The Worst Mother in the World Bans Sugar

Picture if you will - Posy, head in arms on the kitchen table, sobbing, 'I hate you, I HATE you!', Rosy's friends reportedly labelling me a 'monster', and The Girl, with her back to the pantry, wild-eyed, clutching her cook books.

What has Jo done this time? You may well ask. Apparently it is child abuse. I banned sugar.

I have been reading all the books, trawling through all the websites, even read the World Health Organisation guidelines (yawn). I think we are some of the healthiest eaters I know. We cook everything from real, actual, raw, local, often organic food. We don't buy take away or processed food, other than the odd jar of mayonnaise, curry paste, or seaweed rice crackers, the occasional muesli bar or box of cereal. And yet... and yet... there was still too much sugar in our diet. WHO guidelines recommend no more than 6 teaspoons for women, 3-4 teaspoons for children per day. We don't need any at all of course. In fact, apart from honey, most of our ancestors didn't start eating sugar at all until about 250 years ago. That is eight short generations for our bodies to adapt to a foodstuff that interrupts and plays havoc with every bodily system it comes in contact with. Hormones, appetite control, energy levels, fat metabolism, brain activity - you name it, sugar will mess with it.

And so here we are, with me trying to encourage healthy eating, but at the same time baking cookies, cakes, desserts, jams, chutneys, delicious home-made chocolate syrup.. you know, because I love my kids, want them to have happy home-cooked food memories... want to set them up to gain weight, not concentrate at school, and use sugary treats as an emotional comfort crutch?!?

So I banned sugar. For a month. Just to see if it would kill us (spoiler alert - we are not dead yet). It has been two weeks. While I was on a roll, being evil monster mother of the year, I also banned milk as a beverage, and bread as a daily food. I did this because Posy was beginning to subsist on just those two foods, and I want us all to eat a LOT more vegetables and decent protein. She gets cheese sticks (cut from an actual real cheese block with my own fair hands) and local nothing-added-but-actual-fruit yoghurt, but only after she has eaten a fruit and a vegetable. Oh, I am mean.

But not unreasonable. I know I can't police what the girls eat outside the house, so just as an exercise, I added up all the sugary treats I KNOW they have eaten in the last week (who knows what else they haven't confessed!). So, from last Thursday until now - The Girl's Biology and Chemistry classes have a 'bring a cake' roster for the last lesson every fortnight, which means (at least) one slice of cake every Friday. Sunday, The Man took us out for lunch at a local cafe. We didn't have dessert, but the girls had iced chocolates, and Posy had organic raspberry fizz, full of lovely organic sugar, quite probably more than her 3tsp/day allowance (a can of soft drink contains 5-6 tsps sugar). Monday Posy brought home a lollipop she had won in her class at school for being awfully good at something (I forget what, I am a bad mother, but we already know that). Tuesday, Posy's friend's birthday, she brings mini-Malteser packets for everyone in the class, and also a party bag full of lollies for Posy, who missed the party because she was sick on Saturday. Rosy has her Food Technology class (fancy name for plain old Home Ec), and brings home a plate of M&M cookies. We all have one for afternoon tea, and one goes in the girls' lunchboxes next day. Wednesday, Rosy has a class end-of-term party, and Posy dances out of her flute lesson with a chocolate frog 'because she worked so hard' (music teacher code for, 'I love all my students dearly, but I am so grateful to see the back of you all for two weeks, here's to the holidays, now where is my armchair and that nice bottle of red?'). And here we are at Thursday, and The Girl has escaped to Sydney on a school art trip no doubt determined not to let a single grain of sugar pass her lips (!!), and it is the last day of school for Rosy, so possibly more tired teachers will be parting with sugary tokens of gratitude, and same for Posy tomorrow, all of which means.....

