The Sugar Battles

Do you feel that you don’t have enough people judging your every move?  Ahh…well..then become a parent and the blessings and judgements will flow your way like the River Thames.

This past weekend, Adam and I went to a friend’s house for a cook out.  I was happily rejoicing that my little monkey was not climbing the furniture, walls, and stereo equipment.   His exploits have been well documented in this blog.  His doctor smiles, pokes him in the belly and says,  “I want to take you home with me!  You look like you would be fun!”

The next time he says that I will be in the car before he finishes the last word.  I could use the nap.  Instead, I wanly smile and reply, “yes, he apparently can use the dining room table to put himself in his high chair.  He’s loads of fun.”

But I digress.

So at my friend’s house, she says, “Come here Adam! I have some chocolate milk for you.”

Umm no.  He’s NOT a baby who needs EXTRA sugar.

“Welllll…can he have Kool Aid?”

Seriously? No.  White milk is fine.  Thanks.

::heavy irritated sigh::  “Someday Adam, you’re going to stay with your auntie and she’s going to give you all kinds of things.”

Oh really?  Well in that case the answer is no.

I could tell she thought that I ruin all my child’s fun.  It’s not like he doesn’t get any sugar.  He has certain cookies I give him.  He eats plenty of fruits and gets carb loaded from his crackers and cereals.  He has plenty of sugar.  Plenty.

We have really been trying to eat better around here.  I read Micheal Pollan’s Food Rules which is a brilliantly argued and deceptively simple book.   He gives over sixty rules and then gives short explanations of each one.  Some of them are “If it arrived through the window of your car, it is not food,” “Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food,” and “You can have all the junk food you want, if you make it yourself.”

His main argument is that the super markets are full of “food like substances” engineered by the food industry.  Another rule, “Don’t eat anything you can’t picture in its natural state,” which makes you wonder, “What does xanthan gum look like?  Because it’s in everything.  Everything.”

It has made me more label conscious than ever.  I looked at my generic soy sauce…good as the more expensive brands, right?  No.  Read the label of a generic soy sauce and you will see a list of chemicals a mile long.  And I wondered, would I pour those chemicals on my son’s food if they weren’t labeled something more familiar?  Of course not.

Why am I eating it?

I thought too about the cooking shows we watch on Food Network or Hell’s Kitchen with the foul mouthed Gordon Ramsey.   Ever see one of them crack open a can of cream of mushroom soup (where cream and mushrooms are the last ingredients you would ever see on there….try wheat flour)?

We can’t buy organic grass fed beef or chicken, but I can avoid the obvious.  No chocolate milk. No kool aid.  More vegetables.  Better ingredients. Better cooking.

Chicken nuggets?  Sometimes.