Recently, there has been a rage about a certain milk companies who claimed that their milk contains no added sugar. And here’s sharing what other companies with parents who are concerned about this issue with you:
As parents, it is natural to be concerned about obesities, tooth decay or other health-related issues for your child. Therefore it is important that parents need to be conscious of the TOTAL sugar levels in your child’s milk or diet.
Dutch Lady Growing Up Milk formulas which has been developed in line with the Malaysian Recommended Nutrient Intake (2005) and WHO (2003), has approximately 15% and 32% less TOTAL sugar (per 100mg milk powder) than some brands who claim to have no added sugar.
How this is possible?
Even though lactose is naturally present in milk, one can add more levels of lactose if one chooses, hence increasing the TOTAL sugar levels in milk. When you add lactose you do not need to claim ADDED sugar.
We would also like to share that sugars like natural sugar and natural added sugar are types of Carbohydrate. They are important because Carbohydrates are a main source of energy to ensure the healthy growth & development of the body and brain of growing up children. There is no difference in caloric value between the types of sugars.
Natural sugar called lactose can be found in milk while natural added sugar comes from plants (described as added sugar because it’s not found naturally in milk). In terms of calories, there is no difference between the two. In fact, when you take sugar naturally found in milk (lactose), it also counts as part of your TOTAL sugar consumption.
So, if milk already has natural sugar, why do we need added sugar?
Dutch Lady’s Growing Up Milk is nutritionally designed using a combination of NATURALLY PRESENT sugars like lactose, and added NATURAL sugars. Dutch Lady makes a conscious decision to add other natural sugar in our Growing Up Milk.
Why? Based on years of research we have found that Malaysian children can digest milk best if we respect the NATURAL ratio of lactose in milk.
Therefore, we do not choose to add lactose, but other natural sugar from plants. From our research, we found that increasing lactose to a level that is not naturally found in milk can cause digestive problems like diarrhoea and bloating (due to too much gas).
Thus, having a well-balanced mix of types of sugars in our Dutch Lady Growing Up Milk formula will make it easily digestible for children, while providing the energy that they need. At Dutch Lady, we believe that milk brings your children essential nutrients; therefore we find it of utmost importance that many Malaysian children can enjoy the benefits of milk.
For generations, Dutch Lady has been proud to bring parents high quality nutrition for their young children through its Growing Up Milk formulas. We were the first in the world to offer consumers’ Growing Up Milk formulation, and we are constantly guided by our international and local research & development efforts, to continue developing breakthrough innovations that provide the best dairy nutrition for our future generation.
Thank you again for highlighting your question to us and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need more information.
Thanks,
Dutch Lady Malaysia