Mike Myers once did a Saturday Night Live sketch in which his character, Simon, a boy with ADHD, ripped a climbing frame from the ground and dragged it across a field after eating some chocolate. As funny as that scene was, the truth is that sugar doesn’t really make kids hyper.
There have been at least twelve trials of various diets investigating different levels of sugar in what children eat. None of these studies detected any differences in behaviour between the children who had eaten sugar and those who hadn’t. These studies included sugar from sweets, chocolate and natural sources. Even in studies that included only children who were considered ‘sensitive’ to sugar, the children did not behave differently with a diet full of sugar or one that was sugar-free.
This myth, perhaps more than any other, is met with disbelief when we discuss it, especially with parents. Scientists have even studied how parents react to the sugar myth. In one well-thought-out study, children were divided into two groups. One group was given drinks that their parents were told were sugar-free. The other group was given drinks that the parents were told were full of sugar. Then all the parents were told to grade their children’s behaviour. Not surprisingly, the parents of children who thought their children had drunk a ton of sugar rated their children as significantly more hyperactive. The twist to this study was that all the children were given the same drink, sweetened with sugar-free aspartame, so the differences in behaviour were all in the parents’ minds.
Even when science shows time and again that this is not the case, we continue to persist in believing that sugar causes our kids to be hyperactive. It’s just not true. This does not mean that there are not very good reasons why your kid should not ingest large quantities of sugar. As almost any parent knows, sugar has been linked to tooth decay and increased weight gain – just don’t blame it for your child’s bad behaviour.