How much fruit should children eat? | Integrated Learning Therapy

We are constantly hearing about the dangers of sugar to both health and brain function and that we should limit the amount our children eat. Fruit contains high amounts of sugar, so does this mean children should avoid too much fruit?

Nick Fuller, writing for ‘The Conversation’, discusses this.

‘Good sugar’

Sugar itself isn’t inherently harmful, but the type of sugar children eat can be.

Whole fruits contain naturally occurring sugars that are healthy and provide kids with energy. Whole fruits are packed with vitamins and minerals needed for good health. This includes vitamins A, C, E, magnesium, zinc and folic acid. All fruits are suitable—bananas, berries, naartjies, apples and mangoes, to name just a few.

The insoluble fibre in fruit skins also helps children stay regular, and the soluble fibre in fruit flesh helps keep their cholesterol in a healthy range, absorbing “bad” cholesterol to reduce their long-term risk of stroke and heart disease.

So eating fruit is very beneficial for children.

‘Bad sugar’

Added sugars—which add calories but no nutritional value to kids’ diets—are the “bad” sugars and the ones to avoid. They’re found in processed and ultra-processed foods kids crave, such as sweets, cakes, cookies and soft drinks.

Added sugars are often added to seemingly healthy packaged foods, such as muesli bars. They’re also hidden under 60-plus different names in ingredient lists, making them hard to spot.

Weight gain

A diet high in added sugars—found in many processed, ultra-processed foods (for example, sweet and savoury packaged snacks)—can mean children consume excess calories and gain unnecessary weight over the years, which may increase their chance of developing type 2 diabetes as they get older.

On the other hand, research shows that kids who eat more fruit have less abdominal fat.

Research also shows fruit can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, with one study finding kids who ate 1.5 servings of fruit daily had a 36% lower risk of developing the disease.

Nutritional deficiencies

A diet high in added sugars can also result in nutritional deficiencies.

Many processed foods offer low-to-no nutrition, which is why dietary guidelines recommend limiting them.

Children filling up on these foods are less likely to eat vegetables, fruits, whole grains and lean meats, producing a diet lacking in fibre and other key nutrients needed for growth and development.

Conclusion: Give kids fruit in abundance

There’s no need to limit how much whole fruit kids eat—it’s nutritious, filling and can protect their health. It’s also going to fill them up and reduce their desire to ask for the processed, packet food that is low in nutrition, and calorie-rich.

But do avoid juiced and dried fruits because juicing leaves the goodness (the fibre) behind in the juicer, and drying strips fruits of their water content, making them easy to overconsume. Remember that drinking fruit juice may result in consuming more sugar that a cooldrink. They are bad news. Giving your child water to drink at school is a far healthier choice.

We do need to reduce kids’ sugar consumption. But this needs to be achieved by reducing their intake of processed and packet foods that contain added sugars, rather than fruit.

Provided by The Conversation

Image provided by Freepik

← Previous Next →

Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.