Strategies to reduce the sugar content of dairy products targeted at children

Abstract

Children’s sugar intake has raised concern worldwide as it exceeds nutritional recommendations. Although sugars are naturally present in food, sugars added to foods during industrial processing are currently the main source of sugar in children's diets. In particular, dairy products, which are generally recommended to be part of children diets, have drawn attention due to their high content of sugar. In this context, the main objective of this thesis was to explore different sugar reduction strategies in dairy products targeted at children. Results showed that sugar reduction of dairy products targeted at children available in the Uruguayan marketplace is possible. A direct sugar reduction up to 25% did not have a significant impact on children hedonic perception in three dairy products. Meanwhile the use of taste-odor-texture cross-modal interactions allowed to minimize the impact of sugar reduction on the sensory characteristics of dairy desserts. Co-creation with children was identified as a feasible approach to develop innovative healthy dairy products with high acceptance among children. Finally, package information influenced parent’s healthiness perception and choice of snacks for their children, stressing that packaging regulations should play a key role as part of the comprehensive set of strategies that should be implemented to reduce children's sugar intake. Overall, results from this work provide useful insights to food scientists for the development of sugar reduced products targeted at children, as well as valuable information for policy makers to design programs to reduce children’s sugar intake at population level.