United States: Research shows that children 7 years or younger risk severe illness when drinking sugar-free slushies that contain glycerol as a sugar alcohol for texture maintenance.
More about the news
Children below age 7 experienced quick blood sugar decreases with subsequent loss of consciousness and blood acid disturbance after eating slushies with glycerol, according to research published March 11 in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.
As per the experts, the “glycerol intoxication syndrome” from sugar-free slushies impacted twenty-one children in the United Kingdom and Ireland, thereby sickening all but one between 2018 and 2024, researchers said.
What more are the experts stating?
According to the team lead and the senior investigator Ellen Crushell, a metabolic disease consultant with Children’s Health Ireland, “Healthcare professionals and parents should be aware that young children can become seriously unwell due to glycerol intoxication, shortly after consuming slush ice drinks containing glycerol,” US News reported.
Food items like protein bars and shakes together with diet foods receive glycerol-based sugar substitution from the International Food Information Council to achieve their desired properties.
Slushies stay unfrozen through the addition of large amounts of sugar, according to Crushell.
The texture of multiple sugar-free slushies depends on glycerol because it takes the place of regular sugar ingredients.
The American slushy companies employ glycerol because they want to reduce the amount of sugar children consume.
The UK and Ireland established a “sugar tax” policy that prompted the adoption of glycerol as a substitute in slushies according to the published data.
Moreover, Crushell added, “Slush ice drinks have contained a lot of glycerol instead of sugar in recent years due to the increased demand for sugar-free food,” US News reported.
“To maintain the slush, you need either sugar or glycerol, but due to public health concerns and a sugar tax, sugar was reduced, and glycerol was added.”