19 May Temple University and Monell Center Scientists Find Early Intervention at Home Helps Children Consume Less Added Sugar – an Achievable Public Health Goal
For immediate release
Contact: Staci Vernick, media@monell.org
As added sugar remains a persistent challenge in children’s diets, here is encouraging evidence that practical lifestyle changes can make a difference.
PHILADELPHIA (May 19, 2026). New research shows that reducing added sugar intake among children is an achievable public health goal. Published online and in print on May 19, 2026 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the randomized controlled trial highlights the success of a parent-led, home-based intervention to reduce added sugar intake ─ one of childhood’s most stubborn nutritional challenges and a key contributor to dental caries, a common disease of childhood. Led by Jennifer Orlet Fisher, PhD, Professor, Temple University, and Julie A. Mennella, PhD, Member, Monell Chemical Senses Center, the research team found that preschoolers ate significantly less added sugar when they were repeatedly offered lower-sugar snacks and when their mothers received targeted nutrition and dental health education.
Julie A. Mennella, PhD
The Monell-Temple team conducted a two-pronged intervention study of two groups of 70 healthy preschoolers and their mothers who were randomly assigned to either an intervention group or a control group. The intervention, which spanned four months, with 1-month follow-up, provided children with daily snacks and their mothers with nutritional education. The snack menu given to the intervention group was intentionally designed to include more fresh fruit and snacks that were lower in added sugar than those provided to the control group, who were offered typical preschoolers’ snacks.
Temple Professor Jennifer Orlet Fisher, PhD, said, “Snacks provided to children in the intervention group contained about half the sugar, fewer calories, and more protein, fat, and sodium than snacks given to the control children.”
While the intervention snacks tasted less sweet, they tasted saltier, due to higher sodium content. Neither group got snacks containing low-calorie sweeteners. The intervention caregivers were instructed to limit sugary foods and to remove sugar-sweetened beverages from the home, avoid consuming these types of foods in front of their child, and refrain from feeding low-calorie sweeteners, as the intervention was designed to reduce children’s overall exposure to sweetness. These mothers also received monthly dental and nutrition lessons that aligned with the study’s sweetness-reduction goals. Control caregivers received non-nutrition lessons without dietary guidance.
The 4-month intervention reduced daily added sugar and sugary beverage intakes among preschoolers, and it produced beneficial carryover effects on caregivers, who significantly reduced their own sugar-sweetened beverage and added sugar intake. While children’s body weight remained unchanged, added sugar declined by midtrial and remained lower through the end of the trial and 1-month follow-up.
The findings are notable because children have an inborn preference for sweet tastes, and snacks are a major source of added sugar in their diets. The study suggests that even without changing children’s overall sweet taste preferences, families may still be able to lower the amount of added sugar children consume by changing the foods and drinks available at home. It also highlights the powerful role caregivers play in shaping children’s eating habits during a critical stage of development.
Although neither group fully eliminated added sugars as recommended in the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, intervention children showed better alignment with current guidelines. Reductions in added sugar intake were also not accompanied by downward shifts in sweet preferences or change in the intervention children’s acceptance of the lower-sugar snacks. However, there was a shift in children’s salt preferences; the intervention group of children most preferred higher salt concentrations than did control children.
Fisher said, “Our findings show that lowering added sugar intake among young children is a realistic and attainable public health goal. They also underscore that combining access to nutritious foods with caregiver education can play a critical role in achieving this goal during the first five years of life.”
The study’s two-pronged approach—providing healthy snacks to children alongside maternal nutrition education—mirrors the design of federal programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. The authors, however, call attention to one unexpected finding and offer a cautionary note for future work. Mennella said, “That children in the intervention group did not change sweet preferences but preferred higher concentrations of salt at the end of the intervention highlights the need for additional research to understand whether increased sodium exposure is an unintended consequence of reducing added sugar intake from packaged snack foods.”
###
Editor’s Note
The research was supported by grant number R01DC016616 from the National Institutes of Health.
About Monell Chemical Senses Center
The Monell Chemical Senses Center is an independent nonprofit research institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1968 to advance and share discoveries in the science of the chemical senses of smell, taste, chemesthesis, and interoception to solve the world’s health, societal, and environmental challenges.