17-07-2025
Why Armenian Children Eat So Much Sugar
Sugar is everywhere in Armenia. Sugar-laden foods are the first thing on display in nearly every corner store, among the shelves stacked with candy bars, cakes and sugary drinks. School canteens are no different, with pastries crammed alongside the khachapuri , bags of chips, and sodas of all flavors. Even at home, sugar lurks in foods that might appear healthful at first glance—in jams, jugs of the simmered fruit drink, kompot, and in homemade cakes and buttery sweet bread, gata . Feeding kids sugar is largely seen as a gesture of love, and as a consequence, Armenian children are eating it at alarming frequency.
According to a 2024 World Health Organization (WHO) report that examined childrens' eating habits and health across 44 countries in Europe and Central Asia, Armenian kids aged between 11 and 15 eat more sugar per week than any other country analyzed. Nearly half reported eating chocolate, candy, or other sugary foods at least four times a week. They also rank among the top soda consumers for the same age group.
'Armenians are champions of sugar consumption,' says Arev Mazloumian, a nutritionist at the American University of Armenia (AUA) in Yerevan who has worked extensively on the Ministry of Health's school feeding programs in Armenia. 'Finally, we're first in something.'
At the heart of the country's obsession with sugar is the vital role it plays in Armenian culture and daily life. Leading producers of candy are part of national identity, and giving sweets is often seen as a display of care and hospitality. But the risks associated with such high consumption are just beginning to become apparent. Like much of the world, the number of children who are overweight and obese is rising in Armenia, and doctors are reporting earlier cases of type 2 diabetes, typically considered a disease of middle-age.
From a child's perspective, the appeal is simple: candy, cake and chocolate taste good. But the responsibility for making these choices often lies with the adults. Here, family has a 'very, very big influence,' says Mazloumian.
Caring for children is a source of pride for families, and food plays a central role in this expression of love, with generous portions and rich foods seen as a tangible way to nurture kids. The World Food Programme reported data that showed that love and care are central to feeding practices in Armenia, with parents and grandparents expressing affection by making a child's favorite meals—even when those meals contained high levels of sugar, fat or salt.
According to the study, caregivers also perceived homemade foods, including cookies and cakes, as inherently healthy since they don't contain additives. This belief also extended to traditional beverages such as kompot —which children consumed more than soda — regarded as healthy despite the high sugar content. Malzoumian also points to the misconception of honey as a health food. 'No matter how many times I tell people that honey is still a sugar, no one believes me,' she says. 'It is a better alternative, but it's still considered a sugar.' The normalization of sugar-laden foods is tied to more than just Armenian traditions, history also plays a role.
The deprivation of the 90s, when food availability became scarce, caused the pendulum to swing the other way entirely, says Kim Hekimian, an associate professor of nutrition at Columbia University in New York, who has worked on local health initiatives for several decades. 'People in multiple generations went through deprivation,' she says. 'It's an understandable reaction to want to over-feed.' Sweets are also a staple of celebrations and social exchanges. Birthdays are celebrated enthusiastically, and cultural norms around hospitality mean that guests are expected to bring sweets to a home, and hosts feel compelled to offer them. Kids are also often rewarded with candy and sweet treats. 'Armenians are constantly giving candy to kids,' says Hekimian. 'All of us do it to a certain extent, as a bribe for good behavior.'
Sugar consumption begins at an early age, says Satenik Mkrtchyan, the director of the School Feeding and Child Welfare Agency , which promotes balanced nutrition for schoolchildren. Things like sweetened tea are part of every family's morning and evening rituals, she says, and at a very young age kids are often given foods with sugar added to them, such as murabba (similar to jam). Sugar is even added to typically savory dishes such as kasha (a buckwheat dish) and shila (a kind of soup), to make it more palatable for children, Mkrtchyan says.
Since eating habits form early in life, what children are fed in their first years can shape their preferences and health for decades to come. 'Once you have sugar, you always want it more and more and more,' says Mkrtchyan. 'You will not have any power to stop that.' That's why dietary patterns during infancy, and even the diet and health of the mother, play a key role in long-term well-being. Apart from the local dishes laced with sugar, some lingering practices from the Soviet era also shape how some infants are fed today, Hekimian says. Clinical advice once encouraged giving fruit and vegetable juices to infants only several months old — a practice at odds with modern recommendations . Such drinks contain large amounts of sugar. There was also a belief that breast milk should be supplemented with water. 'And to make that water more palatable, people would put some sugar in it,' Hekimian says.
With many parents still living in multigenerational households, new mothers face pressure to follow well-meaning, but outdated, advice. 'You have generations of people who were taught those guidelines,' says Hekimian. 'These are early, early exposures that then develop taste preferences.'
By the time children reach school age, many of those preferences have already been formed, and they're met with environmental challenges that offer few alternatives. Many students arrive at school with as little as 300 drams, according to the WFP report. Even if they wanted something healthier, their only options at the butka , or school canteen, are often pastries, sweets and chips. 'A lot of people mentioned that they don't even have the choice to buy something healthy,' Mazloumian says of the study. In higher-grade schools, the absence of cafeterias is also common, she says, limiting students' access to proper meals. The 'Westernization' of food has affected the availability of more nutrient-dense options at markets beyond the butka s, too. 'If you go to the supermarkets, it's all processed foods, candies,' she says. 'This was mostly in high income countries… now it's happening everywhere in the world.'
