To ask how much sugar your 3 year old eats?

[Myfriendanxiety]

I know this is Mumsnet and there will be people that say their 3 year old only eats avocado and quinoa- but I’m after some real opinions please.

My 3 year old has just said his tooth hurts when he was eating lunch. I’m now in mass panic he could have tooth decay so am worrying about his diet!

He drinks weakly diluted squash, only eats sweets at a birthday party so rarely, doesn’t really eat chocolate- maybe once a fortnight. He does eat a lot of fruit (apples, grapes, strawberries, blueberries) and he has a small glass (maybe 50ml) of orange juice with breakfast.

He does eat biscuits (maybe 2/3 custard creams most days) which I will cut out and usually has one small yogurt every day which I buy the lowest sugar one available. 3/4 times a week he has an ice lolly after dinner which is possibly too much so I will cut that down too.

Can anyone let me know diets for their 3 year olds along with any suggestions of lower sugar treats than custard creams and ice lollies I would much appreciate it!

Frequency not quantity

@Rubyupbeat I’m 34, have 4 fillings and 2 extractions! I am careful with sugar myself and yet my teeth are terrible so I really hope he doesn’t inherit that from me.

I would drop the juice and squash ASAP- if he has a fit a first don’t worry, and move to water or milk only. That’ll help, and then try to keep the sweet treats to once a day, give him other snack- rice cake with peanut butter or marmite, that kind of thing.
It is tricky but the problem is there’s sugar in everything anyway, cereal, bread, fruit.

There’s a lot of kids having a lot of fruit-your teeth can’t distinguish between ‘healthy’ sugar so the fructose is as bad for decay.

Current advice is for just a couple of portions of fruit and the rest to be veg; grazing on fruit is a barrage of sugar in the mouth and contributes to tooth problems as much as chocolate/haribo. The reason it’s slightly better for your body is the fibre mitigates a lot of the damage/insulin production, but your teeth are unable to differentiate and so, as pp’s have said, it’s the frequency not necessarily the quantity (quantity is an issue for general health but not teeth)

Tooth decay is a combo of diet and oral hygeine. Its not hereditary. Some people will be more prone, or more some people lucky but you dont get tooth decay without sugar and plaque.

It is the frequency of sugar more than the quantity. It doesnt really matter if porridge is made with 1tsp of sugar or 10, its still sugar. You want to limit the number of times they are having sugar. We say 4, thats your 3 meals (all meals will contain sugar) and one other.

Whilst i said i wouldnt worry anout fruit if you are using mashed banana/grated apple to sweeten its still sugar. Try and keep fruit to meal times and stick with savoury snacks in between. If they must have fruit have it with something like a cube of cheese, things like berries are low sugar.

Honey is still sugar, coconut sugar is sugar etc. Sugar is sugar. Snacks should be savoury. Sweet things are for pudding only. Drinks water/milk.

@XmasRibbons when you say your 3 yr old brushes their teeth 2x a day i assume your brushing them for her? Oat milk has 4g sugar per 100ml, not masses and i would have thought unlikely to be the cause.

Normally we recommend drinking through a straw but brown marks by the gum sounds like bottle caries, so she could be pooling drink by her teeth. As i said above sugar is sugar, a smoothie is sugar etc. So if your child is eating coconut sugar they are still eating sugar.

Do an honest diet diary and look at the amount of times they have something sugary in a day, basically other than meals it should be one time.

@DishRanAwayWithTheSpoon that cannot be entirely true as there are people who eat far more sugar than me and yet have better teeth. Yes sugar contributes to tooth decay, but lots of people eat lots of sugar and don’t suffer so they must have stronger teeth!

OP, I'm not sure you've really taken on board much of the advice on this thread. You need 3 things to make decay... tooth, plaque, and sugar. Remove any one of those three and decay won't happen. The easiest one to remove reliably is sugar. And it is the frequency of sugar that causes the most issues.
You need to take responsibility for your child's teeth, not make excuses based on how much sugar other people eat and your judgement of their dental health.

@Mrsmorton I think that’s unfair. I have clearly listened to the advice and talked about ways I can make changes to DS’s diet.

However it is a simple observation that some people eat a lot of sugar and have perfect teeth, some people eat far less and have more decay. Therefore whilst sugar is the biggest contributor to decay, there must also be some reason why some peoples teeth are more likely to decay than others.

I am not a quinoa person but found it pretty easy to bring up all my children with virtually no sugar. We just arent a sugar eating family. They are all in their 40's and there are no fillings. Young enamel is much more susccepible to tooth decay. The main advantage is you get kids that arent so much bothered about sweet things as adults. Not virtue just common sense really, oh and a dentist husband stressed by having to do fillings on children. Drinks and biscuits are the main culprits, and sweets of course. The modern stress about fruit juice is nothing compared to sweetened juice, pop, coke, snaking btween meals etc. It doesnt have to be hard

Have you ever taken your child to the dentist OP?

