I'm going to be completely honest with you. Sugar is such a tricky thing to navigate with kids.

It is. There's dangers on both sides of it, either being too restrictive or too liberal with it.

Both can have consequences. So it's really hard to find that good middle ground.

Today's call comes from a mom who's worried because one of her kids craves sugar a lot more often,

and she wants to know how to reduce his need for sugar. Welcome back to the Feeding Toddlers Made Easy

podcast. I hope you're having a fantastic day today.

I'm Casey Barnes. I'm a registered dietitian nutritionist. I have a master in clinical nutrition,

and I am so glad you're here. If you're a parent, grandparent, caregiver, you are in the right place.

I answer your questions on feeding toddlers and preschoolers with

real life tips. If you have a question you'd like me to answer, please give me a call.

The number is 469-552-5527. That's the voicemail line, and you can grab that number, plus all the information from today's

episode at mama knowsnutrition.com forward slash podcast. This is episode 11 if you're looking

for the show notes for today. And I promise this will not be the last sugar or dessert-related

episode for sure, because this is such a common topic.

It has so many different sides to it. And I hear questions about sugar and desserts all the time.

So let's hear Kaylin's question for today.

Hi, Casey. My name is Kaylin. So my question is I have a five-year-old who is super healthy, Casey. My name's Kaylin. So my question is, I have a five-year-old who is super healthy. She grew up eating just all the healthy things. We were in a healthy season in our life. And with our second child, he's almost three. He did not get as much healthy food. So now you can definitely see when she's asking for carrots and ranch and he's asking for a popsicle.

So how are ways that we can break the need for sugar or the desire for sweeter things and when he doesn't eat his veggies at night at dinner?

What are some effective ways we can transition

into getting him to eat healthy now?

I'm going to unpack all of this today.

There's three main things that I want to address here.

...