Cutting down/out sugar with a 4 year old--any advice?

[madskye]

I think my 4 year old DD is consuming way too much sugar and I want to cut it down but I need help with healthy and still delicious substitutes?

If you are a low sugar household, what do you do for:

drinks
snacks
treats

I'm especially worried about drinks--she is crazy for juice boxes, and I know that they need to go. I can draw a straight line from juice box consumption to tantrum. If I offer water instead she says she's not thirsty--but I do worry about her getting dehydrated since she's very active.

Any advice welcome. I know a big part of it is just saying NO but I also want to have some good-tasting alternatives to offer.

[kjbrown92]

Originally Posted by madskye

drinks
snacks
treats

Drinks: water, fruit juice watered down with water or seltzer to make it "fun". The only thing my DD1 drinks is water. DS drinks water or 1/2 grape juice and 1/2 seltzer. You could also do iced tea with not too much sugar in it (or honey). I do a caramel hazelnut tea that's delicious with only a little honey. We also do smoothies with no sugar added (banana, coconut milk, frozen berries, pineapple juice).

Snacks: focus on non-sweet stuff. Veggies and dip (yogurt, sour cream, hummus), fresh fruit, puffed rice cereal (there are other puffed ones, but there isn't any sugar in them). Popcorn. GORP (good old raisins and peanuts).

Treats: That's where a little sugar is okay. But choose the sugars that are lower glycemic. I believe that honey and palm sugar are better than cane sugar and definitely better than HFCS. But you can reduce the amount of sugar in a lot of recipes with no noticeable difference (like in an apple crisp or a peach cobbler). Some people sweeten baked goods with applesauce or banana.

[onthemove]

we try to drink water, eat fruit in our house. snacks are usually fruit, nuts, and other healthy foods and these get served throughout the day. Afternoon treat in our house is usually baked good of some sort with lower amounts of sugar or honey.

with a 4 yr old I would slowly ease out the sugar making each day better than the last until I hit an amount that is reasonable. Make it fun, maybe a new water bottle, and let her help you make or pick out snacks.

[ChocolateNummies]

The previous suggestion were good.

You can also make herbal teas. Celestial Seasonings has lots of good ones. My kids like the true blueberry and raspberry zinger. You can lightly sweeten it, gradually working towards unsweetened or you can use stevia. My kids also like lemon in their water and occasionally I'll turn it into lemonade by adding stevia.

For snacks we do veggies, fruit, nuts, leftover pancakes with or without nut butter, nut butter sandwiches (sometimes with a small amount of jam or honey), leftovers from other meals, cheese, cheese sandwich. My son loves apple with nut butter. Both of my kids love banana dipped in either ground flax seed or finely chopped nuts. Apple slices sprinkled with cinnamon go over well also. Guacamole or hummus with veggies, chips, pretzels, or crackers would be another option.

Treats might be dried fruit (we have to limit otherwise due to dental issues in ds) or muffins, yogurt, popcorn, unfrosted cake made with 1/2 the sugar. I can halve the amount of sugar in most baked good recipes and have it come out good. Some muffin recipes I've gotten the sugar down to 1/4 the amount called for, letting fruit do the sweetening. Cookies I think are less forgiving in that respect so try to save them for special days.

Having said all that we do have days occasionally when we eat extra special treats and I don't worry too much about sugar. Sometimes we just break the rules and enjoy ourselves.

[Therese's Mommy]

drinks: throughout the day it is either water or "lemonade" which is mostly water, some lemon juice (or lime or combo) and a very small amount of stevia. At meals they have milk (cow for DD#1, hemp for DD#2). They both drink less than 16 oz of milk a day.

snacks: my kids don't snack much, but if they do it is fruit, veggies, whole grain goldfish, Oatios, olives, stuff like that

treats: they get no more than 1 treat a day and that almost always occurs after a meal (in order to slow down the sugar going into the bloodstream). A treat would be a very small bowl of ice cream (cow for dd#1, homemade oat ice cream for dd#2), a very small handful of sundrops, a small amount of some baked good. Treats do not occur everyday in our house.

[gillibean]

For drinks our children get water, sometimes milk. We have juice about once a week. I'd just get rid of the juice boxes. If you DD knows you have them she may hold out in the hopes that she'll get one eventually.

Snacks for us is usually yogurt or fruit, sometimes crackers and cheese. DD2 has also recently discovered almonds. Cashews are another big hit here.

Our kids love frozen yogurt tubes for treats.

[Therese's Mommy]

Originally Posted by gillibean

Our kids love frozen yogurt tubes for treats.

I totally forgot about this. We do this as well. It started because DD couldn't get the hang of eating them unfrozen and the box was about to expire so we threw it in the freezer. Now, I buy them by the case through the coop and they automatically go in the freezer. A case lasts us a LONG time

[EMS]

My boys _love_ boiled sweet potatoes for a snack. Seriously, I can't make enough of them. They eat them plain, as a finger (or rather, fist) food.

[lil_earthmomma]

Drinks: Smoothies!!! My boys love them! I don't add any sweetener, but the fruit and yogurt makes them delicious and filling, so they also work as a snack.

You can thin down yogurt with milk and serve it with a straw as a drink.

[Vancouver Mommy]

drinks: water, milk. We do juice only very occasionally.

snacks: homemade muffins, homemade cookies (I cut the sugar in half in all my recipes), fresh fruit, popcorn, crackers and cheese, rice cakes, yogurt, cottage cheese, carrots

treats: fruit with real whipped cream, ice cream. We have real treats, just not as frequently.