Walk along the sidelines of almost any junior sporting event and you'll probably see it.
A bag of snakes being passed around at half-time. A brightly coloured sports drink. Lollies in the kit bag. Maybe even a parent or coach encouraging kids to "get some sugar in" before they head back onto the field.
And the reasoning makes sense on the surface.
Young athletes use carbohydrate as an important source of energy during exercise, so if carbohydrate is important, surely a big hit of sugar is exactly what they need?
Not necessarily.
Carbohydrate absolutely has an important role in sports performance, particularly during longer or higher-intensity exercise. But carbohydrate and lollies are not the same thing, and supporting a young athlete should be about more than finding the quickest possible source of sugar.
We also need to think about hydration, overall nutrition, gut health, dental health and the habits we're helping young athletes develop for the future.
So, should young athletes be eating lollies and drinking sugary sports drinks during games? Let's look at the bigger picture.
Why do athletes need carbohydrates?
Carbohydrates are an important fuel source for exercising muscles.
When we eat carbohydrate, the body breaks much of it down into glucose. Some glucose is used immediately and some is stored as glycogen in the muscles and liver, ready to be used when the body needs energy.
For a young athlete running, sprinting, tackling, jumping or repeatedly changing direction, carbohydrate availability can therefore matter.
This is why sports nutrition advice often focuses on ensuring athletes have enough carbohydrate around training and competition.
But there is an important distinction.
Needing carbohydrate does not automatically mean needing lollies.
For many junior athletes, particularly those who have eaten appropriately before their game and are playing for a relatively short period, there may be no need to spend half-time loading up on confectionery.
For longer matches, tournaments or extended periods of intense exercise, additional carbohydrate may be useful. The amount and type needed will depend on the athlete, their age, the sport, how long they're exercising and what they have eaten beforehand.
Why have snakes and lollies become so common in junior sport?
The idea is simple: lollies contain rapidly available carbohydrate.
They are inexpensive, easy to carry and kids generally don't need much convincing to eat them.
That doesn't necessarily make them the best everyday sports nutrition strategy.
Lollies can provide sugar, but they generally provide very little else nutritionally. They aren't providing the broader range of nutrients that growing bodies need.
There is also a bigger question worth asking:
If we can provide the carbohydrate a young athlete needs from nutritious food, why wouldn't we?
Natural sugar isn't the same as avoiding sugar altogether
This is where conversations about sugar can become confusing.
Fruit contains sugar.
A banana contains sugar. Grapes contain sugar. Oranges contain sugar.
So recommending fruit while telling parents to avoid "sugar" can sound contradictory.
The difference is the food that the sugar comes packaged in.
Whole fruit doesn't just provide carbohydrate. Depending on the fruit, it can also provide water, fibre, potassium, vitamin C and a variety of beneficial plant compounds.
Lollies, on the other hand, are predominantly a source of refined carbohydrate and generally offer little nutritional value beyond energy.
For a growing athlete, food isn't simply fuel for the next 20 minutes.
It is also supplying the nutrients their body needs to grow, recover and function.
What about sugary sports drinks and artificial ingredients?
Sports drinks are everywhere in junior sport.
They're brightly coloured, they're marketed around performance and hydration, and it's easy for young athletes and parents to assume that if someone is playing sport, a sports drink must automatically be a better choice than water.
But that's not always the case.
Traditional sports drinks are generally designed to provide carbohydrate, fluid and electrolytes together. That can absolutely have a place in sport, particularly during prolonged or high-intensity exercise.
But many young athletes simply don't need a high-sugar sports drink every time they train or play.
Sports Dietitians Australia recommends water as the chosen fluid on the sports field for adolescent athletes in most circumstances, while acknowledging that sports drinks can be beneficial during prolonged vigorous exercise.
And when choosing a sports drink, it's worth looking beyond the front of the bottle.
Don't just check how much sugar it contains. Turn it around and look at the entire ingredient list.
