Sign up to >>

Source of Sugar May Be More Important than Amount When it Comes to the Development of Obesity in Children

New research presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Venice, Italy (12-15 May) suggests that the source of sugar is more important than the amount of sugar when it comes to the development of obesity in children.

The study found that the total amount of sugar consumed when very young was not associated with weight at age 10 or 11. However, children who got a higher proportion of their sugar from unsweetened liquid dairy products (milk and buttermilk) were less likely to go on to live with overweight or obesity.
Similarly, getting more sugar from fruit was associated with less weight gain. However, getting a lot of sugar from sweet snacks such as cakes, confectionery and sweetened milk and yoghurt drinks, such as chocolate milk, was linked to being of higher weight.

The researchers conclude that when it comes to developing obesity in childhood, the source of sugar seems to be more important than the amount.

Ms Zou adds: “Children should be encouraged to have fruit and milk instead of sweetened milk and yoghurt drinks, sweets, cakes and other foods rich in added sugar.”

Archives

Copyright © 2025 Nutrition2Me. All Rights Reserved |

Privacy Overview
Nutrition2Me

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Necessary cookies

Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

Social media & marketing cookies

Analytics

We would like to set Google Analytics cookies to help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. The cookies collect information in a way that does not directly identify anyone. For more information on how these cookies work, please see our Cookies page.

Social media

We use Twitter for some marketing activities on our site, and will set some cookies for this purpose if you consent.

Advertising cookies & third-party cookies

We use the income from advertising to help fund nutrition2me.com services.

We implement our own tracking cookies via our Word Press advertisement plug-in (Advanced Ads).  Advanced Ads provides us with data on advertisement engagement.  This data is anonymous.  We use this data for our own statistical monitoring and also to share with advertisers/clients that have placed advertisements.

Third-party cookies are set by a domain other than the one you are visiting, in this instance nutrition2me.com.  This includes social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram), advertiser/client plug-ins or advertising that may be hosted by a click tag.  When the browser or other software fetches these elements from the other sites, they can set cookies as well.