How To Address Sugar In Your Child’s Diet and Avoid Chronic Health Issues

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show, I am Dr. Nicole, and on today’s episode, we’re talking about sugar and the many mental and physical health problems that it can cause. Kids today eat more sugar than ever before, and many parents are unaware of just how problematic that can be. We all kind of laugh about kids at birthday parties who eat too much sugar, they get hyper, then they get grumpy, but the reality is that the diets of most kids on a regular basis include levels of sugar that can cause not only acute, but more chronic problems. And it’s not just the amount of sugar we need to be concerned about, it’s the types of sugar as well. So to help us understand how sugar is impacting our kids, and the very practical things we can do to reduce sugar in our diet, I’ve invited the authors of the brand new book ‘Sugarproof’ on the show today. Dr. Michael Goran and Dr. Emily Ventura have a wealth of experience with this topic and are going to leave us inspired to make changes. 

Let me tell you a little bit about them. Michael Goran, Ph.D. is one of the world’s most widely-recognized experts in childhood nutrition and obesity research, with more than 30 years of experience as a researcher, mentor and educator. He is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, co-director of the USC Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, and leads the Program in Diabetes and Obesity at Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles, he’s also the father of two daughters. Dr. Emily Ventura is an experienced nutrition educator, public health advocate, writer and cook. She completed her masters in public health and her PhD in health behavior research at The University of Southern California. She was selected as a Fulbright scholar to teach public health nutrition in Italy, and now lives in California where she works as a writer, recipe developer, and as a mother to two young boys, Michael and Emily, welcome to the show!

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

Thank you, what a pleasure to be here with you today, thank you so much for your interest in Sugarproof. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

It’s a great book, it’s very needed and I’m thrilled to be able to have you on to talk about it. I’m going to start by — both of you have a wealth of experience around this topic and working with children and nutrition and all of these things, but I’m curious to know: What was your main motivation for writing Sugarproof, which is a book that focuses specifically on the nutritional and health impacts of sugar?

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

Well, I think you covered a lot of that in your introductory comments, actually. It was through our research that we were discovering a couple of Aha moments that you mentioned. We know kids are consuming more sugar than ever, but it was the realization also that you are consuming different types of sugar. We will get into that conversation in detail. And it’s those different types of sugar that are causing problems. You know there are a couple of big things going on that created a perfect storm, that each by themselves wouldn’t be too bad: Number one, kids are consuming more sugar, number two, different types of sugar, number three, those different types of sugar have disruptive effects, specifically on childhood development. So it was through our research and other people’s research that it kind of came to this realization that all these sugars and different types of sugar were actually being very disruptive. Some of those disruptive effects, and obviously, like you mentioned, the obvious highs and lows, but also through our research, seeing that some of the seeds of long term chronic disease instilled in childhood and cause by sugar, and then the other aspect of this was the realization that kids are drawn to sugar, and that’s biological. Kids are born with a preference for sugar, and it was supposed to protect them. It was supposed to make them like breastmilk and avoid toxic foods. But in today’s food environment, it’s just not working. It has backfired. 

So I wanted to put all that together and basically trying to accelerate the research. And the research has been fruitful, but what I really want to do is translate all of that for the public, for families who are struggling with this, and not just translate the science, but offer real practical, simple solutions that would work and that families could adopt. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, and I think that’s so important because many of us as parents, we’ve heard about the problems with sugar. You hear about and read about so many things in the realm of food, and it’s hard for families to know what to put stock in, what not to, what’s really important to do. I think it can be confusing, and what we tend to do when we’re confused is just say “Well, I’m not going to do anything with it.” What I love about this book in particular is that you not only lay out the science, but you also give us really practical things that we can do. And Emily, I’ve got to believe that that was a motivation of yours too as a mom of two young kids, and all the work that you’ve done with families — do you see for your own family and for other families that you work with that sugar is really a top concern?

