When it comes to sugar consumption in my house, I feel like I am running a methadone clinic. I make meals for the kids every day, doling out what I think is an acceptable sugar ration, then spend the rest of the day being hustled for early access to the Halloween stash and Gatorades and Lucky Charms and cereal bars that might as well be candy bars and crackers that might as well be cookies.
Maxon and Ezra surely think me the stingiest sugar-denier currently drawing breath. But what they don't understand is since they first started to eat, I doubt my kids have had many sugar-free days. Because sugar is in everything. It might as well be in oxygen. Trying to keep sugar out of their bodies is like trying to keep a Kardashian off television.
There's 29 grams alone in the Noosa yogurt. As a comparison, two Reese's Peanut Butter Cups have 21 grams.
I try. Breakfast is the hardest meal and the one I want to be completely sugar-free. I wish they would have eggs every morning. Ezra indulges occasionally but Maxon says they make his mouth feel funny. They both usually have cereal, and even if I bought the healthiest cereal on the planet (which has to be All-Bran right? Good morning, bowl of sticks!), it would still be the equivalent of eating a donut in their bodies.
Maxon would eat Eggo waffles with syrup every day if he had his way. I allow it two days a week. Some mornings I am too tired to fight. I tried replacing the McCann's Maple and Brown Sugar Irish Oatmeal with the regular flavor, made like my mom used to – with milk, a thick square of butter and a sprinkle of sugar.
They did not go for it.
I made my own granola bars and purged the house of the evil Cliff Crunch.
They did not go for it.
I stopped putting dessert in their lunch boxes with a Friday exception.
They really do not go for that.
And then, all day:
"Mom, can I have a Nutella sandwich because I forgot to make one last Friday?"
"Mom, can I have Weekend Cereal because we went out to breakfast on Sunday and I didn't get to have it?
"Mom, can I have a dessert in my lunch today because you forgot to put one in last week?"
"Mom, can we have dessert after dinner because we didn't have it yesterday?"
"Mom, can I have lemonade with dinner because I didn't have it with lunch?"
I wouldn't care as much if sugar wasn’t so insiduous.
To try and help the boys understand where I was coming from, a few months ago I took them to seeFed Up, a documentary about the sugar and food industry, which may provoke you to take your anger out on your waiter. Sugar acts like a drug, is the nucleus of the obesity epidemic, causes a host of serious health problems and should be treated and regulated like tobacco.
I bribed Ezra with Mike & Ike's to get him to go to the movie peacefully.
I don't know how much of the information sank in. We discussed the movie in the car and I got the sense that the main message got through. But they continue to jones like the addicts they are, and I give out their daily doseage. A mini babka* here, a nutella sandwich there, a walk to the ice cream parlor after Shabbat, ginger ale when they go out for dinner, Munchkins because I want a coffee. I know they will keep hustling me for more, hoping they catch me on a day when I am too tired to fight.
(*From The Bake Shop on Twentieth between Spruce and Locust. Just go.)