.....even if I never bake another cookie or buy another gram of organic, fairly traded sugar EVER, the children will probably exceed their WHO guideline daily intake of sugar several days a week, mostly from those institutes of learning which put so much emphasis on healthy eating. Ha. So a) don't feel too sorry for them, especially if they are whining in your vicinity, and b) this means I never have to bake again.

Ironically, the only day they didn't have sugar from an outside source last week, I broke down and let The Girl cook dessert - chocolate pudding and ice cream - because Daddy was home. It was the first time we have had ice cream in the house for months. So, clearly, I am no purist, and also  - how incredibly easy it is to put a 'little' sweetness into our diets, it just creeps in until it is in every meal.

Pre-sugar-ban diet, children
Breakfast - Choice of: Home baked muesli (baked with honey or brown sugar), or weet-bix or plain cereal like cornflakes with honey and milk. Toast with jam (or Nutella for treats!). Fruit toast. Fruit. Yoghurt. Stewed fruit. Glass of milk.

Recess - Home baked treat. Fruit. Popcorn and choc chips. Dried fruit. Crackers. Muesli bar.

Lunch - Salad and Meat Sandwiches, wraps, or home baked rolls and scrolls.

After school snack - Fruit, Home baked goodies, glasses of milk, cereal with honey and milk Cheese and crackers. Popcorn. Dried fruit.

Dinner - Home made, fairly nutritious something with vegetables, lots of pasta and home made bread. Dessert on the weekends. Posy often ate the bare minimum, then snacked on cereal and milk afterwards if no-one caught her.

No sugar diet, children
Breakfast - Choice of: scrambled eggs, boiled eggs. Porridge with stewed fruit and plain yoghurt, or yoghurt with fruit, no added anything else (there is only one local yoghurt sold in only a couple of outlets around town, that doesn't have sugar, or sugar substitutes in it). Rosy usually just eats a banana. Posy sometimes refuses to eat anything at all. Being such a bad mother, I have let her out the door without breakfast occasionally. So far she has not fainted or suddenly started getting Ds in Maths. I do sympathise. I can rarely eat breakfast before 9.30 either.

Recess - Seaweed rice crackers. Fruit. Vegie sticks. Cheese sticks. Pop corn. Limited dried fruit.

Lunch - The Girl, being in Grade 12, and therefore highly privileged, with coveted membership of the Senior Common Room, has access to a microwave, so takes dinner leftovers. Rosy takes dinner leftovers or soup in a thermos, and Posy, creature of habit, takes fried rice with vegies every day in her thermos. Unless there is chicken soup available, but only chicken noodle, not that horrid chicken and vegetable soup, Mummy. Just NO. Sometimes she buys lunch at school when it is chicken soup or Singapore noodles day.

After school snack - Fruit, cheese and crackers, cheese sticks, yoghurt, stewed fruit, dried fruit, vegie sticks and dips. Pop corn. Nuts.

Dinner - Home made, lots of vegies, hardly ever pasta or bread. We have home made potato wedges with soup now, instead of bread, and are getting through a lot more basmati rice than pasta, but really, just eating a lot more vegetables. We may re-instate one dessert a week.

So, tell me lovies. What do you think about this? Am I being too extreme? Does anyone else not eat sugar at home? Yesterday, one of my friends mentioned she was on a high fat, low carb, no sugar diet, and when she heard I'd banned sugar, she was very excited at the thought that she could use peer pressure to introduce the idea to her two girls, same age as Rosy and Posy, so I am afraid I will be even more heartily disliked by small children everywhere soon... help! I need some support!

Next time - a recipe for a successful, no-added sugar muesli bar substitute, based on a recipe sent to me by the lovely Jessie some time ago. Excellent fuel for those after school, pre-hockey training moments..