 

Dr. Emily Ventura: 

It is. I’ve seen it in the community with the families I’ve worked with and also in research settings, we’ve seen — I’ve worked for a number of years in Michael’s lab, and just seen all of the benefits that can happen metabolically, through these measures and tests. And as a mom, seeing how these things work with my boys as well, and then also just learning that sweet spot of figuring out how to communicate those messages to your children and to make sure that they don’t feel restricted and that they’re still enjoying some of the treats that come along with childhood, but without overdoing it to the point of having health concerns. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, and that’s a tricky thing, right? How to help our kids understand that and make some different choices, but also not harping on it so much that they want to go totally in the other direction, and just not do anything that we’re telling them to do. That can be tricky. Michael, you’ve done a lot of research in your lab. I want to have you delve into — just so our listeners really can grasp this: How does sugar affect mental, physical health, academic performance of kids? Why is this really such an important thing to be looking at? Because it’s not just in the short term, right? I mean there are long term issues to be concerned about here too. 

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

Yeah, totally. We’re all parents, we’ve all dealt, we’ve all seen the short-term effects, right? Those are very tangible. But it’s the long term effects, and this is problematic because some of these effects are silent, ‘asymptomatic’ is a word that we’ve become familiar with, unfortunately. But in terms of chronic diseases, we’re talking about cardiovascular disease, diabetes, fatty liver disease. The development of those chronic conditions can be asymptomatic, can be silent and it’s long-term progressive. It actually can start before birth. We call this the developmental origins of adult diseases, and it starts in utero, and it continues to infancy in childhood and diet is a big part of that. What goes into the body has an effect, short term and long term. That can be manifested in any number of different ways. We talk about effects in the body from head to toe, brain development, memory, academic performance and standardized tests have all been related to higher levels of sugar consumption. Focus, concentration, all the way through the body, digestive issues, tummy problems, for example are a common malady of childhood. There is research that shows that that can be explained by too much sugar. We’re not saying that sugar is the only cause of all of those problems, but it’s certainly a main cause and it’s one that we can do something about quite easily. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Well, I think what you said about the asymptomatic piece is realyl important, because I will sometimes have families come into the clinic and they may have a child who clearly is overweight or maybe falls in the obese category, and they want to talk about nutrition and sugar intake for that child, they may have other children in the family who are not overweight and they don’t have concerns about them, to the point where I’ve had some parents just say, “Well, she needs to cut back on the icecream, she needs to not be eating those things, but the other kids can eat them ebcause it’s not making them overweight.” But I think your point about the asymptomatic nature, all kids can be having these chronic problems that are building up overtime, even if they’re not looking overweight or obese right not in childhood. Is that right? 

 

Dr. Michael Goran: 

Absolutely. And this is a very important point. You don’t have to be overweight for your body to be suffering from the consequences of too much sugar. It’s nothing to do with the caloris. There are caloric effects that manifest in weight gain, but a lot of these things that we’re talking about have got nothing to do with the calories. For too long, we’ve been too focused on calories in, calories out. But this is to do with how sugar is metabolically handled in the body, what it’s converted to or not converted to, and how that really is interfacing with development. It’s a very different scenario because you have cells that are building and brains that are building and livers that are building. During that process, it can be very sensitive to the metabolic products that are coming through the system from sugar. Nothing to do with the calories. I’m sure we’re going to get into this as well in a bit more detail, but a perfect example would be fructose, the sugar, which is metabolized in the liver causes fatty liver, which was not even on the radar for children 10 years ago. Type 2 diabetes was not a not a problem for children 20 years ago. Now we’re seeing huge increases in these problems, these chronic diseases in younger ages and it’s all to do with sugar. Not to do with the calories, but to do with the way that they affect the liver, fatty liver disease, the pancreas for diabetes, the brain with how well these kids scored on a standardized test score. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

It’s interesting, you know, I’ve often said for so many things — this generation of children, they’re really guinea pigs in so many ways because of new things that we’ve introduced into the environment, whether we look at technology or toxins in the environment or things in the food supply, and it sounds like really, the dramatic increase in the amount of processed foods and sugars and things is something that we’re seeing, this new generation of really significant neurological and metabolic problems in kids where we never used to see that in kids before. 

