Different needs at different ages

A mom determined to limit her child's access to sweets wrote "I try to model healthy eating."

I responded:

Healthy eating for an adult woman isn't the same as for a teenaged boy or an eight year old girl or a two year old or an infant.

SandraDodd.com/sugar
photo by Sarah S, of Minecraft-themed food

Healthy attitudes

"I don't believe sugar is addictive. I believe some people naturally like sweets more than others and I believe our attitude about sugar, about any food, creates more problems than the food itself. I think one of the best things we can do to ensure a healthy attitude about foods for our kids is to not screw up their psychology with fear and guilt and dire warnings."

—Deb Lewis

The quote is the conclusion of a longer story by Deb Lewis here: SandraDodd.com/eating/sugar
photo by Sandra Dodd, of cupcakes by Julie Anne Koetsier

In 2011, when the quote was posted, there were two good comments you can see here.

Pancakes

Meredith Novak wrote:

The first time I made pancakes with white flour he thought they were the best pancakes he'd ever eaten.

Here's an interesting tidbit, though: after a few weeks of being allowed to have all the cakes and cokes he could eat at our house he out-and-out said "You know what, now that I can have all the sugar I want, I don't want nearly as much of it."

—Meredith

SandraDodd.com/eating/healthfood
photo by Sandra Dodd, of pancakes designed by Devyn, 8
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All the sugar

If a child has "all the sugar he wants" when he's little, I'm pretty certain that his total will be smaller over the course of his life than someone who is deprived and measured and shamed.

The quote is from Food, eating (transcript of a discussion)
but this might be a better next read: Natural Balance
photo by Celeste Burke
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Not the same choices

Happy, supported, trusted kids don't make the same choices as unhappy, controlled kids.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/eating/sugar
photo by Sandra Dodd

'Tis the Season for Sugar

"Children that truly have choices, won't feel the need to always choose the most sugary choice, or the choice that gets them away from home the fastest... They have access to it all, so they can make choices based on what they really want or need, not what is most limited in their lives." —Ren Allen

SandraDodd.com/eating/sweets
photo by Sandra Dodd, and it's a link

High energy

Deb Lewis wrote:

There’s some growing evidence that sweets are good for kids. Sugary foods provide quick calories and energy for the high energy demands of a growing body. And at least one study suggests that sugary foods help children feel better, reduce pain and generally help induce feelings of physical comfort. Some researchers think that growing bones secrete hormones that increase metabolism and may act on the brain to increase appetite for high energy (sugary) foods.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/eating/sugar
photo by Sandra Dodd, sweets, Lyon (click to enlarge)
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Natural Balance

If you limit it, they will want more.
If you "unlimit" it they will fill up and be done.

They can only make their own choices if they're allowed to make their own choices.
I don't think balance will come from limitations as well as some people wish it would.

I had a niece not allowed to eat sugar at all. NOTHING with sugar. A little hippie kid in the late 1960's, early 1970's.

She came to stay with us for a few days when she was six. We were keeping to her mom's rules about sugar.

We found her in the field, squatted over a 5-lb. bag of sugar, eating it with both hands like a monkey, as fast as she could before she'd get caught.

That wasn't balance.

Or maybe it was. It was the balance of all her deprivation.

My kids have come to their own balance with food, TV, activities, sleep, because they're allowed to make their own choices.

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The quote is from an online discussion in August, 2001, ten years ago. The story of the sugar was when I was 22 and in my first marriage, long before I had children with Keith.

A related link is SandraDodd.com/balance
photo by Sandra Dodd

Eating sugar

"I don't believe sugar is addictive. I believe some people naturally like sweets more than others and I believe our attitude about sugar, about any food, creates more problems than the food itself. I think one of the best things we can do to ensure a healthy attitude about foods for our kids is to not screw up their psychology with fear and guilt and dire warnings."

—Deb Lewis

The quote is the conclusion of a longer story by Deb Lewis here: SandraDodd.com/eating/sugar
photo by Sandra Dodd, of cupcakes by Julie Anne Koetsier