How To Reduce Sugar From Your Child’s Diet (Free Handbook)

Trying to reduce sugar from your child’s diet and need some help? Read on to find helpful tips, snack ideas and steps to get you started.

Keep reading because I have a FREE eBook for you. “How To Reduce Sugar From Your Child’s Diet … in 3 easy steps” PLUS 50 healthy sugar-less snack ideas for kids.

How To Reduce Sugar From Your Child’s Diet

When it comes to consuming sugar, the majority of people know it’s bad for health but as parents, do you have a good idea of how much sugar your children are eating and drinking on a regular basis?

Frequent requests for juice, fizzy drinks, flavoured milk, cakes, cookies and chocolate is a good indication that your children may be hooked on sugar!

How To Start Reducing Sugar

If you’re desperate to learn how to reduce sugar from your child’s diet, but don’t know how to start, here are 3 simple steps you can start TODAY.

You can easily begin with one step at a time and then add the next step so that you don’t feel overwhelmed with trying to implement too many changes too quickly!

I’ve created this free PDF download that you can print and refer to on a regular basis. It includes a summary of the important points within this blog post as well as 100 helpful snack ideas that will assist in reducing the amount of sugar your children consume. Grab your PDF here. 

Why Has Sugar Become A Problem?

These days, sugar is added and hidden in almost all the regular foods we buy and enjoy.

It’s a problem which we as parents never experienced while growing up, unlike our kids of today who are exposed to sugar and processed food whichever way they turn. 

To give you an idea of how sugar is hidden everywhere, consider your everyday grocery purchases. Did you know that sugar is added to rotisserie chicken? It’s also found in ketchup, processed meat, fruit yoghurts, granola/muesli bars, peanut butter and especially breakfast cereals.

Where Is Sugar Hiding In Your Child’s Diet?

Knowing that sugar is being added to almost all our foods, how do you know how much sugar is too much? The World Health Organisation recommends that children have no more than 6 teaspoons of sugar per day.

Sadly, at today’s current rate of consumption, by the time children are 8 years old, they will have consumed as much sugar as an adult would have in their lifetime a century ago. It’s a shocking reality which is why I’ve created 3 easy steps that you can start today to reduce your children’s daily sugar intake. 

3 Easy Steps To Reduce Sugar From Your Child’s Diet – even if you have picky eaters

The trick is to start reducing sugar gradually but to keep going.

Adopting a slower approach for most families is much more sustainable in the long-term than a sudden and big clear out. It’s all about consistent progress, not perfection. 

Over time, reducing sugar and junk food will become easier as your children’s taste buds adapt to whole foods and less sugar. Just imagine the progress you and your family can make if you make 1 simple change each week or 1 big change per month! 

Let’s have a look at these 3 simple steps to reduce sugar that you can try today:

Step 1: Stop The Sugary Drinks – Never Drink Sugars

Sugary drinks like energy drinks, juice, flavoured milk, and sugary fizzy drinks act as one of the biggest sources of sugar in children’s diets. A 3500ml/12 fl.oz bottle of fruit juice or fizzy drink both contain a whopping 39g = 9.75 teaspoons of sugar which is well above the daily recommended limit of 6 teaspoons. 

But surely real fruit juice is a healthy option?! Although real fruit juice contains vitamins, it comes at the price of the damage done from high blood sugars.

More Low-Carb Drinks Recipes…

Healthier Options To Stop Sugary Drinks

Water should become your child’s go-to daily refreshment, but if you are finding it difficult to remove juice from your children’s daily routine, first try diluting it each time until they become less hooked on it.

Start by diluting fruit juice by 1/4 water, then every week that follows, dilute the juice further until it becomes tasteless. At that point, you can stop the fruit juice completely.

Another way is to stop fruit juice is to encourage your children to eat whole fruit instead of drinking fruit juice. Whole fruit is self-limiting. 

