Sugar makes children hyperactive
The old claim turned out to be wrong and was rejected by evidence.
TaughtSugar causes hyperactivity. Cut it out before a test, and blame the birthday cake for the chaos afterward.
NowA 1995 meta-analysis in JAMA covering 23 controlled studies found sugar does not affect children's behavior or cognition. The effect is in the parents' expectations, which has been demonstrated experimentally.
What actually happened
Mark Wolraich and colleagues pooled the double-blind trials and found nothing. Not a small effect: no detectable effect on behavior or cognitive performance, including in children whose parents described them as sugar-sensitive.
The most interesting experiment took the next step. Researchers told one group of mothers their sons had just been given sugar and the other group that their sons had been given a placebo. Every child actually got the placebo. The mothers who believed their child had eaten sugar rated his behavior as significantly more hyperactive, and were observed being more critical of him and staying physically closer, monitoring him. The sugar effect is real; it lives in the observer. Plenty of good reasons remain to limit children's sugar, including dental and metabolic ones. Behavior at a birthday party is not one of them, and the chaos is better explained by the party.
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Sources
Who was taught this
Still standard through 2010, so anyone who finished school between 1950 and 1995 learned the earlier version.