Food for thought: The hidden sugars your kids are eating

Leann Dennis or her husband prepares what they think is a healthy breakfast for their two kids every day.

It’s nothing unusual: cereal, yogurt, sometimes bread and peanut butter. These are meals most Canadian kids have on a daily basis.

But what Dennis and most parents don’t know is how much sugar is actually in these meals.

"The Honey Nut Cheerios has nine grams of sugar, which is two and a half tea spoons,” says Jody Dawson, a registered dietitian. “They would have a little bit of this yogurt. This one everyone thinks is healthy because we advertised it as Greek. It has 13 grams of sugar. So that's three teaspoons of sugar."

Dawson took those teaspoons and put them in a cup. As Dennis went through the rest of her kids’ daily meals, the sugar continued to grow.

The final number is tough the swallow. Her children are consuming about 36 teaspoons of sugar each a day.

"Right now I’m about to be sick. Imagining how much sugar my kids eat.”

Typically most children should have around 10 teaspoons of sugar if they consume about 1,600 calories a day. That number increases a little for adults.

“No more than 12 and a half teaspoons of sugar if you're eating a 2,000 calorie diet, but of course it depends on your weight, your height and age," says Dawson.

Part of the reason why people are eating so much sugar is because we're often not aware of how much of it is added to foods. Whole wheat bread for example has about three grams of added sugar.

Hidden sugars are also a big issue because, while they appear on nutrition tables, they are often listed under names most people aren't familiar with.

Then there's advertising.

"These [juice boxes] have fresh fruits visuals on the front of the image so you think it's healthy. This one specifically has 30 grams of sugar," Dawson says.

That’s about seven and a half teaspoons of sugar

"If you think about that as adults we would never put seven and half teaspoons of sugar in a cup of coffee."

Dawson says unless laws are introduced to lower the amount of sugar in the foods we buy, people really need to read the fine print to see exactly what's in the food they're consuming.