It’s not sugar that is making our kids fat.
Over and over again I keep reading the same thing, the same concerns from parents, the same complaints.
They talk about “excess sugar consumption”, the “sugar culture”. They wax lyrical about the “obesity epidemic” and throw in a few “in-my-days”.
The common theme is that kids these days are getting by on a daily diet of corn syrup and cane sugar; that we may as well be hooking them up to an IV and blasting liquidized jelly-snakes into their veins.
In their day cakes weren’t heard of at school. In their day birthday parties didn’t give out lolly bags.
In their day children received an orange from Santa rather than a bag of chocolate coins.
(It makes me thank my lucky stars that I wasn’t brought up “in their day” as I certainly had birthday cakes at school, lolly bags at parties and Santa always brought gold coins.)
The argument goes the same from these sugar scaremongers – it’s the fault of our schools, it’s the fault of other parents for supplying sweets at sporting events, it’s the fault of everyone else except for these parents themselves.
It’s an argument I am tired of.
It makes me weary with the outrage just for outrage sake. Don’t you wonder when we are going to stop dragging the fun away from everything?
When they rant about the evils of birthday cakes at school and cry out for bans and blacklists their argument always seems to circumvent the need for parental responsibility.