When it comes to sugary soda drinks, do not rely on diet drinks as a substitute long-term. If your children are absolutely hooked on sugary soda drinks, you may wish to swap them for diet drinks initially but always with a plan to cut those diet drinks down until they are no longer hooked on them.

You can do this by cutting back on 1 diet drink per day until you remove them completely.

Step 2: Cut Back On The Chocolates, Cake And Ice-Cream – But Go Gently (For You And Your Child’s Sanity)

Buying delicious treats is one of the ways parents show their love for their children. It’s also an expression of pride for a child’s achievement and sometimes a means to soothe a sad child. Unfortunately, most of those treats have very high sugar content. 

Instead of reaching for a sugary treat for your child, try to gradually reduce sugar, week by week. Slowly reducing sugar over time is much more achievable than a straight ban (unless your child has been medically advised to stop sugar immediately).

The following simple ideas will cut your child’s sugar consumption by at least 50% with relative ease.

These sugar reduction techniques are a compromise between what you would like (zero sugar) and what your children or family would like at a given time (which you can reassess on a regular basis).

• Ask your children to share a slice of cake at a cafe instead of each eating 1 slice. 
• Ask visiting grandparents and relatives to bring only 1 special bag of chocolate or candy for your children to share rather than 1 (or 2) bags each.
• At parties, allow your children to enjoy party food (without eating to excess) and remind them of the rule regarding zero sugary drinks. Remember, you don’t want your children to drink their sugar. This will, in time, give them a huge level of self-control.
• Ask sports teams organisers to stop the post-match cupcake and chocolate treats tradition that many parents share with their team players. Explain to the manager that your family is trying to get rid of sugar and whether they will support you with this. Take comfort in knowing that you aren’t alone in this – every single parent I have spoken to wants this but are scared to be the first to ask for the post-match treats to stop.
• Make some kind of fun pact with your children that encourages them to make healthier choices. For example, tell them that you will commit to paying them an additional $1 in pocket money every time they refuse a lollipop or chocolate from their local hairdresser, DIY store or similar shop. You will be amazed how this technique works, even on the most sugar-loving child.

More Low-Carb Sweet Treat Recipes …

Step 3: Keep Junk Food Out of The House – And Begin To Make Copycat Recipes

Bad habits start at home so try to lead by example by not eating junk food or keeping it in the house. If your house is junk food free, your children can’t pester you for it. 

Another great idea is to start making copycat recipes such as Fat Head pizza, mozzarella dough garlic bread, sugar-free cheesecakes, keto fudge cake and low-carb chicken nuggets to get them used to yummy whole food flavours.

This will show them you’re not the grinch, but instead, care enough to make low-carb versions that they will still love!

Here are some other ways to keep junk food out of the house:

• Print my 50 Low-Sugar and Low-Carb Snack Ideas list and stick to the fridge or somewhere in the kitchen. 
• Get your children to tick the snacks that they love already. As time goes on, they will end up ticking more as you discover how many more they start to enjoy over the following 6 months.
• Have healthy snacks ready-made in the cupboard in reusable boxes or reusable zip lock bags so that you are not caught off guard when it’s snack time. 
• Start to swap your child’s favourite snacks with healthier versions.
• Reduce how many junk food snacks you buy each week until you reach zero. This will get easier the healthier snacks you make that your children enjoy. 
• Replace current junk food purchases with homemade healthier copycat versions. After that, it will become easier to completely remove any remaining junk food requests. 
• Learn some fast and easy low-carb meals for the family. And if you are pressed for time then opt to buy a hot rotisserie chicken and a bag of salad on your way home from work, reheat low-carb leftovers, spend just 5 minutes to throw a whole chicken in the slow cooker in the morning, or visit the deli counter for a selection of deli meat, cheese and coleslaw. 

