{"id":20987,"date":"2012-12-16T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2012-12-16T14:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/?p=20987"},"modified":"2019-03-13T10:34:24","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T14:34:24","slug":"tracking-sugar-consumption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/tracking-sugar-consumption\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracking Sugar Consumption"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is a post from contributing writer Marci<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

photo credit: M I S C H E L L E<\/a><\/p>\n

We’ve been studying nutrition at our house this past month. The kids learned to determine how much of each food group they need to eat at a meal in order to be healthy. \u00a0We used the new My Plate<\/a> USDA guidelines.<\/p>\n

My seven year old son was quick to point out that the My Plate guidelines left out his favorite food group – sugar. And since it’s the holiday season, his sweet tooth is on high alert!<\/p>\n

This lack of sugar in the recommended daily diet caused us to do some research. Are there any dietary guidelines for sugar?<\/strong><\/em> We all know too much sugar isn’t good for us, but…<\/p>\n

Just how much sugar is too much?<\/h3>\n

The average American consumes 22 teaspoons of sugar per day.<\/strong> What?!\u00a0<\/em> This is well above the American Heart Association’s recommendation<\/a> of no more than 6 \u00a0to 9 teaspoons of sugar daily<\/em>. That’s a pretty large gap between what is\u00a0acceptable\u00a0and what is the\u00a0norm.<\/p>\n

This made us wonder…How much sugar are we consuming?<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

I really had no idea. I am known as the “food nazi” around here and don’t buy a lot of sugary or processed food. Even at that, I had a\u00a0suspicion\u00a0that my sweet-loving kids were still getting way more sugar than they needed.<\/p>\n

Keeping Track of Sugar Consumption<\/h3>\n

The kids and I decided to keep track of sugar\u00a0consumption for a day. We simply\u00a0wrote down everything we ate or drank for an entire day. To determine how much sugar was in our foods we read labels, used an online nutrition tracker such as the Food-O-Meter from WebMD.com<\/a>,\u00a0an app like My Fitness Pal<\/a>,\u00a0or we just Googled it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Using labels and nutrition trackers, we figured out grams of sugar consumed. Then, we converted grams into teaspoons. A teaspoon of sugar is 4 grams. So, for instance, if the food contained 16 grams of sugar, we divided 16 by 4 and that’s the teaspoons of sugar — 4.<\/p>\n

Our results shocked me. Even with a “food nazi” for a mother, my kids still managed to take in way more sugar than recommended. The culprits?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

For my daughter, it was the juice she likes in the morning (25 grams per1 cup) and the sweet bread she loves to eat with sandwiches (10 grams of sugar per roll – she ate 3). That right there was almost 14 tsp of sugar!<\/p>\n

For my son, the high sugar culprits were the ovaltine in milk (21 grams of sugar), jelly (12 grams of sugar) and the same sweet bread (10 grams of sugar).<\/p>\n

Then, to top the day off, someone bought the kids 2 scoops of ice cream each at a local ice cream shop. Get this —> 51 grams of sugar in those 2 scoops!!!<\/strong> That’s 13 teaspoons of sugar!!<\/p>\n

My sugar intake for the day? Just under 3 teaspoons. yes!<\/em><\/p>\n

Assuming the kids should get less than the 6 gram recommended upper limit of sugar that women should get, they went way over. I was horrified. The kids were not phased by the numbers.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Making it real<\/h3>\n

I needed to do something hands-on to get the kids to realize just how much sugar they are consuming. Inspired by SugarStacks.com<\/a>, I decided we would create our own “sugar” stacks to see just how much sugar we actually ate. Instead of using sugar cubes (I couldn’t find any), we used unifix cubes. One cube = one teaspoon of sugar.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

See the little stack of six in the middle? That supposed to be our upper dietary\u00a0recommendation for sugar consumption. See those huge stacks on each side? Yeah. That how much my kids ate in one day.<\/p>\n

Why is too much sugar bad for us?<\/h3>\n

While our bodies need sugar for energy, studies have shown that too much sugar is not good for our health. From increasing the\u00a0risk of diabetes<\/a>, to\u00a0decreasing cardiovascular health<\/a>, to the \u00a0negative effects of sugar on our brains\u00a0<\/a>, the effects of excess sugar\u00a0consumption\u00a0can be\u00a0frightening.<\/p>\n

This little exercise made us realize that sugar isn’t just in candy and cookies. It’s in lots of other foods we consume everyday – even foods we think of as “healthy.”<\/p>\n

Will this study change my kids eating habits?<\/em> Maybe a little. My daughter\u00a0voluntarily gave up her morning juice and decided that the sweet bread should be just for special\u00a0occasions. \u00a0That’s a good start. My son…he’s seven and just wants his ovaltine!!<\/p>\n

Will I keep my family from enjoying the sweet pleasures of the season?<\/em> No. However, I will be watching our sugar from other sources to try and keep it under control. I’m the mom. It’s my job to keep them healthy and teach them how to do the same.<\/p>\n

How much sugar do you and your kids consume? Try this simple project and find out!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

More Homeschool Science Activities<\/a> on Pinterest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a post from contributing writer Marci. photo credit: M I S C H E L L E We’ve been studying nutrition at our house this past month. The kids learned to determine how much of each food group they need to eat at a meal in order to be healthy. \u00a0We used […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[635,2821],"class_list":{"0":"post-20987","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-projects","7":"tag-cookies","8":"tag-homeschool","9":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\nTracking Sugar Consumption - The Happy Housewife\u2122 :: Home Schooling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/tracking-sugar-consumption\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tracking Sugar Consumption - The Happy Housewife\u2122 :: Home Schooling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The following is a post from contributing writer Marci. photo credit: M I S C H E L L E We’ve been studying nutrition at our house this past month. 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