Comments

Bek said…
Not having children myself, but putting my dietitian hat on, I don't think you are being too extreme for a month long experiment. If nothing else these sorts of extreme exercises teach us just how many "extra" foods (i.e. none core food group - veg, fruit, dairy, meat/alternatives and grains/cereals)creep ever so easily into our daily food consumption habits.
That said, while I'm more than happy to support the "avoid excess added sugar like guzzling fruit drinks/soft drinks daily and high added sugar snacks" I DO have a massive problem with the extremists who ban (whole) fruit, decent wholewheat/grain breads and wholegrain unprocessed cereals. This is, in my professional opinion, complete bollocks! High fat is not so much a problem if it is plant based oils like the mediterranean diet olive oil type intake. Butter and animal fats ideally would be minimal. Coconut is still not well enough understood to make a clinical judgement.

Your plan of encouraging more veg and fruit consumption is nutritionally sound. Good luck with managing the kids though. :)
Jo said…
Thanks for that Bek! Good to have a professional opinion. I have cut out bread for this month because Posy was starting to live on bread and jam, and cereal and milk, to the detriment of the fruit and veg component of her diet, but bread is something we are all missing the most. Rosy sneaked a couple of salad sandwiches this week, and I turned a blind eye. I do think we have been eating too much bread and pasta in our diet though, and this break has given us a chance to look at alternatives. I have looked at the paleo diet, and like the 'no rubbish' part of it, but can't be eating all that meat. Love my butter, but can't eat much of it without bread, and won't be eating coconut oil, because it is not real local to Tasmania... such a balancing act - healthy? Local? Plastic free? Ethical? Lordy. Food is tricky.
Anonymous said…
You are brave! Your family's "before" diet is so much better than average. I agree with the commenter above that I cringe when parents ban their kids from eating fruit because of "all that sugar." I think my recent ancestors used a lot of sugar - berries were preserved as jam, cakes and cookies were baked every week, and treats were fudge or pulled taffy! But then, diets high in sugar and fat seemed to make sense when everyone was doing so much manual labour. When I ban myself from sugar, I end up craving salty snacks
Anonymous said…
We banned sugar in our house. Processed sugar that is and I felt like a) a mean mum and b) the most helath conscious mum on the planet. Then a friend of mine and her family went truly sugar free. No sugar, no refined sugar substitutes (rapadura, honey, maple syrup, agave etc) and no foods containing sugars in their simple forms (no fresh fruits, no fruit juices, no dried fruits). They broke the rule and allowed their kids 1 piece of fruit a day (they were getting bound up from the diet change) but that was it. It was an experiment to see how they went and she said it was a roaring success. It challenged me greatly as we have only a tiny bit of white sugar in our house and it's used to feed my ferments which means precious little if any passes our lips, but we do eat a LOT of fruit and we still use coconut sugar, honey and mainly rapadura.
Sugar I think became a huge part of our diets because it was cheap, firstly due to slave labour and then once slavery was abolished, through the slavery of fossil fuels being able to do the work of many people.
Refined sugar is also highly addictive and I know how much I struggled to cut my 2 sugars from my coffee (it's taken me 2 years, firstly with a cut to rapadura and last week finally to no sugars in my coffee).
Translating the post hijack, I think you are not only brave but I think you're doing a great thing. Even if you can't stay sugar free, check out baking with alternatives. White sugar is pretty toxic stuff really. Honey substitutes well and rapadura (unrefined cane sugar which still contains the mineral salts and molasses) is a 1 for 1 subs too. Good luck with the rest of the month.
My kids eat too much sugar, and I was just thinking this morning that we need to do something about it. A few years ago, I started letting them have a Coke on Fridays as a treat, but now that's getting out of hand, and so I'm not getting any more Coke or Ginger Ale. They'll get it elsewhere, I have no doubt.

I don't mind them having a little sugar, as neither of them have overly-active sweet tooths (teeth?), but I'm noticing some bad habits develop that I want to nip in the bud. I used not to worry, as both of them have excellent teeth and no weight problems, but more and more research seems to show that even if you don't gain weight or get cavities from eating sugar, it's still not good for your system. I have stopped eating it myself, except for the occasional square of 90% Cocoa dark chocolate, and right now I'm not even eating that. I feel much better without it.

