TUESDAY, June 12, 2018 (HealthDay News) — Most infants and toddlers aged 6 to 23 months consume added sugar, according to a study presented during Nutrition 2018, the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition, held from June 9 to 12 in Boston.
Kirsten Herrick, Ph.D., from the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md., and colleagues used a single 24-hour recall from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2011 to 2014 to estimate the prevalence and mean consumption of added sugars among 806 infants and toddlers aged 6 to 23 months.
The researchers found that on a given day, 85 percent of infants and toddlers had any consumption of added sugar. Sixty-one percent of infants aged 6 to 11 months consumed added sugars, compared with 98 and 99 percent of toddlers aged 12 to 18 and 19 to 23 months, respectively. For those aged 6 to 23 months, the mean added sugar consumption was 4.2 teaspoons. There was a significant increase in consumption by age, from 0.9 to 5.5 and 7.1 teaspoons for infants aged 6 to 11 months, and toddlers aged 12 to 18 and 19 to 23 months, respectively. Non-Hispanic white infants and toddlers consumed fewer teaspoons of added sugar compared with non-Hispanic blacks (3.8 versus 5.4 teaspoons).
“Our results show that added sugar consumption begins early in life and exceeds current recommendations,” Herrick said in a statement.
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