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Artificial sweetener marketed to kids

August 13, 2009   2 Comments

Rewarding your child with a treat is a wonderful thing to do. A parent usually assumes that something that has a rabbit on a label is safe for their child.

Nesquik Milk Shake

What about Nesquik milk shake? Sucralose is one of the ingredients in Nesquik's milk shake.

Does the addition of an artificial sweetener make the drink unsafe for children? This depends on your perspective on artificial sweeteners. Do you want your child to drink something that is made in a factory or made in nature?

Nestle could have chosen to make their "milk shake" with sugar, but they probably were worried about the calorie content of their drink if they did.

The FDA has approved Sucralose for children, so Nestle isn't breaking any law. In fact, over 100 scientific studies conducted over a 20-year period demonstrate that Sucralose is safe for use as a sweetening ingredient.

Sugar (sucrose) is a chemical too, but it is one that human beings have evolved with over millions of years.

Sucralose is approximately 600 times as sweet as sucrose (table sugar). Why is this sweetness a problem? We want our kids to like all types of food including vegetables. If they get used to food that is "super" sweet, they may reject more sour tasting food.

Drink Chocolate Milk instead of Nesquik's milk shake. It won't cause you to lose sleep at night.

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2 Comments:

The argument that kids will get used to 'super sweet' foods is just not well applied here. Yes, Sucralose is 600x as sweet as sugar. However, the companies that use it only use enough to sweeten the drink as much as a sugary drink would taste. So- its tiny amounts of Sucralose compared to large amounts of sugar.

Yes- kids that ingest super sweet foods will develop a taste for them. It doesnt matter if that food or drink is sweetened naturally or artificially- just dont give your kids too many sweet things.

I am not supporting the use of artificial sweeteners for kids, just pointing out the misstatements here.

Actually, I find that the few artificially sweetened products that I have tried are sweeter than those with just sugar. It's gross. I avoid all artificial sweeteners. In fact, the one time I accidentally bought yogurt with artificial sweetener in it, my kids would not eat it. Also, I think she was referring also to just lowering the sweetness of the foods in general.

I wanted to add also that Nestle itself is a very unethical company so this does not surprise me. I'll be avoiding these for that fact alone but the artificial sweetener makes me doubly grossed out.

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