Anyway, good for you! It's good to be a mean mom. There are so few of us these days ...

xofrances
Heather said…
I don't think you are a bad mother. It sounds as if they are getting a lot of sugary treats from outside sources. I think they will probably gravitate to eating a lot of fruits for the natural sugars if they are craving something sweet. I do feel a bit sad for the one daughter who was always baking cakes. I love to bake desserts and would miss that creative outlet if taken away from me. Maybe she can find some sugarless, flourless recipes to experimemt with. Nice to hear from you again!
Anonymous said…
I am a total Bad Mother! I've just started getting Chaos to have one of those up and go type things for breakfast because he was only eating one slice of fruit loaf, no butter or anything, and only eating that if forced. So he was generally being a feral hell beast, because he wouldn't eat anything else until lunch at 1.30pm. Big fat sugar filled something something and he'll eat actual food happily.

On the plus side, Mayhem has taken to eating home made (and completely sugarless) sour dough for breakfast everyday. Swings and roundabouts, hey.
Jo said…
Dar, from all the reading I'm doing, salty snacks would be better than the sugar! Especially if they are salty nuts. I think I may be going to be the first person in history to gain weight on a sugar-free diet. It's those healthy nuts that are the culprit. Ah well, hopefully they are making me brainier..
Jessie, I do agree with you about the ethical issues of sugar. I have thought about baking and making jam with honey, because we have such great local honey here in Tas, and our closest sugar comes from Queensland. But the kids haven't really missed baking. I have made the coconut/date biscuit recipe you sent me (with added, local ings!) and that is their muesli bar substitute for sport days, but honestly, there is no whining for baking. I have been allowing Rosy to choose a new cheese each week, which keeps her happy (she is a weird cheese freak). Posy would eat all the oranges in the world if I let her, so have limited her to 2 a day, and insisting on vegie sticks after that, as our dentist warned us that constant fruit acids in the mouth do ruin the teeth. Her suggestion, which I have taken up, is keep all foods to set times, ie afternoon tea from 3-3.30 then no food till dinner, to keep food acids away from teeth for a reasonable length of time.
Frances, I agree, Bad Mothers of the World Unite!
Heather, luckily The Girl had a week of study, then a week of exams to keep her busy! Next week I will encourage her to cook dinner instead. Then I will be able to retire:)
Miss Maudy, I am hearing you. Like Frances, my children were experiencing 'treat creep' from once a week to every day, until they refused to eat breakfast unless there was Nutella or fruit loaf. I felt like I was being emotionally blackmailed. At breakfast time! Outrageous! I think that might have been the proverbial straw..
Anonymous said…
I read the first four paragraphs of this post and was interrupted (by my boiling kettle) and as a made my cuppa I thought you are a kind, caring, loving, thoughtful mother who has researched healthy eating and is prepared to make the hard decisions and act on those decisions for the benefit of your childrne. I also thought: thank god you're not my mother and tended to side with your girls - you are a little mean.

But then I read all the exceptions to the ban and I take back my last judgement.

Though I do think we've got a little fad-like about this anti-sugar thing. Your pre-sugar ban diet was pretty healthy. I can see why our history has been dotted with wars and mal-treatment over sugar - it is pretty good stuff.

My sister banned sugar and processed foods for her kids. I didn't. Really no difference between our lot. No overweight kids. In fact mine are on the very slim side for current adolescents (but look normal for the 1970s). And all are generally healthy with no chronic illness (though one of mine who never drank soft drink had ongoing tonsillitis, not that they're related, just that he had self-imposed sugar bans and he had a chronic infection.)

I know I need to eat more vegies. But on the up side, since I gave up bikkies last October (which I named Droptober) I no longer have the cravings for them. And I have imposed this on my kids - I do the shopping and have stopped buying biscuits.