Depending on the product, flavoured sports drinks can contain added sugars as well as colours, flavours, sweeteners and other additives.
Food additives permitted for use in Australia must meet Australian food safety requirements, so the message isn't that every artificial ingredient is inherently dangerous.
It's about asking whether they're necessary for your young athlete.
There is also growing scientific interest in how some non-sugar sweeteners may interact with the gut microbiome. Research is still evolving and we shouldn't claim that every sweetener or artificial ingredient damages the gut, but it is another reason to think about a young athlete's overall dietary pattern, rather than assuming a sugar-free or brightly marketed sports product is automatically a healthy choice.
For gut health, we know there is considerable value in a varied diet containing fibre-rich whole foods such as fruit, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds and legumes.
So when choosing hydration for a young athlete, a simple question can be helpful:
What does my child actually need from this drink?
If the goal is hydration and electrolyte replacement, do they necessarily need a large dose of added sugar, artificial colours and a long ingredient list at the same time?
Not always.
Why we created DYVAL Perform
This was actually one of the reasons we created DYVAL Perform.
We wanted a hydration and electrolyte drink specifically designed with young athletes in mind, without feeling that we had to load it with the ingredients commonly found in many conventional sports drinks.
DYVAL Perform is designed to support hydration and electrolyte replacement with no added sugar, no artificial colours, no artificial flavours and no artificial sweeteners.
Because our philosophy is simple.
If a young athlete needs additional carbohydrate during sport, that carbohydrate can come from food when appropriate.
And if they need hydration and electrolytes, their drink can focus on doing exactly that.
It means parents can make the carbohydrate decision separately depending on the demands of the sport.
For a regular game, that might mean fruit at half-time alongside hydration.
For a long tournament or particularly demanding endurance event, the athlete may require considerably more carbohydrate.
Hydration and fuelling are both important, but they don't always have to come from the same brightly coloured bottle.
You can see Dyval Perform in the shop here
What does a high-sugar diet mean for long-term health?
One packet of snakes at half-time isn't going to determine a child's future health.
Health is built from patterns over time.
But this is exactly why the habits we create around junior sport matter.
Regularly consuming large amounts of added sugar can make it easier for young people to consume more sugar than recommended, and frequent exposure to sugary foods and drinks is also an important consideration for dental health.
Rather than becoming frightened of sugar, the goal should be to teach young athletes what everyday nutrition looks like.
There is a big difference between using rapidly available carbohydrate strategically during a demanding endurance event and automatically handing children confectionery every time they play sport.
What about gut health?
Gut health is another reason to look at a young athlete's diet as a whole rather than simply focusing on calories and carbohydrates.
Our gut microbiome is influenced by the foods we regularly eat.
A varied diet containing plant foods and dietary fibre helps support a diverse gut environment. Foods such as fruit, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds provide fibres and plant compounds that can help nourish beneficial gut bacteria.
A dietary pattern dominated by highly processed foods and low in fibre doesn't provide the same nutritional environment.
Again, this isn't about suggesting that eating a handful of lollies will suddenly "damage" a child's gut.
It won't.
It is about the overall pattern.
If sport becomes associated with sports drinks, lollies, energy products and highly processed snacks every week, we're missing an opportunity to teach children that performance nutrition and good health can work together.
Artificial ingredients: should parents be worried?
"Artificial" doesn't automatically mean dangerous.
That's an important distinction.
Food colours, flavours, preservatives and sweeteners approved for use in Australia are regulated and must comply with food safety standards.
At the same time, parents don't need to assume that every ingredient found in a sports product is something their child actually needs.
Some additives are there to create colour.
Some create flavour.
Some provide sweetness without sugar.
They don't necessarily improve hydration or sporting performance.
Research into the relationship between certain food additives, non-sugar sweeteners and the gut microbiome continues to develop, and we don't yet have enough evidence to make sweeping claims about all artificial ingredients.
