Background: Sugar consumption is one of the major risk factor associated with nutritional problem and can lead to many chronic diseases later in life. Commercial snacks (with high sugar) are some of the most food-items consumed by the school-aged children based on the food and nutrition status survey of Thailand. Nevertheless, there is limited data available in Thailand about the sugar composition of commercial snacks.

Objective: To analyze the types and contents of sugar in selected commercial snacks consumed by school-aged children.

Materials and Methods: Ninety-six commercial snacks consumed by most Thai school-aged children were divided into sixteen categories such as hard candy, soft candy, lollipop, milk tablet, marshmallow, chocolate, wafer, biscuit, cookie, cracker, stuff bread, layer cake, jelly, meat snack, corn snack, and ice cream. All the commercial snacks were analyzed for the types and contents of sugars using the enzymatic method.

Results: Selected popular commercial snacks had different sugar content (g/100 g) and the most sugar content was sucrose. The top three snack items with the highest total sugars (g/100 g) were lollipop fruit flavored (83.4), lollipop cola flavored (81.8), hard candy honey-lemon flavored (75.7). The top three snacks, lollipop (fruit flavored), lollipop (cola flavored), and hard candy (honey-lemon flavored) contained various types and contents of sugar (g/100 g) including glucose 3.8±1.1, 3.3±0.2, 3.7±2.0, fructose 3.9±0.4, 3.7±0.4, 2.1±0.7, sucrose 53.1±6.5, 55.9±7.6, 55.2±2.1, and maltose 22.6±1.2, 18.9±4.0, 14.7±10.8, respectively.

Conclusion: All Thai popular commercial snacks contain high amount of sugar. A sugar composition and content database of selected commercial snacks was developed. It can be used as an educational tool to raise public awareness of high sugar source in diet.

Keywords: Snacks, Sugar, Monosaccharides, Disaccharides, Enzymatic method, School-aged children