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Children under eight should avoid slushies as glycerol leads to hospitalisations
- t-3 2y agoAfter reading this and realizing that glycerol is processed in the liver like ethanol, I can't help but wonder if slushies will also cause adverse effects with medicines that interact poorly with alcohol.
- rjsw 2y ago... or just damage the liver itself.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- hedora 2y agoI looked around a bit wondering why they’d even contain glycerol. Apparently, it’s a sugar substitute that has similar antifreeze properties as real sugar: https://foodcomplianceinternational.com/industry-insight/news/3644-new-guidance-on-glycerol-in-slush-ice-drinks https://foodcomplianceinternational.com/industry-insight/new... I checked ICEE ingredients here in the US, and they don’t seem to contain it. https://www.icee.com/flavors/ https://www.icee.com/flavors/ Their FAQ says no such sugar substitute exists: https://www.icee.com/faqs/ https://www.icee.com/faqs/ (Though it also fails to mention that their products are loaded with HFCS). My guess is that looking for brands that are sugar based or at least advertise they’re free of artificial sweeteners is probably the right move. I looked for Slurpee (#2 brand in US) ingredients, but could only find them for Canada, with a note saying they vary by country. Canada doesn’t have any sugar free offerings, and none contain glycerol. The US has a sugar free oreo slurpee that sounds terrible. I’d like to see the ingredient list for it!
- jorvi 2y agoI've always wondered what makes high-fructose corn syrup so uniquely bad among sugars. AFAIK, 10g of sugar is 10g of sugar, regardless of if it's fructose, glucose, sucrose or lactose. Of course Americans love their products stuffed with sugar.. your ordinary bread is almost like a really fluffy cake. But in that case there's just more sugar, so the culprit is easily identified :)
- kelipso 2y agoFructose is metabolized through the liver where it gets converted to glucose and other molecules. I assume it would put more stress in the body to metabolize a large amount of fructose, compared to glucose.
- sfjailbird 2y agoYes, fructose is uniquely bad, as it must be metabolized in the liver, where it can contribute to fatty liver disease. But regular sugar contains fructose in almost the same proportion as high-fructose corn syrup, so it's not a much better or worse alternative. Edited to add: Fructose also has ten times higher glycation activity than glucose, which is the process by which sugar binds to (and destroys) proteins and lipids in the body.
- J_Shelby_J 2y agoSo, same issue as ethanol?
- sfjailbird 2y agoSame in the sense that their liver metabolism ends up depositing fat in the liver, leading to the same fatty liver disease. The actual metabolic pathways are different though.
- directevolve 2y agoI see no reason to think either the manufacturing process or the glucose-fructose balance is a problem. It is just a cheap way to make a lot of sugar. That makes sugary foods cheap. Which helps make people diabetic and fat due to overconsumption.
- laweijfmvo 2y agoI’ll go out on a limb and say that everyone should avoid “slushies” as they’re nothing but frozen sugar.
- Symbiote 2y agoThe ones containing glycerol are sugar-free. But anyway, the scientists agree: “From a public health perspective, there are no nutritional or health benefits from these drinks and they are not recommended as part of a balanced diet. Recommendations on their safe consumption therefore need to be weighted towards safety.”
- opo 2y ago>The ones containing glycerol are sugar-free. Well glycerol is not sucrose but it has more calories per gram than sucrose and the FDA requires the glycerin content per serving to be declared as sugar alcohol. >Glycerin (sometimes spelled glycerine), or glycerol, is a sweet, syrupy liquid that is about 75% as sweet as sucrose. It is chemically categorized as a polyol with 4.32 kcal/g. ... If the label has a statement regarding sugars, the FDA requires the glycerin content per serving to be declared as sugar alcohol. https://diabetesjournals.org/spectrum/article/17/3/137/2007/Low-Carbohydrate-Food-Facts-and-Fallacies https://diabetesjournals.org/spectrum/article/17/3/137/2007/...
- swat535 2y agoI would perhaps amend that statement for adults to: consume it on very rare occasions as an enjoyable treat, but certainly not frequently.
- MBCook 2y ago> It also recommends children between five and 10 are limited to no more than one slushie a day. I would really hope most people would have imposed such a limit on their kids already.
- tredre3 2y agoImagine you spend a family day at the fair, a full 10-12 hours. Allowing your 8yo to get two slushies throughout the day doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoThe correct number of slushies per day is zero.
- averageRoyalty 2y agoAnd an hour of exercise, no sweets, a healthy diet, 10+ hours of sleep, etc. However the real world works differently.