So rather than creating fear around them, we prefer a much simpler philosophy:
If an ingredient doesn't need to be there, why put it there?
For everyday sports nutrition, start with real food and purposeful hydration. If a specialised sports nutrition product is genuinely needed, choose it deliberately and read the ingredient list rather than relying solely on the marketing on the front.
What can young athletes have at half-time instead of lollies?
For many young athletes, half-time nutrition can be incredibly simple.
Depending on the length and intensity of the sport, options might include:
- Orange wedges
- Grapes
- Watermelon
- Banana
- Berries
- Other easy-to-digest fruit
- Water
- An appropriate electrolyte drink when additional hydration support is needed
Fruit can be particularly useful because it provides carbohydrate alongside water and micronutrients.
The key is also not to overload the stomach.
Half-time isn't the moment for a huge meal. Young athletes generally want something light and easy to digest so they can return to activity feeling comfortable rather than heavy or nauseous.
Don't forget what they eat before the game
One of the best ways to support energy during a game is to start fuelling before the whistle blows.
A young athlete who has eaten an appropriate pre-game meal or snack doesn't necessarily need to spend the entire match trying to catch up on energy.
Depending on timing and individual tolerance, pre-game carbohydrate foods might include:
- Banana
- Toast
- Oats
- Yoghurt and fruit
- A simple sandwich or wrap
- Rice
- Fruit and a small smoothie
- Crackers with an appropriate topping
The closer you get to the start of the game, the lighter and easier to digest the food generally needs to be.
What about tournaments and long days of sport?
This is where the conversation changes.
A child playing one relatively short game is very different from a young athlete competing for several hours, playing multiple games in a tournament or participating in prolonged endurance activity.
During extended exercise, carbohydrate intake can become much more important.
There may be circumstances where easily digested, rapidly available carbohydrate is useful because the athlete needs energy without a large amount of food sitting in their stomach.
Sports drinks containing carbohydrate can also have a legitimate role in these circumstances. The Australian Institute of Sport recognises carbohydrate-electrolyte sports drinks as a practical way of simultaneously delivering fluid and fuel during and after exercise.
That's why blanket statements such as "sugar is bad" aren't particularly helpful either.
Sports nutrition should match the demands of the sport.
The goal isn't to eliminate carbohydrate or sugar. It is to understand when it is needed, how much is needed and where possible choose options that support both performance and overall nutrition.
Performance today AND health tomorrow
At DYVAL, we think junior sports nutrition should do two things.
It should help young athletes perform.
And it should help them build healthy habits that will serve them long after junior sport finishes.
Those goals don't need to compete with each other.
Young athletes can get the carbohydrates they need.
They can stay properly hydrated.
They can replace electrolytes when appropriate.
They can recover properly.
And they can do all of that without making lollies and highly processed sugary drinks an automatic part of every training session and game.
Sometimes the simplest options are incredibly effective.
Fruit. Water. Balanced meals. Appropriate hydration. Enough carbohydrate. Enough protein. Good recovery.
Because we're not just fuelling the next half of football, netball, basketball, rugby, hockey or athletics.
We're helping young athletes build the nutrition habits they'll carry into adulthood.
Carbohydrates are important for young athletes, and during longer or particularly demanding exercise, consuming carbohydrate during sport can be beneficial.
But "athletes need carbohydrate" shouldn't automatically translate to "kids need lollies."
And "my child needs electrolytes" doesn't automatically mean they need a high-sugar, artificially coloured sports drink.
For many junior sporting situations, young athletes can get carbohydrate from simple whole-food options such as fruit, while water or an appropriate electrolyte drink can support hydration depending on the conditions and duration of exercise.
There's no need for parents to feel guilty about the occasional snake or sports drink.
This isn't about perfection.
It's about looking at the bigger pattern, reading ingredient labels and making informed choices.
Fuel the athlete in front of you, consider the demands of their sport and remember that good sports nutrition isn't only about what gets them through today's game.
It's also about supporting the growing body behind the athlete.