 

Dr. Michael Goran: 

Absolutely. I think this whole concept of GRAS approval for Generally Recognized As Safe, which is kind of broadly adopted and accepted to some of the additives and sweeteners that are now used in sugar are perfectly safe, but we have no idea of the long term effects. I used a good example. Like high-fructose corn syrup. The public, generally, for the most part recognizes that as a problem, and there was a bit of a revolt against that because of the high fructose, and it was highly processed. But now we have all these other fructose-based sweeteners that are just as high in fructose, but they have the healthy-sounding halo around them because they are fruit-based sweeteners. Now they don’t have that notorious kind of sound to them like high-fructose corn syrup. But many of these sweeteners that are highly used now could have even more fructose in them. So the reason that we were worried about high fructose corn syrup was A, that it was highly processed, and B, they add a lot of fructose, and fructose is very problematic for human bodies. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, the food companies wised up to that real quick, that the words ‘high-fructose’ were turning consumers off. I think we’re having that issue now across the board, whether it’s products we use in our home or foods that we eat or things companies now are using, branding and labelling that’s making it more difficult for consumers to figure out what may be healthy versus unhealthy. So I do want to get into a discussion about the names of sweeteners and sugars that people should avoid, but before we delve into the specifics of it — so we’ve talked about the real health concerns, and these can be alarming, right? And as parents, we should be alarmed. We should put a red flag for us that says, “Wow, I should be paying attention to this.” The good news is, though, as you mentioned a couple of minutes ago, is that we can make substantial changes that really can change the trajectory of this for our kids. So even if there is a parent listening who is like, “Oh my goodness, my kids eat so much sugar, are they doomed? Have I totally screwed them up?” I think what I hear you saying is that we can make changes that will start to improve that, is that right? 

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

Yeah. That’s part two of the book and part three is all about simple solutions, simple daily hacks that you can make to address this issue. Some of the solutions are simple acts or substitutions, others may involve, for example, our 7-day challenge — and just so your listeners know, we’re not advocating that you don’t give your kids sugar anymore. We’re not saying that you show up at Sunday breakfast and say, “Okay folks, that’s it. Game over, no more sugar.” We know that’s not going to work. So we have a clear path to at least say, “We’ll take it out for a week and see what happens.” So it’s a bit more — it involves including those acts, but it will get you to recognize those sneaky sources of added sugar, find alternatives and substitutions for them, and see what it’s like to just go off sugar, and see what kind of obvious changes you notice in your feelings, and the mood and behavior of your kids after one week. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

What do you guys feel are some of the things that start to shift relatively quickly, both from a metabolic standpoint and a mental health standpoint. What are the things that you have seen in the research that really going off of sugar or cutting it down dramatically for a week or a month — over that kind of period of time, do we start to see positive shifts, even within several weeks? 

 

Dr. Michael Goran: 

Well, within a week, you can see benefits. I’ll let Emily talk about some of the behavioral responses, which are more evident, but metabolically, what we call under the skin effects. So studies show that even after one week without sugar, you can get improvements in things like blood pressure, fasting glucose, lipid levels, things that are clinical markers, all those foreign diseases we talked about. Those things start to improve very quickly after you take sugar out of the diet, and Emily can talk a little bit about some of the other benefits too. 

 

Dr. Emily Ventura: 

Definitely. In the families that we worked with, we tried out our challenges. There were some big surprises that they encountered. We talk about this in the book too, but just to give you an idea, one of the families had received an email from their 14 year old’s science teacher saying “Grace is falling asleep almost everyday in the second period. Is she getting enough sleep? What’s going on?” Normal weight child, no health issues, they thought that her 9:30 bedtime was completely reasonable for her age, which it probably was. They weren’t sure, they thought “Maybe we’re letting her be on her phone too late every night.” So they started taking away the phone starting at 7PM, but they never really figured out the issue until they did our 7 day challenge and changed Grace’s breakfast. 

