A mom whose four-year-old daughter was left ‘floppy and unconscious’ after drinking a popular iced drink has joined experts in warning of the dangers of the beverage for young children.
Kim Moore, from the UK, was with her daughter, Marnie, at a children’s party when the little girl suddenly fell unconscious.
Terrified and unable to wake Marnie up, the 35-year-old mom-of-two rushed Marnie and her older sister, Orla, to hospital, where doctors discovered Marnie’s blood sugar levels were dangerously low.
As they looked into Marnie’s condition, doctors determined her low blood sugar levels had been caused by the drink she’d consumed just minutes before she fell unconscious – a simple, much-loved slushy.
Moore explained: “We ended up buying two one-litre refillable cups and they were going off playing, eating, getting drinks and coming back but Marnie didn’t drink the full cup, probably only half.
“Then about 10 minutes later, she started getting really aggravated then she started falling asleep so I just thought she was over-tired. It was only five minutes later when I tried to wake her up that I realized she wasn’t waking up and was actually unconscious. She’d gone really pale.”
Marnie was unconscious for around 25 minutes while doctors worked to bring up her blood sugar levels, and she ended up staying in hospital for three days in total.
Now, Moore believes her daughter suffered from glycerol toxicity; a condition characterized by symptoms like headaches, sickness, shock, and potentially loss of consciousness.
She said: “In hospital, she screamed out in agony saying her head hurt and threw up everywhere.
“Looking back, she had every single symptom of glycerol toxicity. We got transferred to another hospital and they had no idea what had caused it. We started looking into the slushy because that was the only thing differently she’d had that day.”
Moore is now a firm critic of slushies, describing them as ‘poison’ and expressing belief they shouldn’t ‘be allowed at all’.
“I personally wouldn’t allow my child to drink one at all. It’s not a risk I’m willing to take,” she said. “I don’t think they should be sold to kids 12 and under in all honesty. I wouldn’t wish what we went through on our worst enemy. It was awful.”
Moore’s warnings come as experts have warned that children under the age of eight shouldn’t be given slush-ice drinks containing the sweetener glycerol, following concerning findings in the cases of 21 kids who fell ill after drinking them.