that's been helpful one and I hope you have a beautiful week. Bye for now.