Many kids might not know healthy food when they see it, either. The Mazloumian and Hekimian's experience teaching university-age students about nutrition has pointed to a bigger misunderstanding of 'healthy' foods in Armenia. When asked to name items for a healthy breakfast, many of their students mention avocado and salmon — neither of which are cheap or readily available in Armenia. 'There is a very, very, very big misconception that eating healthy is expensive,' says Mazloumian. 'You don't have to drink a 2,000 dram matcha latte or eat quinoa or avocado every day to be healthy.' Instead, beans, lentils and chickpeas, as well as seasonal fruits and vegetables which are part of a traditional Armenian dietary pattern, are affordable and nutritious, she says.
Mkrtchyan and Mazloumian have been part of efforts to change eating behaviors from a young age within schools. One of the most promising efforts is the national School Feeding Program, active across Armenia's regions except Yerevan, which provides low-sugar, low-salt and limited trans fat meals to students aged six to ten. As part of her work on the program, Mazloumian has reviewed dozens of menus around the country, and sugar shows up everywhere. In some kindergartens, tea served to the children often contains several teaspoons of sugar ('Tea shouldn't even be provided to young children — let's not go there,' she says). With limited funds to create a menu, some schools lean on sugar and sweets to reach the caloric target.
Meals devised as part of the School Feeding Program prove that healthy meals don't have to be expensive. These school meals can be as cheap as 150 drams per child, says Mazloumian. Such a meal would consist of a cabbage and carrot salad, rice, lentils, bread, cheese and a piece of fruit. But kids aren't always sold on the healthier plates. These menus that contain minimal amounts of added sugar or salt, 'imagine how difficult it is for that child to get used to this food.' For instance, they serve kompot without added sugar. 'No one drank that,' she says. 'Imagine you're drinking this with 40 teaspoons of sugar, and then no sugar.'
The Ministry of Health recently updated their standards to reduce the amount of sugar recommended to children. From 40-45 grams per day— about a can of coke-worth of sugar — the recommended daily amount dropped to 20-25 grams, depending on age. 'But the implementation needs a lot of work,' Mazloumian says. In Kindergartens, some parents agree with the new menus, but others are resistant to the change, says Mkrtchyan, and ask for cakes and sugary teas for their kids. She's also part of an effort to roll out nutrition education to school-age children across the country. 'It's too early to measure the outcomes of this,' Mkrtychyan says, but 'the idea is to present rules for health, nutrition, physical activity and food safety.' She also suggests 'very intensive' educational work is also needed among parents and grandparents—the primary influences of a child's diet.
Despite efforts to reduce sugar intake in school meals, changing broader perceptions about sugar remains difficult. Globally, the warnings about sugar are gaining traction, but this phenomenon is relatively recent. A few decades ago, fat was the taboo nutrient on supermarket shelves. Foods, such as yogurts, milks and spreads, began to be 'fat-free', but necessitated the addition of other flavors, especially salt and sugar, to remain palatable. Now, a growing body of evidence points to the overconsumption of sugar leading to long–term health effects , especially obesity , type 2 diabetes, and heart disease —Armenia's biggest killer.
Armenia isn't an outlier in the global increase of overweight and obesity among kids and adults. A national study on childhood obesity found that more than a quarter of kids were overweight and about 13% were obese; those results were approximately double the previous survey three years prior. No robust data exists for diabetes prevalence among children, but anecdotally, doctors are reporting seeing diabetes at a younger age, says Mazloumian. 'People get type two diabetes after 40 years of age,' she says. 'Now they are seeing it in children.'
High sugar intake is strongly associated with childhood obesity, and increased risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But efforts to reduce sugar consumption are only beginning to be part of the conversation in Armenia—though other countries around the world may provide a blueprint. Mexico and Chile lead the way globally with comprehensive policies aimed at reducing sugar consumption. In Mexico, a sugary-drink tax introduced in 2014 led to a decline in sales of such beverages in its first two years. Chile's 2016 law mandating front-of-package warnings, prohibiting the marketing of high-sugar foods to children, and banning their sale in schools have contributed to a significant reduction in the sales of sugar-heavy foods.
Armenia's membership in the Eurasian Economic Union means food labels list calories, fat and total carbohydrates—not the amount of added sugar. Without a quantifiable sugar content, taxing or regulating sugar levels is nearly impossible, says Hekimian.
Public discussions about the harms of sugar overconsumption remain nascent, but from a food policy perspective, there appears to be momentum for change . Hekimian points to a growing interest within the Ministry of Health for evidence-backed regulations such as limiting the advertising of sugar-laden foods to children. One Ministry-backed study found a large proportion of products marketed to minors failed to meet nutritional standards among television advertisements, though this analysis didn't include social media. Currently, no legal restrictions exist for the advertising of sugary foods and beverages to children, 'making it hard to counter unhealthy consumption patterns,' Mazloumian says.
Sweeping changes to food policy might be challenging to implement where other factors add complexity. Sugar holds a dopamine appeal, says Hekimian, especially significant as part of comfort foods in what she hypothesizes is a state of chronic low-lying depression after war and the pandemic. That national grief might complicate how public messaging lands. 'It's hard to get a message out there that says sugar is bad for you, salt is bad for you,' she says. 'No one is listening to that.' More effective policies are the ones you don't know about.
In an ideal scenario, Armenian food producers could quietly reformulate recipes to slowly reduce sugar without public fanfare. 'People don't even have to know about it,' Hekimian says. Alternatively, bold legislative proposals (even if they fail to pass) can spark crucial debate, similar to what happened when lawmakers floated removing salt shakers from restaurant tables several years ago. The law never passed, but it sparked a national conversation about salt. The same could be true of sugar, Hekimian says.
'The body needs sugar,' says Hekimian. 'Nobody is recommending a total and complete ban.' But something has to change, she says. 'We can really delay the introduction of sugar, and get sugar from carbohydrates that are healthier for us.'