Previously, she was having honey nut cheerios with a glass of 100% juice blend, it was orange and peach. She was having two different types of vitamins, one was a gummy vitamin and another was a calcium chew. That breakfast was so high in sugar that she was experiencing a big spike in her energy levels and then she was crashing by the time the second period rolled around. So just changing her breakfast had near immediate effects on how she was able to concentrate in class. That’s a big one. 

Then we’ve seen her sister actually change her breakfast as well. Interestingly, the two girls chose different things for breakfast. Grace liked a steel-cut oatmeal with raspberries on it and her sister liked eggs. Her sister had ADHD and they noticed that she was much better able to concentrate in class as well with her new breakfast. So it’s interesting to see how different children with different meals both respond well to these kinds of shifts. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

It’s one of the things that I do with families in my practice that shifts things quicker than anything else is changing the breakfast, right? Because so many times, even if parents realize that the amount of sugar in at least what we call breakfast in the United States, it causes these kids to just have these sugar spikes and these crashes. Just shifting to less sugar, more protein-focused breakfast can make a dramatic difference, even within one day, just that day, you can notice the difference. I’m so glad that you commented on that. You mentioned something there, we’re talking about breakfast and this is a question that so many parents have: So let’s get into the issue of juice, because juice is a staple in the diet of many children. Many of us were raised on juice, “It’s fruit, it’s healthy!”, right? So I would love for you to comment on why juice is so problematic for kids. 

 

Dr. Michael Goran: 

Well, if it was called high-fructose fruit juice, people might think of it differently, and this is an example — I mean because fruit juice has that health halo around it, it sounds healthy. But in fact, it’s delivering an unnatural high concentrated dose of fructose to the body, which is extremely problematic. Before I get too into it, I just want to make clear that we are in no way opposed to fruit. So eating fruit is perfectly fine, we should be eating fruit, not drinking it. The problem is when you take the juice out of the fruit, say a glass of apple juice, you’re removing the juice of maybe three apples and throwing away most of the fiber, most of the other nutrients, and concentrating that fructose from three apples. So there’s nobody eating three apples all at once, but we could easily be drinking three apples all at once, and this comes back to the metabolism and the way fructose is handled in the body, and especially kids’ bodies. There are several problems. They’re not designed to deal with all that fructose because it’s not natural. We weren’t built to drink juice, we were designed to eat fruit. So when the fructose comes in in high amounts all at once, the rate at which it’s being absorbed is also critically important. So when you eat an apple that rate of absorption is slowed down, right, because you’re chewing, the fructose is packed inside the cell wall, it has to be digested. That work is all done for you in the juice. It’s all free in solution and it overwhelms all the normal metabolic machinery. Under those conditions, that fructose gets taken up by the liver, almost 90 percent of it. In the liver, it’s converted to fat. 

That process creates an inflammatory cascade as well, and that fat can be trapped in the liver and cause a buildup of fatty liver, a big problem. Eventually, it will require a liver transplant if it goes unchecked. But also, the silent effects are that it’s inflammatory, it produces inflammatory compounds, and it contributes to increases in lipids in the blood, the hallmark of risks for cardiovascular disease, which is why now there is stronger research linking sugary beverages including juice to cardiovascular risk. Not dietary fat as much as dietary sugar. So it’s to do with the amount and the rapid-fire dose that you get from a juice. Fructose in juice is higher than in high-fructose corn syrup. So a glass of apple juice, about 70% of the sugars are fructose, whereas in a soda, it would be 55-50%. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So do you really advocate then for parents to start moving away — I mean, it’s a given, most parents think, “Oh yeah, I know I shouldn’t be giving my kid soda pop or things like that.” But juice, are you really advocating to parents to back away from juice? What do you suggest people move towards? Just regular, plain water?

