We, like our kids, bathe in sugar.
It’s in the drinks we drink, the snacks we eat, and the desserts we consume afterwards. It’s even in foods not normally associated with sugar (sliced breads, hot dogs, ketchup).
The role of sugar in health is only recently being understood, and now we’ve discovered that the sugars in low fat food products can lead to weight problems, and even the insulin instabilities that become diabetes.
And the worst time of all, in respect to sugar consumption, is the “sweetened storm surge” that happens at Halloween.
Many people may take issue with my apparent assault on sugar. True, sugar is not unhealthy per se. True, it really can be incorporated into a healthy diet – just like bacon, wine, chocolate, or any other real food. And the sugar industry position downplays Halloween's sugar bolus, calling it the happy exception to the rule – sweets as a treat, nothing more.
That might be true if we were not inundated by sugar every day, making Halloween a punctuation mark on the end of a long candy road.
But what can you do? We live in this culture. Kids come to your house expecting neon syrup wads, and our kids go to houses that produce handfuls of orange candy corn (what IS that, anyway?), fireballs, gummy things, and the Barney-purple sugar in a straw called Pixie Stix.
With so much candy afoot, we run into a common cultural dilemma. “Everyone else is doing it.” Although you cannot change the world, you can change your self. One good starting spot is to buy treats for your house, and for the passing kids, other than a bag of candy.
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