Sugar – The World’s Most Successful Drug Cartel is Targeting Our Kids
- Brainz Magazine
- Sep 11
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 5
Anastasia Schenk is a Pediatric Feeding Specialist and Integrative Nutrition Health Coach. She supports children from starting solids to young adulthood with evidence-based strategies for ARFID, picky eating, gut health, immune support, allergy prevention, and chronic inflammation.
We laugh when we call sugar a drug. After all, it’s the stuff of birthday cakes and grandma’s cookies, not cartel hideouts and midnight deals. But if cocaine companies could advertise in playgrounds, they’d look a lot like the breakfast cereal aisle. The joke stops being funny when you realize the boardroom strategies of the sugar industry read more like organized crime than harmless marketing.
Because here’s the bitter truth, sugar isn’t just sweet, it’s strategic. It hijacks dopamine pathways in a child’s brain in ways eerily similar to addictive substances. It rewires appetite regulation. It primes the gut microbiome for imbalance. And yet, unlike nicotine or alcohol, sugar wears the innocent smile of “kid food.” It shows up as cartoon animals on yogurt tubes and “no nasties” stamped across toddler snacks that are, in reality, metabolic time bombs.
And when anyone dares to challenge the empire, the industry fights back, hard. Coca-Cola, for instance, spent years funding pseudo-scientific networks to bury the link between sugary drinks and metabolic disease. When soda taxes gained momentum, they didn’t just lobby against them, they pushed to change laws so cities couldn’t even vote on taxing soda until 2030. That’s not PR. That’s narrative warfare. And like any cartel worth its salt, or in this case sugar, it’s a battle to control the story at all costs.
This isn’t unique to the UK or the US. In Mexico, where soda consumption per capita is among the highest in the world, the government introduced a sugar tax in 2014. Sales dropped, public health improved, and within months the beverage industry poured millions into marketing campaigns to “restore consumer confidence.” In the US, the food lobby has fought tooth and nail against healthier school lunch programs, arguing that kids won’t eat vegetables. (As if the answer is to keep pizza on the menu and call it a vegetable because of the tomato paste.) The cartel isn’t fictional. It’s global.
Governments, of course, try to push back, gently. Just this month, the UK told baby food companies to reduce sugar and salt within 18 months. If they don’t, tighter regulation might follow. A polite warning, not exactly a crackdown. After all, we’ve seen this movie before. The UK’s 2016 sugar reduction program promised a bold 20% cut, but after four years of voluntary pledges and glossy reports, the food industry had shaved off just 3.5%. That’s not reform. That’s rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Meanwhile, 22% of UK children enter school already overweight or obese. Pediatric type 2 diabetes, once unheard of, is no longer rare. If this is what success looks like, then the “cartel” can sleep soundly.
The many faces of sugar
Sugar doesn’t just infiltrate through obvious culprits like soda or candy. It hides in plain sight, wearing disguises designed to make us feel clever for buying “healthy” foods. If you’ve ever scanned a label and seen glucose syrup, maltodextrin, fruit concentrate, evaporated cane juice, or brown rice syrup, congratulations, you’ve just met sugar’s aliases.
There are more than 50 common names for sugar, and every one of them is legal, clever, and intentionally confusing. Some sound “natural” (honey, agave, coconut blossom sugar). Some sound like something scraped off a lab floor (polydextrose, crystalline fructose). All behave in remarkably similar ways in a child’s body.
Take baby snacks. A pouch that boasts “no added sugar” may in fact be mostly apple concentrate, a liquid sugar with the same metabolic impact as the table sugar we’re all supposedly avoiding. Yogurt marketed as “organic and wholesome” for toddlers can contain more sugar per spoonful than ice cream. Even tomato sauces, cereals, crackers, and breads marketed as “family friendly” are spiked with hidden sugars. If you need a chemistry degree to decode your toddler’s snack bar, chances are it isn’t real food.
And here’s the cruelest irony, many of these sugar-loaded foods are marketed specifically for babies and toddlers. That’s not an accident. The earlier a child’s palate is trained to crave sweetness, the harder it is to accept the natural flavors of vegetables, legumes, or whole grains later in life. The so-called “picky eating epidemic” is not a developmental fluke, it’s often the byproduct of a food industry that has trained our children to expect every bite to taste like dessert.
Beyond willpower: Rewriting the feeding script
Reducing sugar in a child’s diet is not about willpower or “good parenting.” It’s about rewiring taste preferences, rebuilding trust at the table, and addressing the very real feeding challenges that families face. This is where nutrition and pediatric feeding intersect, and where solutions get personal.
As both a nutrition professional and a pediatric feeding specialist, I see daily that it isn’t enough to say “eat less sugar.” Children aren’t miniature adults. Their sensory preferences are stronger, their neurobiology more plastic, and their eating habits far more influenced by environment and exposure. Some children are hypersensitive to textures, others crave predictability, and still others have medical conditions that make feeding complex. That’s why tackling sugar is not about discipline, it’s about strategy.
Here are some starting points that parents can use:
Read beyond the word “sugar.” Learn the aliases. If the label lists syrups, concentrates, or dextrins, treat them as sugar.
Don’t swap sugar for artificial sweeteners. They may reduce calories, but they can disrupt the gut microbiome and maintain a preference for hyper-sweet tastes.
Redefine treats. Fresh fruit, homemade muffins, or plain yogurt with berries can shift a child’s palate without the dopamine spikes of processed sugar.
Expose, don’t ban. Children learn tastes gradually. Offering vegetables alongside familiar foods reduces resistance. Outright bans create forbidden fruit, and cravings.
Work with, not against, your child’s profile. For a sensory-sensitive child, textures matter more than taste. For a child with constant hunger, balancing protein and fiber may be key. Each case is unique.
Every child is different. For one, reducing sugar might ease constant hunger cues. For another, it might calm hyperactivity or improve sleep. For some, sugar is tied to comfort eating, sensory sensitivities, or rigid food preferences. These nuances are why a “one-size-fits-all” approach rarely works.
The bigger picture
Sugar may be the most successful legal cartel in history, but the real power doesn’t sit in a boardroom, it sits at your dinner table. Yes, corporations have turned childhood into a marketing battleground, and yes, they’ve hidden sugar under more disguises than a Cold War spy. But as parents, we still get to decide what goes on the spoon.
When families begin to decode labels, reframe food exposure, and shift their children’s palates, they’re not just cutting sugar, they’re breaking a cycle. They’re reclaiming health in a way that glossy reform programs and industry pledges never will.
And while the industry thrives on the illusion that parents are powerless, the truth is that change is possible. Not by following a rigid plan or falling for the next “sugar-free” marketing gimmick, but by understanding the individual child in front of you, their body, their preferences, their struggles, and their potential. That’s where real feeding expertise lives.
Because the sweetest thing you can give your child isn’t sugar at all. It’s health, resilience, and the freedom to live a long, vibrant life.
Read more from Anastasia Schenk
Anastasia Schenk, Pediatric Feeding Specialist/Integrative Nutrition
Anastasia Schenk is a Pediatric Feeding Specialist and Integrative Nutrition Health Coach who reversed her own autoimmune disease through nutrition. A mother of two, she combines clinical expertise with lived experience to help families navigate picky eating, Pediatric Feeding Disorders, ARFID, gut health, and chronic inflammation. Her programs are evidence-based and rooted in real life, supporting children from starting solids to young adulthood. She is the founder of Early Eaters Club, a platform dedicated to raising resilient, adventurous eaters for lifelong health.