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

To answer your question, yes we are advocating that because it’s a big source and it sounds healthy. It is a point of controversy, so the dietary guidelines, for example, don’t have a problem with juice, and we would count it as added sugars. But in terms of the solutions, that could be a gradual thing. So you can dilute it easily down to 50-50 and you can do that gradually and get twice as much mileage out of the same carton of juice, and that’s a perfectly okay strategy to begin with because kids are just amped up to want something sweeter and sweeter, and we can talk about it as a separate issue. And move them towards water or other flavored drinks, herbal teas, lots of great beverages in the market that don’t have sugar. Certainly not to replace it with beverages with alternative sweeteners that we can also talk about. 

Move more towards eating fruit, not drinking it. It’s something that we just accepted as culturally normal to have juice with breakfast, but it really doesn’t have to be that way, in the same way that pancakes don’t have to be drowned with syrup, which is another issue too. These are just things that we have accepted and have piled up that are causing this big sugar pileup. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

It’s true, we do have really rigid ideas here in the U.S, at least, about what constitutes breakfast foods versus lunch foods and dinner foods. Sometimes when I say to families, “Well, instead of the cereals and the pancakes and the toaster pastries and things, your child likes certain kinds of meats, so you can use leftovers from the dinner before…” And they go, “Well that’s not a breakfast food!” It’s like, “Well you can eat any food at any time of the day! It’s really okay, right?”

 

Dr. Emily Ventura:

We actually suggest an international breakfast challenge in the book about giving kids a chance to research what other countries eat and try something that’s completely out of the normal range for breakfast in their household. So it might be something like broiled fish served in Japan with miso soup, or something like papusa, that’s from El Salvador, just to expand the breakfast horizons and realize that, like you said, we can eat more vegetables and more savory foods in the morning as well.  

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I love that, that’s a great challenge, yeah. 

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

Yeah. Pancakes and oatmeal don’t have to be sweet. We have several ideas about how to make them savory. Yes, you can still have savory in the morning. It doesn’t have to be sweet. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Well, it’s amazing to me, really, how quickly kids can shift with that. I’m glad we’re talking about the breakfast thing because especially during the school year, I just feel like it sets kids up for such a better or worse day. We’re not necessarily sending them off to school right now, but whether it’s doing school online, or especially for kids with sensitive brains, our kids with ADHD challenges, anxiety, autism spectrum disorders, learning difficulties, behavioral issues, all of these things, they just do so much better when we start the day with something that fuels them in a steadier way than all this sugar. So I’m glad we’re talking about that. Michael, I want to have you touch on here — one of the things that I read in the book — in the introduction actually, you talk about a study that you did and when you got the data back, looking at actually how much sugar is in some very common things that we give to kids, beverages, yogurts, those kinds of things, you were really shocked at the findings of that, and I was shocked by it too, I’d love to have you comment on that. 

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

Sure. And just to wrap up on that previous point: So stabilizing blood glucose is the best thing you can do for your kids in the morning, not just for energy levels and concentration, but you can also link that to COVID-19. The research is out on that too. Stable blood glucose is going to help your body find immunity and be stronger in its immune system for flu or cold. We’ll come back to that later. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Thank you for mentioning that, super important, especially right now. 

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

Yeah, so this was a study. Emily can also give you her perspective because she was a graduate student in my lab and she actually executed the plan. The question was — all good research starts from a question, right? Our question was: What is in a Coca-cola? What is in an apple juice? What is in it? What are the different sugars? We wanted to know that just because we were curious and because we wanted to document exactly what the dietary intake was. If the kid is drinking two apple juices a day or two sodas a day, what are they really consuming in terms of different sugars. So Emily executed the plan where we went shopping around Los Angeles to grocery stores, to gas stations, numerous different outlets where you can buy sodas and juices. Buying it with ice, without ice and gathered together the samples and sent them off for analysis. The results came back that showed some cases there was a lot more sugar in general in products, some was a little less, but the surprising fact was that there was more fructose in the beverages than we had anticipated, and that we thought should be there based on what the food industry was telling us. 

