Study: Reducing sugar can improve children's health

TAMPA (FOX 13) - A new study shows that cutting most sugar out of a child’s diet can immediately improve their health, even if the diet still contains the same amount of calories.

Researchers put 43 Hispanic and African-American children on a special diet for nine days. They replaced all of the calories they usually ate from sugar with starch.

The children weighed themselves daily and if they were losing weight, they were told to eat more of the provided food in order to keep their weight the same throughout the study.

After nine days of having their total dietary sugar intake reduced to ten percent of their daily calories, the children showed improvements in their blood sugar, cholesterol levels and had less fat in their livers.

The study was published in the journal "Obesity."