Many parents believe that their children 's eating of sugars, especially in the evening hours, increases their hyperactivity, which confuses their daily routine And makes them awake at night for longer hours.
But this belief does not have a scientific basis or health evidence, according to the results of several studies that have proven that children ’eating sugar does not generally affect their activity, nor does it hinder their sleep.
The issue of the effect of sugar on children's activity and behavior began to interest researchers in the 1990s, and this interest was followed by a series of studies, the most prominent of which was in the middle of this decade.
In a study published in 1995 in the "Gamma" magazine, which examined the results of 23 experiments through 16 scientific papers, the authors concluded that "Sucrose mainly does not affect children's behavior or cognitive performance", according to the "Medical News Today".
The Researchers note that a limited number of children may respond differently to diabetes, but in general, scientists have demonstrated that there is certainly no significant effect of diabetes on children's activity and behavior as many parents believe.
Are some children more sensitive to sugar?
To test whether children were particularly sensitive to sugar, researchers compared two groups of children. The first group included 25 "normal" children between the ages of 3 and 5, and the second consisted of 23 children between 6 and 10 years old, whose parents described them as sensitive to sugar.
Each family followed 3 experimental diets with their children for 3 weeks. The surprise was that children who were described as sensitive to sugar did not show any statistically significant differences with regard to behavioral and cognitive variables.
In 2017, a new study appeared whose results were published in the International Journal of Food Science and Nutrition, during which researchers studied the effect of sugar consumption on the sleep and behavior of 287 children, ages 8 to 12 years.
The researchers concluded that sugar consumption was not associated with problems with behavior or sleep, although 81 percent of them consumed more sugar than recommended.