Industry pushes sugary products, while obfuscating the health hazards

In other words, you could easily track the change in sugar content over the years if you paid attention to the "per 100{g,mL}" column without having to do any maths.

I don't know how many other parents you know, but I'd guess that's it in the range of n=36 (based on an average of 40 friends in adulthood and a parental rate of 90%). If you talked with people over the internet about this in parenting forums, there is an implicit selection bias towards people who believe there is something wrong with their children (more people will seek out such information who think they need help than those who think their children are okay). All of these biases and limited sample sizes mean that your experience isn't objective enough to count as "real data" -- and even if it was you'd be proving a correlation not causation (that requires even more rigor).

I don't actually have an opinion either way, but I just wanted to point out that it would be a good idea to look up clinical studies on the topic with large sample sizes and review your position from there (maybe they back up your position, maybe they don't -- but ignoring them and stating that anecdotes from raising a child is the only valid form of evidence is incredibly unscientific).

You’re right about portion being a big issue, which reinforces my earlier point that HFCS is cheaper than other sweeteners so it’s opted for and in higher amounts.

That said I’d say it is a problem. Look at children, there wasn’t a medical diagnosis of childhood type2 or childhood non alcoholic fatty liver disease, now both are a problem and childhood fatty liver disease is diagnosed at even higher rates than type2. So medically I think it is a problem.

And saying it’s a portion/life style issue I agree with 100% and these chronic diseases can be prevented in most cases without cutting out 100% of sugar, but i don’t know why layman can’t echo the medical science and admit cutting 100% of sugar can prevent 100% of these medical cases. In other words you can be sedentary and eat huge portions (you will have other health issues for sure which likely include liver issues) but you won’t get type 2 so long as there isn’t any insulin spiking sugar in the diet.

Edit:

Fructose is sent from the blood directly to be processed in the liver and over consuming results in deposits of fat in the liver cells (aka fatty liver disease). Glucose goes straight to the blood and is only sent to the liver to convert to glycogen if the body needs it (but most people’s glycogen stores are already full) and glucose is converted to fat in fat cells (no liver processing). In short glucose and fructose are not processed the same.

Here's the thing I noticed when I was a single father. I'd have my daughter with me and she'd be fine doing what toddlers do. Someone would see us and whip out a piece of candy and give it to her, and then we'd say our goodbyes. 5-10 minutes later my daughter was bouncing off the walls, every single time that happened.

It's the sugar, and most all moms who spend a lot of time with their kids will tell you the same thing. That's who I learned about it from. And when I got up the nerve to start telling people, "Please don't give her candy" I stopped having that problem, when I was successful at stopping them.

I've seen the same thing with my youngest step-kids when my wife and I met and I took over the day to day caring for them. And I spent a great deal of time with "moms" learning from them and listening to them because when I started caring for my daughter myself (at 14 months) I realized fast that I didn't know shit about momming, and I was a very active father before then.

The funny thing about those who've posted links to "studies" here that dispute this is they must know there are many studies that do make this link for both sugar and Red 40, and that Red 40 is banned in many other countries because of it's links to making kids hyper and other issues.

I'll readily concede that these may not affect all kids the same, and that it probably affects young children most, but that really makes sense when you consider doses (serving sizes) and body weight. But in my experience it affects most children. I've not met many it doesn't, but I've met a lot of adults that ignore it.

The longer term ill effects of too much sugar are pretty well documented too. If you don't raise children to eat healthy foods you're pretty much failing as a parent.