Excess sugar consumption by children is a gigantic problem in the US. It is a key driver to more serious diseases, from child obesity to diabetes, both being risk factors for other illnesses such as heart disease and COVID-19.

To make matters worse, added sugar is in most packaged foods, and it goes by over 150 obscure names.

The thing is, health literacy isn’t exactly kids' favorite topic, so how do we raise awareness about the issue and drive behavior change without boring them to death?

To expose all of sugar’s disguises and turn kids, parents, and caregivers into sugar experts, by doing what the food industry does every day: presenting ourselves as something kids love.

We knew that only by observing what every kid is crazy about, we could find the right angle to talk about nutritional education and keep them engaged. Things like music, gaming, and storytelling.

People need to wise up to what the food industry has been doing for decades, but it’s easier when they don’t feel like they’re being lectured.

So, to fight big sugar, we created a Lil Sugar: an evil sugar cube who is a master of disguise. Each disguise represents one of the obscure names that the food industry uses to hide sugar inside packaged foods.

The Lil Sugar campaign fuses hip hop, gaming, and storytelling to expose all of sugar’s secret disguises, so now kids can not only spot sugar hiding in food, but also catch it red-handed.

Our research started with compiling a list of over 200 disguised sugars. We then categorized the various forms of sugar based on their scientific composition.

Next, we wrote descriptions of each sugar that included information such as the foods and soft drinks it is often found in, its history of use, its potential side effects, and its glycemic index value.

Once we had gathered and organized this robust set of information, we put together programmable data sets that could be coded into a digital application designed to target children and parents who typically download educational games on their smart devices. 

Since launch, we have been running a fully integrated campaign composed of many moving parts.

The music video is the main driver of a larger campaign; it’s an animation that fuses cute with menacing, and shows Lil Sugar, “MTV Cribs” style, bragging about its master plan of disguising itself to sneak inside people’s food, harming their health.

Darryl ‘DMC’ McDaniels from Run-DMC co-wrote and performed as Lil Sugar, giving life to the character with lots of swagger and glee. It was aired via targeted donated pre-roll media, movie theater screening and taxi cabs, and it was also featured at community events, directly reaching students and educators.

3.000 copies of the Lil Sugar storybook were printed thanks to an educational grant and were distributed through community events and school curricula.

Both drive people to the Lil Sugar app, which gamifies dense health information, helping to modify behaviors in their daily lives.

Thanks to partnerships with community events, the campaign has so far reported 42,462 downloads of activities including Lil Sugar. 5852 schools registered and reported participation of over 4 million students. And has been endorsed by the NYC Board of Education.

In 2022, Lil Sugar went nationwide with OPEN National Field Day, which took Lil Sugar’s content through educational activities to 28 countries/territories, 47 US states, 147 metropolitan areas, 1585 teachers, and 833,710 students.

Later in 2022, the Lil Sugar Song was remastered for radio, and got significant play in key markets as a long form PSA.

Educators are embracing the character and the song more and more through online activity contests, with thousands of schools adding Lil Sugar to their curricula.

The campaign is steadily laying its foundations in key communities across the United States, gradually becoming an effective, cost-free tool to teach health literacy.