Hope your spasmodic single-mumdom is going better! So glad you popped by my blog, haven't seen you in ages. Will give you an answer as to how I can have so many unread books shortly.
Jo said…
As you can see by my kids' 'out of home' sugar consumption, I don't think there is any need to feel too sorry for them. But here is my question - when did lollies and cakes go from being an occasional treat to an everyday food group?
My mum was, admittedly, not a baker, so when we had cake at home (bought, very occasionally baked) it was so exciting. We got lollies and chocolate a few times a year, birthdays, Christmas, Easter, holidays away. They are treats, but at our house they were turning into everyday foods. So no more. Any sweets my kids see now, will be given to them by Santa, the Easter Bunny, or their flute teacher. And dammit, one day they will be nostalgically pleased I did this!!:)
Well done on the continued biscuit fast. That was one of the hardest habits ever to kick for me - the biscuit dunk!
And I would love to know about the books. I cannot leave a book unread, because although biscuits are good, what I'm really addicted to is books!
Unknown said…
Not only informative but hilarious post Jo. You are in fine form, sugar or not.
Anonymous said…
Do you know how much I Love, Love, LOVED this post? I read it out - verbatim - to my kids over dinner last night (husband away, so all normal dinner rules of no technology and no reading books at the table out of the window!) So they could see that I wasn't the only mean mum, and that other mums were even meaner.

My sister lived with us for a month last year and was on the paleo diet and sugar free and very rigid about it. I learned a lot about food from her, and decided that our diet was pretty good on the whole, but to cut down on sugar but not be militant about it. I think some personalities handle a zero-tolerance policy better than others:-)

We have daily, ongoing discussions every day about food: what is healthy, what the other kids are getting in their lunchboxes, blah blah.I does my head in, but at least they are mindful (even if they don't want to be) about what/when crap goes into their mouths. According to my son, EVERY other kid in his class gets packaged biscuits, snack packs, chips, cake in their lunchbox every day. I can well believe that, because I find the empty packs in his pockets every day! It's not just ONE snack either, it's 3-4 and even his friends say it's too much and give him the excess.

My kids have EXACTLY the same snacks as yours! Plus I sometimes give them Vege chips which are made from tapioca or some such thing (Health food section at supermarket).

My 14 yo daughter has always hated breakfast so I make her a smoothie everyday: yogurt or kefir, milk, frozen banana and berries, flaxseed oil, LSA, chia seeds and a little maple syrup to sweeten it a little. Sometimes, if she's not looking, I will slip in one of our fresh eggs. It's really filling and tasty. I freeze the excess as icypoles, as it makes 2-3 serves and my son will have it after school. My son often has homemade chicken noodle soup with miso for breakfast, or eggs or baked beans.

I do buy a jar of Nutella each school holidays which has to last them the whole 2 weeks. It is just the little jar though. If I bake it is usually for visitors or birthdays, and they are SOOOO grateful to get a muffin or cookie in their lunchbox on the rare occasion.

Eating enough veges is our downfall though. Need to work on it... Loretta
Anonymous said…
I can pinpoint the year that sometimes snacks went to everyday snacks - 1991. Yes, 1991.

In the 70s, and before, we couldn't afford snacks. They also just didn't exist. I know some kids had money to buy a cream bun for recess from the canteen, but mostly we didn't. And those little packs of chips and other salty treats in multi-pack boxes didn't exist either.

Come the 80smore snacky things in little individual packs came on the market, and we became wealthier as a nation to buy the junk.

Roll onto 1991, and putting the snacks into lunch boxes became the norm. And chocolate was no longer an Easter and Christmas treat, and lolly bags only for birthdays. 1996 I encountered my first pass the parcel where every unwrapping disclosed a chocolate Freddo. I thought it was novel. Now I realise it was a sign of the end.

And when did we start noticing general obesity? The 90s.