DD2 is 3 and eats fruit, yogurt, homemade vanilla biscuits, ice cream or ice blocks (maybe once a week, the occasional jelly snake (but only orange ones) but really doesn’t get much sweets mainly because she a tiny weirdo who hates chocolate and anything but orange lollies.
She has enamel staining from antibiotics.

Her sister eats more but gets regularly brushed teeth and 6 monthly dentist visits for a clean (and is having her permanent teeth Sealed as they emerge)

They get brushed twice daily by either DH or I as kids can’t brush there teeth effectively till about 8 (they don’t have the manual dexterity to do it properly)

Some tooth enamel damage and weakness are genetic or the result of antibiotics, illnesses, fever or infections while the tooth is still forming.

Also no sharing anything that has been in your mouth from infancy is a big one.
Then they don’t get your mouth bacteria including plaque creating bacteria

Poor nutrition during infancy or childhood, intestinal parasites or getting the chickenpox etc at a time your teeth are forming can effect your tooth enamel life long.
I had Enamel hypoplasia of my pre-molars,
Either infection or it was hereditary.

@Mypathtriedtokillme yes he has been to the dentist every 3 months since he was 6 months old. They haven’t managed to have a proper look in his mouth since he was around 2 because he refuses to open it.

I brush his teeth for him twice a day, he is never left to do it alone as he can’t do it thoroughly enough.

I managed to do a food shop today and have stocked up on rice cakes (salt and vinegar to start as I know he will eat those) and got some crackers to try and encourage.

This afternoon he has happily accepted a rice cake and some carrot sticks for his snack. Lunch was homemade pizza with fruit after. Morning snack was cucumber and cheese and then one of the babies Ella’s Kitchen flapjack bars rather than biscuits. I know this is still sweet but it’s better than biscuits and soreen surely? He still had his cereal for breakfast this morning.

Remember, it's the frequency NOT the quantity. Malt loaf or organic flapjack makes no difference If it has sugar in it. It could be granulated sugar off a spoon or haribo. If you have it too many times per day it will cause decay.

Every 3 months is very frequent dentist visits. Are you in the UK?

Well done OP.

It sounds as if you're making some really good choices that'll benefit you and your child in the future

All of it.

@Mrsmorton yes I am the UK. He should be on 6 month check ups but because of his anxieties and no cooperation the dentist recommended every 3 months to try and get him used to it.

3 months recall is fine to acclimatise a young child.
There are 2 other dentists on this thread -dish & Mrs Morton, read their posts again OP and really try to grasp it's sugar frequency rather than quantity that is crucial.
Do not eat anything with sugar in, in between meals -keep it really simple.
As for Ella's kitchen flapjack as a mid-morning snack 🤦‍♀️no, no,no -it's a lump of sugar.
To the other poster, why are you adding honey to cereal for your child? Are you under the illusion it's healthy? Honey is full of sugar. 3 banana smoothies per week is your key to why your child likely has bottle caries. Blitzing a natural fruit to make a smoothie releases the type of sugar that causes dental caries. Eat fruit in its natural form only is the take home message. It's not a mystery.

@1976Bo thank you. I will make sure sugar is only ever at a meal time apart from special occasions.

I had a lot of issues around food myself so I don’t want to put that into him.

It doesnt matter if its biscuits or flapjack. Its the number of sugar attacks.

You dont get decay without sugar and plaque. Some poeple will be less prone and can eat sugar without getting much decay (although unless youve looked in their mouth im not sure youd know) but if there is decay it is a result of too much sugar +/- poor oral hygeine, and if you were to eat less sugar/improve oral hygeine there would be no decay.

There are also corn cakes as low sugar snack. And mini breadsticks. Taste better than the rice cakes imho

Great that you are making changes. As others have suggested, I would also up the protein at main meals (chicken, ham, egg, tuna, cheese etc) - he eats a lot of snacks, maybe his main meals don’t fill him up?
My 4 year old only has one small snack per day now, usually a piece of fruit.

@Myfriendanxiety
Re fresh Orange juice
A 50 ml glass of fresh Orange juice is absolutely fine with your son's breakfast, from a dental perspective.
It's one of his 3 daily acid attacks.
If the OJ was drunk in between meals, it would be completely different/deleterious.
It is definitely beneficial, counts as 1 of his 5 a day and is a source of Vitamin C.
Dentists and DCPs all use the government publication ' Delivering Better Oral Health' to give solid evidenced oral health education; in fact, there is reference within DBOH to having a 50 ml glass of fresh OJ with breakfast.

Probably too much. My three and five year old have eaten today:

Breakfast - shreddies with milk and A small apple
Juice

Snack - watermelon

Lunch - tuna mayo sandwich (white bread) bag of Pom bears, cucumber, strawberries and three jammy dodgers each

Snack - banana

Tea - we had a mini bbq so sausages, bread, corn on the cob and then we toasted marshmallows and they had four each.

They drink water and milk throughout the day except for the apple juice in the morning