Abstract
Convincing evidence suggests that diets laden with added sugar, specifically sugar-sweetened beverages, associate with excess weight in children. The relationships between sugar consumption frequency and BMI remain less well studied. We, therefore, evaluated children's consumption frequency of selected sugary products (n 8461; mean age 11·1 (sd 0·9) years) selected from the Finnish Health in Teens cohort study. Using a sixteen-item FFQ including six sugary products (chocolate/sweets, biscuits/cookies, ice cream, sweet pastry, sugary juice drinks and sugary soft drinks), we calculated a Sweet Treat Index (STI) for the frequency of weekly sugary product consumption and categorised children based on quartiles (Q) into low (Q1, cut-off < 4·0), medium (Q2 + Q3, range 4·0-10·5) and high STI (Q4, cut-off > 10·5), and as thin, normal and overweight/obese based on the measured BMI. Through multinomial logistic regression analyses, we found that subjects with a high STI exhibited a higher risk of being thin (OR 1·20, 95 % CI 1·02, 1·41) and lower risk of being overweight (OR 0·79, 95 % CI 0·67, 0·92), while subjects with a low STI were at higher risk of being overweight (OR 1·32, 95 % CI 1·14, 1·53). High consumption frequencies of salty snacks, pizza and hamburgers most closely were associated with a high STI. Our findings suggest that consuming sugary products at a high frequency does not associate with being overweight. The relationship between a low consumption frequency and being overweight suggests that overweight children's consumption frequency of sugary products may be controlled, restricted or underreported.
Highlights
Even though mean BMI appears to have recently levelled off in some developed countries[1], childhood obesity remains a major concern given its association with several health risks, such as high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, and is likely to continue into adulthood[2,3]
The distribution of boys and girls differed according to BMI: there were a higher proportion of girls in the thin group compared with overweight group, while for boys, the opposite was observed
Among children adhering to the recommended amount of sleep, we found results resembling those in the entire sample, the higher risk of being thin for those in the high Sweet Treat Index (STI) group was barely significant
Summary
Even though mean BMI appears to have recently levelled off in some developed countries[1], childhood obesity remains a major concern given its association with several health risks, such as high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, and is likely to continue into adulthood[2,3]. The issue remains controversial as recent data suggest that sugar intake is either stable or decreasing worldwide[6]. One of the main dietary challenges among children and adolescents in many developed countries, including Finland, lies in the high consumption of sucrose-rich drinks and snacks[8,9,10]. Beverages and food consumed as snacks provide as much as 42 % of daily energy intake and two-thirds of the daily sucrose intake in Finnish children[11]. The WHO recommends that the intake of free sugars (i.e. mono- and disaccharides added to foods, and sugars naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juices) should not exceed 10 % of the total energy intake[15]
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