Beware "health drinks" for young children like Bournvita

Editor's Note: Dear IL'ites, Ansuya has shared some very important pointers regarding the precautions we need to take before we give our kids any health drink. Please read and share with your friends.

Ansuya, thank you very much for your thoughts. This has been selected as best of forums and has been feature here. Congratulations!

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I've noticed the popularity of so-called energy-boosting or fortifying health drinks for children, such as Milo, Horlicks, and Bournvita. Please read the nutritional labels on these drinks very, very carefully. Depending on what country you're in, they might be full of all kinds of nasty additives and chemicals, including way more sugar than a child needs in a drink.

Ideally, kids should be drinking plain milk. Unless they are malnourished or otherwise deficient (after illness, for example), they don't really need anything added to that milk. If a child won't drink milk at all, then maybe the chocolatey or malty drinks may be necessary. But here in the US, liquid calories (from soft drinks especially) are a major cause of obesity.

Food, and a daily multivitamin, if necessary, should adequately meet a child's nutritional needs (in addition to milk and water). Heavy milky drinks can fill up a child and prevent her from eating the food she needs.

These malted drinks were originally served sweet, flavored, and cold (like a milkshake) here in the US, and were originally an adult's bedtime drink in the UK. Beware the diabolical marketing in some countries which has turned it into a must-have for growing children.

While I'm ranting, please take note of the obsession with fruit juice here in the US for kids. Fruit juice is basically sugar water (don't be fooled, even if it contains Vitamin C). As such, it can be an occasional treat, but again, should not be a daily drink that takes up valuable real estate in our children's stomachs. Empty calories from sugary drinks replace more nutritious calories (and fibre, vitamins and minerals) one should get from eating real fruit or real food.

When reading a nutritional label, remember that the ingredients are listed in the order of quantity; so, if sugar is the first ingredient, it has more sugar in it than any other single ingredient. Also, there might be several forms of sugar with different names (glucose, high fructose corn syrup, evaporated cane juice, rice syrup, maltodextrin, etc.).

 

Dinny, thanks for the reinforcement. I don't want to get too preachy; obviously mothers are very conscientious about feeding their kids a healthy diet. What concerns me is how advertisers, marketers, and traditions influence us and play on our anxieties.

It is hard to be so diligent as to thoroughly research every substance we ask our kids to ingest. Sometimes, we rely on what others are telling us. But we need to remember that the food industry is a multi-billion dollar one, and often, the advertising is aimed directly at kids. It is up to us to look beyond the glitzy ads and panic-inducing, celebrity-endorsed marketing campaigns. Reading labels doesn't take too long, as long as you know what you are doing. This is a good place to start:

How to Understand and Use the Nutrition Facts Label

Sometimes I think these things are deliberately made so obscure, just so it's harder for us to figure things out, as in the case of the food industry being so resistant to labeling products with genetically-modified ingredients as such. I've become a bit of a conspiracy-theorist in this regard!

On a more personal note, I don't like milk, at all. Luckily, no one ever forced me to drink it. But I understand that it is important for kids. Even luckier, my daughter loves milk. She will occasionally have chocolate milk as a treat, but happily drinks 4 half-cups of plain milk a day (and would drink more, if I let her).

What really made me sad was watching a relative force her young daughter to drink the malty drink (may have been Horlicks) every day before school, together with a full breakfast. The poor girl had to choke this thick concoction down even though it was clear she was too full and didn't want it. It just made me realize how much at our mercy our children are, and what an awesome responsibility we have to make sure that the things we THINK are good for them, and put pressure on them to drink or eat, ARE actually good for them.

That last paragraph made me think of a truly awful yet hilarious joke that was doing the rounds at the time that Hugh Grant was caught with a prostitute in his BMW in Los Angeles, I think. I'm not going to spell it out for you, because then this post will be the first in this Baby/Kids forum to be edited for inappropriate content. And I wouldn't want the rest of my message to be diluted by my propensity for juvenile jokes

 

Rakhii, I'm glad you see our point.

I read online about a great way to make your own chocolate milk at home without resorting to the sugary, over processed stuff. All it takes is one square of dark chocolate (obviously, because it is not too sweet, and is real dark chocolate, which means it is full of healthy anti-oxidants) and sugar to taste, melted in half a cup of warm milk. As your child (the one who doesn't like plain milk) gets used to the taste, you can gradually reduce the amount of sugar.

I also tend to use honey, maple syrup (which has the BEST taste, I think) and agave syrup more than regular granulated sugar when sweetening my daughter's foodstuffs, because it seems to me like I use less to get the same degree of sweetness. There is also more of a depth of flavor than you would get with regular sugar.

 

Vidu, you're lucky to have such a naturally healthy daughter!

I have my own theory about children and the sweet stuff (don't laugh, now): sugar is like cocaine for kids. Somehow, it seems to me like their taste buds are calibrated differently than ours. They are super-sensitive to sugar, and it becomes addictive for them (the more they eat, the more they need to eat to achieve the "high"). Which means we should be giving them less sugar than we consume, but most prepackaged kids' food has more sugar than adult versions.

I kept my daughter away from very sugary foodstuffs for a long time, which is not easy to do. Now, she also seems to be able to control herself. But it was really hard when we'd go to birthday parties and people would be forcing cake, ice-cream, and cookies on her all at once (this actually happened).

 

Uttaraa, thanks for that dispatch from the ground! It's mainly Milo in South Africa, but kids generally despise it there.

Yet another friend getting me into trouble... if they come for me, I'm taking you down, too

P.S. I started compiling an EM post about puns, using the Hugh Grant joke, but I chickened out. If you want to figure it out, it's a question ("What is Hugh Grant's favorite bedtime beverage?") and the answer, well, there aren't that many options that make sense, if you run through the list of drinks this thread is all about! Don't say I didn't warn you, though - it is terrible! I will behave from this point forward.