The food industry sells us that high-fructose corn syrup is about 55% fructose. But we were finding these beverages made with high-fructose corn syrup to be 60-65% fructose. Juices were about — depends on the fruit, depends on how it’s made can be variable, but can easily be up to 70-75% fructose. This was very surprising. I couldn’t understand why it would be so high, and got into a big argument with the food industry about this. Their argument was that our results were flawed and we didn’t know what we were doing. So we repeated the study and sent samples to three different labs and got very similar results. So it was surprising because the higher fructose makes a difference. Some people might say 55% fructose vs. 60% is not really that much difference, it’s trivial, but because fructose is more problematic and especially because it’s more problematic for growing bodies, the more you tip that balance towards more fructose, the more likely you are to get those detrimental effects.

So if you had the choice, I’m sure we’d all rather stay away from that, especially if we were dealing with children who were very vulnerable because they are not choosing. And then there was research going on at the same time that was beginning to say that it was fructose that was disrupting growth and development. So that was the Aha moment for me. It was like, wait a minute, there’s more fructose in these things than we thought there is supposed to be, and fructose is detrimental for growth and development. So that was a big turning point. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And it’s not just beverages, right? I mean this goes across the board for lots of processed foods and things that kids are eating, yes?

 

Dr. Emily Ventura:

Right.

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

Yeah. In the second study, we also looked at breads, crackers, and yogurts. Highly processed foods. And by the way, this fructose doesn’t just come from high-fructose corn syrup. No, there’s a whole range of fructose-based sweetness that sound really healthy like evaporated grape juice or organic brown rice syrup or organic apple puree. 

 

Dr. Emily Ventura:

Yeah, I think it’s confusing, especially for parents, when you’re trying to buy quick, easy things for your kids and you might think something that says “Fruit juice sweetened”, when really it’s just a fruit juice concentrate that’s sprayed on something like rice cakes or added to a baby smoothie that’s in a pouch, or a pre-bottled smoothie that also contains a few spinach leaves and it’s a green smoothie and it seems like it’s something that might help your child be stronger and boost their immunity, but really, it’s just delivering a high dose of concentrated fructose. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Well, one of the things I’ve noticed: We have a smoothie chain that has come into our area of Michigan and they market themselves as being a healthy alternative. I’ve started seeing more — especially the teens, there’s a high school right near the clinic and they swing by there before their appointment, and they’ll come in and they’ll say, “Oh you know, it’s a fruit smoothie.” I started looking into the ingredients of that, and was absolutely shocked. 80 some, 90 some grams of added sugar into these things that are being marketed as a healthier alternative. I think what you’re highlighting here is that this happens a lot and we need to be savvy consumers. Not only do we need to look at the things that are written on the package but also realize that there may be even more problematic things than we can see on there. 

 

Dr. Emily Ventura:

It’s true. 

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

Absolutely, yeah. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

So let’s get into — what are the things that we should be aware of as far as sweeteners? People know high-fructose corn syrup: not good, and Emily, you just mentioned a couple of them, but what are the sweetness that we should be trying to avoid? There are a lot of them out there now. What about some of the more natural ones? There’s stevia, there’s monk fruit, there are these low-calorie sweetness. What should we be avoiding and what is okay to give our kids?

 

Dr. Emily Ventura:

Also high on the list, another one that’s concentrated in fructose that a lot of people don’t really they should avoid is agave syrup. So that can be up to 90% fructose. Certainly any of the ones that we just mentioned like the fruit juice concentrates, crystalline fructose — then there’s a lot of the sugars that are 50% fructose like sucrose, table sugar, which if you start to have a lot of that, we have to think about how that’s adding up. But in general, we say it’s better to have some regular sugar and just try and keep it to a minimum than go as some of these other alternatives.

