The holidays bring friends and families together to share food and good times, creating memories that will last a lifetime.
While we always enjoy the festive meals during holiday time, monitoring our children’s sugar intake during this time of year can be a challenge. While we want them to enjoy Grandma’s special
holiday cookies, hot chocolate with marshmallows, or other holiday favorites, sometimes excess sugar can affect children’s energy a little too much.
To help you manage your kids’ intake of treats and sugary goodness, here are some tips to help avoid the sugar spike, and crash, often associated with eating too many holiday treats.
- Make it special — make sweet treats the exception, and not the rule, and kids will appreciate them even more.
- Earlier is better — avoid big desserts late so kids will be able to get to sleep better, faster.
- Out of sight, out of mind — keep candy and chocolate dishes out of the reach of smaller children. What they can’t see, they won’t miss.
- Substitute for sugar — try less-refined alternatives to white sugar in your recipes. Honey and maple syrup are lower on the glycemic index,
and will release more slowly into the bloodstream, lessening sugar spike. For more information on the glycemic index, e-mail a Hannaford Supermarkets nutritionist.
- Portion control — limit portion sizes for your kids and you limit their sugar intake.
- Limit treats to dessert — giving kids sweets on a fuller stomach slows the release of sugar into the bloodstream.
Fun facts for kids.
Quiz your kids with these fun food facts!
Did you know that:
Bees have been producing honey for at least 150 million years?
Maple syrup won’t actually freeze?
An average worker bee makes only about 1/12 teaspoon of honey in its lifetime?
Vermont produces more maple syrup than any other state?
It takes 40 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of maple syrup?
In order to produce just one pound of honey, two million flowers must be visited?