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoThe nice thing about having kids is you get to dictate what they consume, how they spend their time and when they go to bed.
- averageRoyalty 2y agoI've never met a parent in my life who has been able to dictate every meal, every moment of the childs day and their bedtime to the minute. I've met many who have tried, but reality doesn't work like that.
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoIt's really not that hard, just start the way you mean to continue. My children went to McDonalds twice in their youth, once for a party and once on a road trip with no other options. We would take them to the cinema and walk right past the food and drinks. Whilst other parents took their kids to the sweet shop after school we went right to the park. There were no complaints because they didn't know any different. Clearly a lot of parents don't do this sort of thing but that doesn't make it impossible. We were far from alone.
- trebligdivad 2y agoI have used Glycerol in a low sugar/low fat icecream I made in a home ice cream maker; it works pretty well at stopping it freezing solid, so I can see why it's there.
- sfjailbird 2y agoBe aware that glycerol has as many calories as regular sugar. It does have a lower glycemic index, though.
- dfawcus 2y agoSo does a small quantity of Arrowroot, I used to add that when making my own ice cream.
- Symbiote 2y agoThe original paper: https://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2025/02/10/archdischild-2024-328109 https://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2025/02/10/archdischild-20...
- neuroelectron 2y agoThese packaged slushies have glycerine in them. Glycerol is also known as glycerin. https://www.amazon.com/Icee-Slush-Frozen-Fruit-Pouches/dp/B0DK87CCK1 https://www.amazon.com/Icee-Slush-Frozen-Fruit-Pouches/dp/B0... Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/713aJ4YGS7L.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/713aJ4YGS7L.jpg
- cantrecallmypwd 2y agoMaybe we shouldn't be drinking sugary antifreeze.
- 31carmichael 2y agowhy not?
- moktonar 2y agoWe are at a point were we are being feeded acfual poison directly..
- pessimizer 2y agoThese have been on sale for at least 50 years.
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoWhich coincides with the period of increasing obesity.
- moktonar 2y agoPoison doesn’t age well
- ktusznio 2y agoOr, you know, one should not be permitted to sell slushies to children.
- Imnimo 2y ago>The study looked at the medical notes of 21 children aged between two and seven in the UK and Ireland who fell ill after consuming the drinks between 2009 and 2024. Is this just a sample of 21 among a larger set of children, or is that all the children that could be found that had this reaction?
- amelius 2y agoWho would have thought that anti-freeze is not healthy to ingest?
- flyinghamster 2y agoThat's glycol, not glycerol. Ethylene glycol is especially toxic, while propylene glycol may be used as a food additive (E1520, or E490 for pharmaceuticals).
- javawizard 2y agoNote that the two are chemically related: glycerol is propylene glycol with its end-chain carbon atom and bonded hydrogen atoms yeeted off and replaced with an oxygen + hydrogen pair. (The process of actually manufacturing glycerol is more complicated than that, of course.)
- cantrecallmypwd 2y agoWrong. Glycerol was used as antifreeze historically.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- metalman 2y agothe way this is worded, is that responibility is bieng downloaded onto "Children under 8", whereas I am absolutely shure that there is no toxin that effects only children remarkable how this appears right out in the open like it's a technical discussion involving the placement of a regulatory warning sticker.
- Symbiote 2y agoFrom the paper, they are going by body weight, and then a conservative age as a proxy: “To ensure safe population-level recommendations can be easily interpreted at the individual parental level, and given the variability across an age cohort of weight, we suggest that recommendations should be based on weight rather than age. “Alternatively, the recommended age threshold may need to be higher (eight years), to ensure the dose per weight would not be exceeded given normal population variation in weight.” This is quoted at the end of the Guardian article, which is better than the Sky one: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/12/under-eights-should-not-drink-slushies-containing-glycerol-say-doctors https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/12/under-eights...
- metalman 2y agoSorbets, ice's, sherberts, etc, have been in use for centuries, its absurd that there would be a "food" presented, and designed to attract youth, where something akin to a LD50 is bieng floated as "goooood times for the whole family"* *Some fatal conditions and limitations apply Glycerol has no function as food, it's a "cheapener"
- jeetoid 2y agoI wonder how much glycerol they use, the article is scant on data. You'll often see somewhere around 10g of glycerol in a protein bar, bodybuilders take quite a bit too in order to increase water in muscles and it's safe [0]. Glycerin is also used for baking, used for stuff like fondant. [0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3590833/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3590833/