Kate Hawkesby: Maybe we need to rethink what we're having for breakfast

In the never ending battle of what we can and can’t eat, the one consistent evil these days appears to be sugar.And now a new study published by Frontiers in Neuroscience says ‘children who consume too much sugar could be at greater risk of becoming obese, hyperactive, and cognitively impaired as adults’.Cognitively impaired, that's serious.So just how much sugar are we eating?According to the study, children and adults in more than 60 countries have a diet consisting of more than four times the sugar recommended by the WHO. So the WHO recommends 25 grams a day, most of us are consuming 100 grams a day.The worse news is that over eating sugar leads to more general over eating. We tend to eat more processed food, the more sugar we eat.Long term sugar consumption ‘significantly boosts weight gain, elicits an abnormal and excessive stimulation of the nervous system and it also alters both episodic and spatial memory,’ the study says.This is similar, apparently, to what happens with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders.I’m always surprised by how many things sugar is actually buried in. Tomato sauce, for example, pasta sauces, yoghurt, salad dressing and even your hearty oatmeal. We know muesli bars can be full of it, and juices, but how often do we blithely just consume it without even realising how much we're consuming?So now on top of the hyperactivity, obesity and damage to teeth, we also have neurocognitive deficits to worry about.Professor Bartlett said "there is increasing evidence of overlap in the brain circuitry and molecular signalling pathways involved in sugar consumption and drug abuse."That’s so disturbing isn’t it? Because we often do eat sugary treats for pleasure or comfort. Bad day? Bar of chocolate. Rough night? Sugary drinks.The experts say this ‘hedonistic desire for palatable food is reward-driven and  can override our ability to regulate.’So, in effect, we lose the ability to stop ourselves.Look it’s not all doom and gloom, there was some good news in this study.Apparently overall our ‘sugar consumption has dropped since the mid-1990s’ but (why is there always a but) ‘obesity rates have climbed,‘ which scientists say could be the delayed effect of high sugar intake over a life span.So what can we do? Well apparently we need to eat four times less sugar than we currently do. That’s a lot.So let’s start with breakfast. If you’re about to get into a bowl of cornflakes, think again, maybe try some eggs.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.