Bonus Tips – How To Reduce Sugar From Your Child’s Diet

Don’t forbid, but control quantity and frequency. Forbidding foods can make them even more attractive to children. Think of the times when you’ve been on a diet and suddenly those ‘outlawed’ foods come to mind all day! 

Eat healthy as a family. Children learn from what they see adults doing and as parents, you get to either create healthy habits or bad ones. 

Plan healthy meals & snacks. You can easily plan your weekly meals, snacks and lunch boxes by visiting my link https://www.ditchthecarbs.com/recipes/ for the full recipe index. It includes lunch box ideas and lunch box videos, low-sugar and low-carb breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, drinks, sauces, slow-cooker, Instant pot and even keto carnivore recipes.

And while you’re there, please read my low-carb kids series, with easy lunch box ideas! 

More Low-Carb Lunchbox Recipes …

Set some party rules. Once the juice and sugary drinks have been overcome at home, set party rules with your children that don’t allow them to accept sugary drinks when at parties or at friends. Let them know it’s okay for them to ask for water from the party host instead. To help your children not feel completely restricted, compromise by allowing them to still enjoy sugary cake and food (in moderation) at parties while saying no to sugary drinks. It’s much easier to decline sugary drinks than food and this kind of compromise allows them to feel that they are in control somewhat.

Monitor the picky eaters. If your child is a picky eater, monitor how often and how much they snack. Picky eaters are notorious for filling up on snacks then refusing to eat their healthy main meals. Allowing a few hours snack-free before a main meal like dinner will encourage a natural healthy appetite that makes a whole food dinner far more appealing and a much more pleasant experience for the entire family!

Try my Stepwise Method. With many parents coming to me in desperation trying to cut sugar from their children’s diets, I always suggest that they try my Stepwise Method which is what I teach.  The stepwise approach allows for compromises which makes it easier to have your children reduce sugar over time with lasting healthy changes and habits. 

50 Low-Sugar and Low-Carb Snack Ideas

If you want to get started today by reducing sugar in your children’s diets then why not try some of these low-sugar and low-carb snack ideas. Grab my free PDF download and print this list so that your children can tick which snacks they enjoy the most! 

Print this list and stick it on your fridge by downloading my free PDF.

1. Pork rinds
2. Almonds
3. Olives
4. Guacamole
5. Beef jerky
6. Walnuts
7. Boiled eggs
8. Strawberries
9. Tinned/canned tuna
10. Cheese slices/sticks
11. Salami sticks
12. Sunflower seeds
13. Whipped cream
14. Chicken drumsticks
15. 1-minute mayo with cheese sticks
16. Veggie sticks and cream cheese
17. Ham and cheese roll-ups
18. Sausages
19. Scotch eggs
20. Curried devilled eggs
21. Prawn cocktail
22. Raspberries
23. Sugar-free jello
24. Meatballs
25. Chocolate whipped cream
26. Dark 95% cacao chocolate
27. Avocado with salt & pepper
28. Double chocolate chaffles
29. Canned/tinned sardines
30. Macadamias
31. Prawns
32. Cheddar cheese
33. Pickles
34. Pumpkin seeds
35. Pizza chaffles
36. Pecans
37. Fat bombs
38. Baked cheese chips
39. Bake pepperoni chips
40. Baked bacon strips
41. Ham, cheese and pickle roll-ups
42. Scrambled eggs
43. Turkey and cheese roll-ups
44. Whipped coconut cream
45. Tuna mayonnaise
46. Cheesy chaffles
47. Almond butter
48. Cacao nibs
49. Blueberries
50. Grain-free granola and unsweetened yoghurt with berries

Conclusion And Takeaway Notes:

Reducing sugar from your child’s diet can seem overwhelming at first but now that you have the tools, it doesn’t need to be a difficult process that you dread!

One of the best ways we can show our love and care for our children is by ensuring that they eat whole and nutrient-dense foods that will safeguard their health into the future. Start today by following my Stepwise Method and download this PDF that contains all the information you need to get started easily!