When my kids were younger, I thought about how I wanted them to handle sweets: I wanted them to walk by the candy jar. I wanted them to see and acknowledge treats … and walk on by.
I didn’t want them to dig in every time they walked by a plate of cookies or a tray of brownies. I didn’t want them to stuff their faces at a party or while they trekked door to door on Halloween. I didn’t want them to do this because I did that when I was a kid — and it wasn’t pretty.
A Dessert Desert
You see, my family lived on a food budget in the 1970s. My mom, like I do now, cooked most dinners and packed our lunches for school. She had a structure with mealtime, and meals were a priority in our home. I am not very different from my mom in this respect.
[See: 12 Questions You Should Ask Your Kids at Dinner.]
But unlike me, my mom bought very few sweets. She’d buy one package of cookies each week and rarely any candy, ice cream or other sweet treats. A container of frozen orange juice for Sunday morning breakfast (after church) and a weekly box of sugary cereal — to be split among six family members — were the only sweet items on the grocery list.
My mom preferred cooking over baking and would only make homemade sweets and desserts for parties and holidays. Her special Christmas coffee cake, banana bread, homemade chocolate eclairs and divinity were irresistible — literally. My three siblings and I routinely ate the weekly package of cookies within days — sometimes, in just one. We fought for the last cookie and flake of sugary cereal. The same fate happened to the homemade desserts: gone almost as soon as they were made.
What’s the problem?
As an adult who can look back on my own childhood experiences and see it through the lens of a pediatric dietitian, I see where my mom might have done things differently. My mom, like many mothers across the country, didn’t know what she didn’t know. She did the best she could with the knowledge she had. She didn’t understand the psychological effect food scarcity or restriction can have on children.
Here’s what I mean: The rare appearance of sweets in my childhood drove me to focus on them more, seek them out and go overboard when I succeeded in getting them. The strategy of “I don’t make or have any desserts in the house” increased a desire for them, rather than a dislike or a moderate view of them.
This isn’t just my observation on my own experience; there’s scientific evidence for this outcome. Food restriction, particularly with sweets and treats, has an interesting effect on children. In a 1999 article in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers showed that preschoolers who were restricted from eating high-fat, high-sugar foods experienced changes in their behavior, selection of and eating of the restricted food. Translated: The restricted food piqued their interest more, they chose the restricted food when they could and they ate more of it when the opportunity arose.
[See: 11 Things to Tell Yourself When You’re About to Binge Eat.]
Other studies show that food restriction may lead to higher weights and poor eating habits. A 2014 study in Appetite, for example, found that children who experienced food restriction not only ate more of the restricted foods when they could, but they also had more conversations and questions about them. Further, those children who had low self-control or who had a big appetite were more susceptible to the negative effects of food restriction, such as high reactivity to and eating of the restricted foods. In short, restriction doesn’t promote moderate food consumption in some children; rather, it may encourage desire for those foods. It did for me.
Neutrality Over Restriction
Now, if I buy a bag of candy, I put it in a bowl on the kitchen counter or in the candy dish in the dining room. I almost always have ice cream in my freezer, and I routinely bake or buy sweets and treats. I have worked hard to be neutral around candy and other sweets in front of my kids, and to have them around more than my mom did.
[See: 6 Darn Good Reasons to Eat Sugar and Not Apologize for It.]
I think it’s worked. My children, like most kids, enjoy sweets and include them — or not. For them, candy doesn’t seem to be laden with other feelings, like scarcity or restriction. For me, my relationship with candy, sweets and treats has come a long way. I understand my “history” with them. I work hard to model food balance in my meals and snacks, and incorporate structure and boundaries with eating. I still love candy — especially sour candy — but I try to enjoy it, not gorge on it. Of course, that doesn’t always work. Sometimes, history repeats itself.
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The Surprising Way a Pediatric Nutritionist and Mom Handles Treats in the Home originally appeared on usnews.com
