The Effects of High Sugar Intake on Childrens' Cognitive Development

What is hyperactivity?

Hyperactivity means an increase in movement, impulsive action and being easily distracted. Refined (processed) sugars may have some effect on children’s activity. Refined sugars and carbohydrates enter the bloodstream quickly. When this happens, it may cause rapid changes in blood sugar levels and make a child seem ‘extra active’.

However, did you know that there is a far more detrimental, long-term impact of high sugar in children?

Sugar affects the development of growing up children - here's how:

High Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

Sugar-sweetened beverages, also known as SSBs are readily available everywhere. It comes in a set when you order at famous fast food joints, it is in boxed juices and soft drinks—stuff that toddlers and preschoolers love to drink.

We suppose your child loves them too. Don’t they all come with a sweet tooth?

According to a study on the correlation of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption of Malaysian preschoolers aged 3 to 6 years, a large proportion of preschool-aged children in Malaysia was found to consume SSBs every week (Foo et al, 2020).

The research involved 590 Malay and Chinese preschoolers, made up of 317 boys and 273 girls. From that total, almost 54% of them are reported to be consuming SSBs per week, a pattern similar to countries like the United States that document high sugar consumption.

SSBs includes drinks that may appear as good choice for consumer such as energy drinks, malt drinks, and even milk-based beverages! On top of SSBs, there are also their favourite sweets. Think doughnuts, cookies, ice cream, cake and waffles – they all contain a lot of sugar.

So imagine for a bit—if they are already eating sugar-laden food that sometimes can be difficult to control, parents may be unknowingly topping it up with more sugar whenthey offer them SSBs.

Now, that is dangerous.

Effects of High Sugar Intake

Study showed that with increased consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, verbal intelligence score was reduced by 2.4 points per serving a day.²

High sugar diets have been shown to impair learning and memory.

And in a society that puts a lot of emphasis on education, this is bad news.

A human study on high fat and sugar intake showed evidence that it impaired hippocampal-dependent learning and memory and increased dependency on high-sugar foods (Attuquayefio et al, 2016).

Before you get dizzy over these science-y jargons, let’s learn a little about the biology of the brain: Humans have two hippocampi, located on each side of the brain. Together, they are called the hippocampus. It consolidates information from the short-term memory to the long-term.

A study showed that sugar reduces this process called hippocampal neurogenesis, which is important to minimise disturbance of the merging of information and memories in those two lobes. (Beecher et al, 2021)

Have you ever had someone disturb your chain of thought and then you can’t remember what you were thinking before that interruption?

Sugar is like that irritating someone disturbing the process of storing information in the brain.

With more sugar, comes more disturbances that can affect retaining memory. Therefore, hippocampal-dependent forms of learning and memory are particularly at risk of the detrimental effects of the high fat and high sugar diets. The initial study was first identified in rats (Molteni et al, 2002) but has since been proven to apply to humans (Attuquayefio et al, 2016).

Hence, chill out on the sugar intake to avoid possibilities of detrimental effects on memory and learning.

Therefore, when choosing a growing-up milk, be sure that the sugar levels are minimal, as your child's sugar intake may add up over the course of the day with their daily meals.