And in support of your efforts I will not go out and buy some marsh mallows for my hot chocolate, even though I am down the snow and hot chocolate with marshmallows is almost obligatory.
Anonymous said…
I can pinpoint the year that sometimes snacks went to everyday snacks - 1991. Yes, 1991.

In the 70s, and before, we couldn't afford snacks. They also just didn't exist. I know some kids had money to buy a cream bun for recess from the canteen, but mostly we didn't. And those little packs of chips and other salty treats in multi-pack boxes didn't exist either.

Come the 80smore snacky things in little individual packs came on the market, and we became wealthier as a nation to buy the junk.

Roll onto 1991, and putting the snacks into lunch boxes became the norm. And chocolate was no longer an Easter and Christmas treat, and lolly bags only for birthdays. 1996 I encountered my first pass the parcel where every unwrapping disclosed a chocolate Freddo. I thought it was novel. Now I realise it was a sign of the end.

And when did we start noticing general obesity? The 90s.

And in support of your efforts I will not go out and buy some marsh mallows for my hot chocolate, even though I am down the snow and hot chocolate with marshmallows is almost obligatory.
Anonymous said…
Excuse the double posting. I do not have a stutter but the mystics of the Internet have taken over.
Jo said…
Loretta, pleased to be the only meaner mum in the world than you! Won't tell my kids though! I am loving your breakfast smoothie idea. Might tweak that for mine and give it a go these holidays.. Although mustn't let Posy see me put horrid bananas in hers.
Lucinda, '91 hey? Well that is 2 years before I became a mother, so that would explain how they have been 'treat expecters' all their lives. Is this a personal observation from a teacher's perspective?
Hi Jo, Yes I would agree the 90's became the snack generation. However I also kept my kids sugar free (they're in their 30's now) salty snacks were much more available to them and on the whole preferred. I remember someone coming to the school gate to thank me following one birthday party, I had put mu foot down on a gift in each wrap of pass the parcel, only the winner would have a gift, and the party bag only contained a piece of cake, a couple of lollies and a balloon and not the obligatory £10.00 toy that seemed to have become customary. The reaction from the kids, was where's the toy and all the sweets, my reply was in the vein of whose birthday is it and I don't buy toys just because you came to the party.Mothers thank me and the stranglehold on party bags was broken and may I say forgotten by the next year by the kids who were by then happy to come along to a party just for fun! Going back to sugar, in the new generation of mothers (my daughter for example) it seems to be the norm for no salt and no sugar for their own children, so maybe finally the sugary snack generations are coming to an end!
Anonymous said…
Oh DEAR! Here "I" was, thinking that "I" was the worst mum in the world but now I can officially hand over my laurels to you. Cheers...I was getting a bit tired of the cold shoulder to be honest. I have to say that its almost impossible to avoid sugar these days. I swear it inhabits the atmosphere now like cocaine inhabits American money and we just breath it in every time we inhale. At least you are concerned about your kids. I know that isn't going to wash with them BUT it goes a long way towards salving that inherent guilt that being a mum shovels onto you at any given time. SO glad I am not raising kids now. Not entirely sure how good of a mother I could be personally. They are ladling sugar into themselves now with impunity.
Anonymous said…
Oh DEAR! Here "I" was, thinking that "I" was the worst mum in the world but now I can officially hand over my laurels to you. Cheers...I was getting a bit tired of the cold shoulder to be honest. I have to say that its almost impossible to avoid sugar these days. I swear it inhabits the atmosphere now like cocaine inhabits American money and we just breath it in every time we inhale. At least you are concerned about your kids. I know that isn't going to wash with them BUT it goes a long way towards salving that inherent guilt that being a mum shovels onto you at any given time. SO glad I am not raising kids now. Not entirely sure how good of a mother I could be personally. They are ladling sugar into themselves now with impunity.
Jo said…
Siwzy, good for you for challenging the ridiculous party favour bags. A couple of weeks ago Posy came home from a party with a party bag that was bigger than the gift we had sent. How is your daughter going keeping her family sugar-free? I have a number of friends who think just like I do, but, sugar is everywhere!
Jo said…
Fran, yes, yes, I will now receive the baton of meanest mother and run with it.. glad to be of service :)
what a fabulously funny post (once we get over the seriousness of it - you know what I mean). I laughed out loud at the spoiler alert :-)
I don't have children but reading your tales of how they get treats from school mates and teachers, I can see what a problem it could be. but my child-free experience: I'm lucky that I don't like sweets or lollies, so never get temped by co-workers' lolly jars, for example, or buying that stuff for myself.
I like what everyone has said here. I like what anonymous said about not being militant.
Jen's Busy Days said…
Think I will join you Jo. We already have a milk and bread limit imposed here, always have due to my early days of Natural Therapies studies and knowing that over consuming was more likely to cause health issues. I would probably not do a complete ban but I think I do need to be much conscious of how often sugar is creeping into our daily lives.