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

That’s kind of what our message is. I don’t want to send a message that families should not let their kids have sugar. It’s a question of finding the right balance. There’s just so much sugar everywhere, we’ve forgotten how to enjoy it. In terms of sweetness like stevia and monk fruit, which are naturally occurring and can be marketed as such, something can be loaded with either of those, or it can be labelled as all-natural, unprocessed — we just don’t know enough about the long term effects, and for me, personally, I don’t like the taste of them. If I’m going to be baking at home, I’d rather just adapt the recipe and use less sugar. So we say that you can use down to probably half as much sugar in a recipe. So if I’m going to make a tray of cookies for my kids, or they’re going to bake a tray of brownies, I’d just try to get them to use less sugar. You can enjoy it. 

In Sugarproof, recipes that Emily developed specifically for the book, we took the stance that we’re not using any added sugars or sweetners. That’s not to say that we advocate that in your own home, but for the recipes, we wanted to experiment with the natural sweetness of all fruits. Emily can talk a bit more about how she came up with the recipe for a common item like a blueberry muffin, or chocolate pear cake or cookies that are just naturally sweetened with dates or bananas and dried fruit. Then you get the benefits of the fiber, the whole foods that come with that and the natural sweetness that has a much better flavor profile.

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Because really, this is about shifting kids’ palates, right? For kids who are really used to eating lots of things with sugar, that’s what their palate is used to, that’s what they crave, that’s what they want. What I really like about not only the recipes, but the suggestions you’re giving it, we can take that as quickly or slowly as we need to, depending on where our kids are with that, but start to shift that. So I love the suggestions to start using a little bit less, and then a little bit less, and a little bit less of sugar in your regular recipes. Or you were talking earlier about starting to water down juices. Emily, the recipes in here are great. I really appreciate being able to have a good resource for recipes that don’t add those things to it. The thing that I think is cool about that is when we start to incorporate those things into our kids’ diet, it does start to shift their palate. Even parents, you say “Oh, my kid will never eat that stuff!” It’s a process of acclimating them to less of that super sweet taste. Do you agree?

 

Dr. Emily Ventura:

Yes, that’s a great point. One thing that is sort of a trap that we’ve seen quite often is parents who think, “Well, if I just put a less refined form of sugar in my baked goods”, maybe it’s putting coconut sugar or honey or maple syrup or sugar in the raw in cookies or whatever you’re baking — that isn’t necessarily addressing the added-sugar issue because those things are all added sugar that should still be — can be used in moderation but still need to be thought of as they are. So our recipes, we challenged ourselves to come up with recipes where we didn’t use any of those. They do still taste sweet and are satisfying, but are like Michael said, you get the fiber along with the fruits. Ultimately, yes the idea is to try and get your kids to appreciate a more subtle form of sweetness. That helps them to self regulate on their own. 

So the goal here is to get kids used to healthy foods and appreciate healthy foods, and then when they go back to trying something at a party or a special occasion that’s a lot sweeter, they recognize that and they say “Whoa, that is really sweet! Maybe I don’t want all of this! Maybe I don’t need all of this!” That’s happened with my kids. They don’t like some of the traditional things I might have as a kid, for example.

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And that self-regulation is really important, because ultimately, we want them to grow up to be able to self manage that, right? I think we run into trouble as parents when we just force the issues so much and then kids go overboard the other direction, right? It’s like “I was never allowed to have cookies or cake or candies or whatever. Now that I get to have my own choice, I’m going to eat all of that stuff!” And that’s what we want to try to avoid, right?  

 

Dr. Emily Ventura:

Exactly. We definitely don’t want kids and families to be in that kind of situation. So we give some guidelines, ways you can have your home food environment set up in a way where there isn’t that much stuff — your kids can’t really go wrong. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have some sweet treats around and make them and enjoy them. It’s about taking some of the added sugars out of the staple foods, especially when they’re young and you are the one in control in a way, but then also raising them to be able to make their own decision. You know, so maybe you are at a party and there is ice-cream offered and kind of helping your child decide, “Okay, there are all of these things. Which would you like to have? Maybe we don’t need all of these things.” And when they start kind of getting that internal dialogue going on, then parents start to realize that even when they’re not around, the kids start to make those same sort of decisions. So, “Yes, I’ll have the cake but may I please have some water?”

