Is Your Child Secretly Ingesting Caffeine?

Jul 9, 2015

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Parents monitor what their kinds eat and drink on a daily basis to make sure they are getting the most nutrition possible to help their little bodies grow. The two things that parents watch out for the most are sugar and caffeine. While parents naturally assume that drinks like soda and coffee contain a lot of sugar, there are others that also contain both sugar and caffeine that parents may not know about, and yet, are still giving to their children.

Ingesting too much caffeine can give kids the symptoms of ADD such as inability to concentrate, behavioral issues, and unable to sit still. Need help finding out the caffeine sources that children may be ingesting every single day? Here are some sources of caffeine that parents may never have suspected.

Secretly Caffeinated Drinks:

  • Hot chocolate: When the weather is cold, parents love to give their kids hot chocolate, but there is a lot of caffeine (up to 13 mg) in it that can keep kids up at night.
  • Root beer: Parents think that because root beer is made from a root, that there is no caffeine in it, but there is actually quite a bit–up to 22 mg for one small 12 ounce can. Update for clarification (huge thanks to our Facebook fans): Caffeine content varies by brand. Some brands (A&W, Mug) do not have caffeine in their root beer. Be sure to check the label when shopping for root beer. Barq’s, for instance, has 1.83 mg of caffeine per ounce.
  • Peach green tea: Green tea is healthy, but blending it with peach makes this drink contain both a lot of sugar and caffeine.

Secretly Caffeinated Foods:

  • Dark chocolate: Dark chocolate is not as refined as milk chocolate so it has more caffeine. Parents need to remember anything with chocolate has caffeine in it!
  • Coffee ice cream: Coffee ice cream has a lot of both caffeine and sugar. Remember, like chocolate, anything that says coffee is also going to be loaded with caffeine.

Parents need to start reading warning labels to make sure that their children are not secretly ingesting huge amounts of both sugar and caffeine in their favorite foods. For those parents that have children acting up in school, or are displaying the signs of ADD or ADHD, the first thing they need to look at is what their kids are eating because that could be the cause of any behavioral issues both at home and school.

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