EXCLUSIVE: The REAL reason why kids act hyper after eating sweets — and it’s not because of the sugar

It is believed that it is an important rule of parenthood: do not give children sweets in the evening – then they will bounce off the walls with energy.

Sugar has long been thought to be a trigger for hyperactive behavior, causing children to run around and be full of beans.

Prince William’s youngest child, Prince Louis, aged five, is said to be suffering from the effects of sweets consumption on the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee celebrations in 2022.

The young royal – fourth in line to the British throne – became the star of the show when photos of his silly facial expressions circulated online.

Now experts have highlighted mounting evidence that suggests the link between sweets and behavior IS real – but it’s not because there’s anything in sugar that makes children behave badly.

Prince Louis, Princess Charlotte and Savannah Phillips eat sweets during the platinum anniversary pageant outside Buckingham Palace in London

Prince Louis, the son of Prince William and fourth in line to the throne

And there’s an easy way to stop kids from chasing candy wildly – without depriving them of the candy they love.

In a blog post Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia, recently wrote on his Twitter feed: “The evidence is flawed.

‘The science shows quite convincingly that sugar in itself does not make children hyperactive. The great urban myth is just that: a myth.’

The idea seems plausible because people burn sugar for energy.

The body quickly converts sugar in food into a simple sugar called glucose, which is transported through the blood and delivered to every cell, giving us energy.

Eating a lot of simple sugars, such as from Halloween candy, in a short time means they are processed quickly and can give us a big energy boost.

But this peak drops to normal levels after a relatively short time, and studies show that it does not result in hyperactive behavior in children.

But several studies from the 1990s showed that sugar has no influence on children’s behavior.

In the best known of these, from 1994, mothers were told that their children had been given sugar or an artificial sweetener. Then they were asked all that assess their child’s hyperactivity.

All children had been given artificial sweeteners, but mothers who were told their children were consuming sugar were more likely to rate them as hyperactive.

This implies that the sugar itself did not cause the children in the study to become hyperactive, but rather the mothers’ expectations – which caused a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The women’s expectation that the sugar would make their children hyper meant they were more likely to interpret their behavior as overly energetic.

“It’s almost 40 years later and people still think sugars make their kids really active or hyperactive,” says Dr. Sabiha Kanchwala, a general pediatrics specialist at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital.

Some research has even suggested that the opposite is true: that eating sugar makes people more focused, less aggressive, and more in control.

All the findings are based on fairly weak evidence, said Dr. Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, who recommended taking them “with a grain of salt.”

“But they make the sugar-is-hyperactivity hypothesis less likely than most parents would like to think,” he added.

The most likely explanations are social, Dr. Meyerowitz-Katz said. People think sugar makes children hyperactive, so when they see over-excited children, they assume they’ve had a heavy dose of sugar.

And when children eat sugar, people expect them to be hyperactive. It’s a “vicious cycle of confirmation bias” that doesn’t hold up in scientific studies, Dr. Meyerowitz-Katz said.

Children themselves also perpetuate the sugar-hyperactivity myth.

Dr. Kanchwala said, “Even children know the power of their brains. They say, “I ate all this candy, I’m never going to sleep again!”