Tourists got to see 45,485 pounds of sugar in Times Square on Tuesday to show how much added sugar American kids consume every five minutes.
Natural snack company KIND was responsible for the display in an effort to educate parents about the extent of added sugar consumed by kids and the danger all that added sugar poses to their health.
“On average, children are eating three times more than the recommended limit of added sugar each day,” said KIND health and wellness specialist Stephanie Perruzza, Forbes reported.
Approximately 25 grams or 100 calories worth of sugar a day is the recommended amount — about 25 gummy bears for the average sized child.
Added sugar is found in many processed foods, including ones that don’t have a very sweet taste, like some sauces, breads, and beef jerky. More commonly, kids are large consumers of sweetened cereal, yogurt, and soda or juice, and sugar can even hide in medications and supposedly healthy granola bars.
The Washington Times reported the average 8-year-old eats about 64 pounds of added sugar in a year, which is about the same as that student’s body weight. That breaks down to about 21 teaspoons a day. A 12-ounce can of soda has about eight teaspoons, often in the form of high fructose corn syrup.
A study by KIND and media polling company Morning Consult showed 80 percent of parents don’t know the names of common sugar-containing ingredients on lables, including corn syrup, glucose, and fructose, the Times reported.
“Hopefully, it empowers consumers — especially parents — to make more informed food choices,” Peruzza said, USA Today reported.
Twitter users wondered who would clean up all that sugar in Times Square and pointed out that kids’ parents were buying all these sugary snacks for them.