“The Sugar Game” from Middleton Get Moving Night
Friday night at Howe-Manning many students took part in the Sugar Game which was created to show students exactly how much sugar is in many of the foods they eat. Students had to choose between three cups of sugar to guess which was the right one for the food shown. The answers were often shocking to parents and students alike.
Movie Candy: One box of Mike & Ike’s purchased at the movies containes 26 grams of sugar per serving - and the box has a 4 serving size. So if you ate the entire box you would be having 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon of sugar (pictured top right)
Chocolate Milk: If your child chooses chocolate milk over white milk every day of the school year the ADDITIONAL sugar going into their bodies is 9 1/2 cups! (shown in the
large vase of sugar in the second photo). Children were encourage to lift the vase to see how heavy that amount of sugar is. Jelly Beans: Children were shown a very small box of Jelly Beans (less than 30 candies) and then shown that the amount of sugar in the box equaled 6 teaspoons. The container of sugar was the same size as the box - meaning the entire contents is sugar! Sunny D “Juice”: The single serving bottle contained 28 grams of sugar - the equivalent of 7 teaspoons.
Children were shown the label that actually on 5% of the contents was juice - and the rest was water and multiple kinds of sugar. Vitamin Water: This one really shocked most people. It sounds so healthy, but a bottle of Vitamin Water is labelled as 2 1/2 servings in a bottle with over 3 teaspoons in each serving - so 8 teaspoons of sugar in the full bottle (which is more than a Hershey Bar and almost as much as a can of Coke).
The exercise was also aimed to show children that often products are labeled with words like “whole grain”, “fat free”,“packed with vitamin C” and that doesn’t always mean the item is healthy.