Best wishes
Jen in NSW
Jo said…
Hi e, I know, if it was only me it would be easy. No-one offers me sweet treats during my day:( Why is there some kind of society-wide plot to fill up our kids with sugar?
Jen, it was the daily 'sugar-creep' which tipped me over the edge, when I realised how much sugar the kids were getting from outside sources. Also, yes, the milk and bread thing - once I cut that significantly, Posy has been eating a much wider range of foods, which is an excellent outcome.
I've definitely got on and off the 'no sugar' train. Interestingly, I got my mother on board, and she's not slipped up since. What I mean to say is she is COMMITTED! Maybe she had a slice of christmas cake, but seriously, she's a fiend for nuts, yoghurt and fruit! And she's seen a markable improvement in her tummy area (no doubt assisted by a commitment to almost daily swimming).

I seem to be able to manage it like Lent - a set amount of deprivation. Then the first 're binge' feels horrible, but then you get back on it, and then you're hooked. I was at the ridiculous level of a chocolate bar a day at work (aided by a colleague... who bought them). Now, I've substituted stewed apples, made at home with brown sugar. Hardly saintly, but a step in the right direction...
Tracy said…
I have known, for a number years, that do not react well to sugar. When I have what others consider normal I become foggy-brained and suffer indigestion (or maybe it's reflux?) and insomnia. I too have read and watched all sorts of things about the evils of sugar and its impact on us. I try very hard to avoid sugar, for the most part. Unfortunately it tastes so good and it seems impossible to eliminate it completely, either from lack of will or because it's just in everything!

I have three teens who know I am inclined to rant about sugar. They still bake and Dh still gets very excited about sugary treats. Over the holidays I have put a limit of two pieces of cake/slice/biscuits per day. They choose when they have it, but only two.

My 14yo son has finally been banned from drinking milk after every meal. I mean really, he's not a toddler anymore! He thought his throat had been cut.

I think our children would love to meet and share with one another the horror stories of living in a household where they have mothers that love them enough to care about what and how they eat.

Be encouraged, oh mean monster mother. You are not alone.
Jo said…
Hey Sarah, I am about to reveal my confessions of failure, so I'll join you in the falling off the train club!Wow! Your mum is amazing:)
And Tracy, yes, I have found that sugar isn't treating me well, especially since I have had a break without it.. I can really feel the difference. And yes, horror stories:)
Anonymous said…
Jo, sing along with me! "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, medicine go down, medicine go down." Useful stuff that, sugar. And I take the medicine metaphorically (cause it suits my purposes) to mean the slings and arrows of life.
Jo said…
I hear you Lucinda. But I am coming to the point where I am going to be taking the sugar metaphorically too. I don't want to have to resort to chocolate to suffer the slings and arrows. Maybe I could whine a lot, like Hamlet. If I do it loud enough, it might release those endorphins anyway. OR I could always have a good book by me, which is an excellent 'spoonful of sugar' in my case:)

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