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I’ve seen that with my own kids too, over the years. It’s a great thing. You feel like you’re doing something right when your kids start reporting making those kinds of decisions when they’re not around you, right? You go, okay, this is something. Again, I’m curious as we’re wrapping up here. Emily, what is a favorite recipe from the book for your kids? You have two little boys, what’s a favorite or two that parents, when they get the book, can look at?

 

Dr. Emily Ventura:

My kids never get tired of the chickpea snacks. I’m just waiting for them to tell me they don’t like them anymore, because eventually you get burned out on something, but the great thing about that recipe is just two cans of chickpeas, drained and dried and seasoned and roasted. You can change the seasoning in so many different ways. My kids never get tired of them, they just keep asking for them. Had them today. They love those. As a treat, they really, really like the chocolate sesame squares which are a no-bake recipe. It’s entirely plant-based, so it’s also good for families that don’t want to be having too many animal products. They’re high on fiber and they taste great, really easy to make. 

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

This morning, we were talking about how to adapt them for halloween. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Nice. And what I really loved too as I was skimming through the recipes in there, they lend themselves well to getting kids involved in the kitchen too, which I think is another important piece of shifting kids towards healthier food choice and opening up their palates is getting them involved with making food. As I was looking through the recipes, I was like, many of these are things that young kids can help with, but kids later elementary and up can learn to make some of these things themselves like the no-bake stuff, so kudos to you on that. I’m always really impressed by people who have the creativity and the talent to create these recipes. It’s not a skill that I have, so, super-impressive and I’m looking forward to making some of the things that I saw in there, so thank you for that.

Michael, as we’re wrapping up, I would love to have you share what’s one big takeaway, if nothing else? One big takeaway that you would want parents to walk away from this conversation and from this book with them? What would you want them to take away?

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

I think your appreciation of the book kind of hit on that, and that is we need to dial back the desire for sweetness. It’s become like normal acceptance that we have this high preference for sweetness. As I mentioned earlier, we’re born with this preference for sweetness, but the more we fuel that with sugar and other sweetness, the more we amplify that desire. So we know that that is kind of geared up, but it’s time to dial back. It doesn’t take anything drastic, you can start with small changes. Sugarproof is very versatile no matter what kind of dietary land you’re looking through. If you’re a vegan or a carnivore or ketogenic or paleo, whichever guide you and your kids are on, you can apply these principles. It doesn’t have to be drastic, you can start small and be gradual, but you’ll get benefits the more you dial it back, the more benefit you get. No matter how young your kids are or how old they are, you will also get benefits and they will kind of ripple out across the whole family as well, in terms of some of the benefits that you get. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Fantastic. I want to make sure that people know where they can get the book, where they can find out more information from you because you’ve got a website with lots of great info, so give us the websites, give us the place where we can find the book.

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

You can buy Sugarproof anywhere that books are sold. So real book stores which many people are unfortunately not getting to, but anywhere else that books are sold. And that’s not just the usual culprits, but bookshop.org is a great resource because it supports local bookstores. bookdepository.com ships a book anywhere in the world for free, so that’s a good resource. It’s also available on Kindle and Audible. Those are the resources, and our website is sugarproofkids.com, and on social media, our handle is @sugarproofkids on both Instagram and Facebook.

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And lots of great resources on their social media accounts, on their website, there are great articles, the challenges that they talk about — just lots of great information, and also the research studies, for those of you who listen to this and want to delve more into looking at the science of that, lots of great resources for that on their website as well. Dr. Emily Ventura, Dr. Michael Goran, thank you so much for being here with us today and for sharing this really helpful and practical information. 

 

Dr. Emily Ventura:

Thank you.

 

Dr. Michael Goran:

Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Nicole, that was such a lovely discussion. We appreciate your questions and your interest. 

 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Wonderful, and thanks to all of you for being here and for listening, we’ll catch you back here for our next episode of The Better Behavior Show.