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sugar and kids
Nov. 10th, 2006 12:38 pma friends post just reminded me of how kids react to sugar - and i have a story about this which was far too "all about me" to co-opt the comments in her LJ with it
now - my family was all about convenience food. in the early 80's we got a microwave and we went from a family that canned / froze a lot of food every summer in order to have easily heatable instant food - to a family that microwaved all food. instant food yay. my mom bought the acroutrements, the microwave veggie streamer, the microwave chicken broiler / griller, every sort of hard plastic radiation enduring cooking implement we had. and in fact they still have - to the extent that if i want to make fresh coffee or heat even water without the use of the microwave i am given the - you are insane look. to make matters worse they have one of those flat topped electric stoves which just freak me out - but that's a different story.
so in this land of convenience food there were also the staples of sandwiches on white bread and cereal. now - i have told others before about the super sugary kids cereal - which we got to pick out. my brother and i shared negotiations but there was no parent veto on the cereal - whether it be fruity pebbles, crunch berries, smurf cereal or frankenberry. (for the record - i still dream about the blue smell of smurfs cereal). the sandwiches were usually either bologne and ketchup or peanut butter and jelly. however - the other night i remembered a staple of our homesteads snack food / school lunches. the sugar sandwich. as a child i thought nothing of this. it was as usual as maple trees and hot dogs. in retrospect my logic brain knows to be horrified, but somehow i still feel very affectionate towards the sugar sandwich. what it consisted of was white bread, buttered(or margarined really) and then covered in sugar and folded in half. if some sugar didn't spill out when you went to eat it - then it didn't have enough on it. this snack was family wide and often made for either of my parents when they had just gotten home from a long days work.
there are other bits of hilarity. a family of four ranging from 4 - 45 in age going through two cases of coca cola classic a week. hi-c being considered healthy. capri sun being considered REALLY healthy...
the counterpoint to all of this was the making homemade bread with my gandmothers recipe (and no bread machines), making traditional cornish pasties, canning food, going to U-Pick farms in the summer and spending entire weekends picking bushels of green beams, corn, beets, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, making our own jam, grinding our own sausage, the whole hunting / venison thing, etc... in some ways i know i got my love of cooking and food from all of these influences. from how good food tasted from our vegatable garden, from when i picked it myself, from it being fresh cooked that very day in a pit fire or on the stove. i know how not to be afraid of a fryer or a pressure cooker or a slow cooker. and i lived for many years as a vegetarian in a house of meat eaters thankful for the microwave where i could make the griller w/cheddar on an onion bagel sandwich that was the staple of my diet from 13 - 20.
i remember how spazzy i always was as a kid though. and how tired and stressed my mom always was. i wonder if she had us eating a few more veggies and protein and less sugar how much easier it might have been on all of us? how much did so much sugar shape my personality? it's ironic that since 2001 i have (with a few months exceptions here and there) eliminated sugar from my diet. and i feel so much more clear headed. of course - it's also my primary comfort food. not only for the rush and energy - but it tastes like home. like the good times on the couch watching teevee with my mom and playing monopoly. of course the spaz and crash model i still work with - having just flipped over to it being primarily caffeine instead of the excellent caffeine sugar cocktail.
it's funny how revolutionary it was to me when i realized that what i eat (not just eating period) effects my mood. it still is really. how a choclate croissant for bfast is a recipe for a hard and stressed out morning, but eggs and bacon will have me efficient and calm. i still try to get my head around it... i suppose its a process...
now - my family was all about convenience food. in the early 80's we got a microwave and we went from a family that canned / froze a lot of food every summer in order to have easily heatable instant food - to a family that microwaved all food. instant food yay. my mom bought the acroutrements, the microwave veggie streamer, the microwave chicken broiler / griller, every sort of hard plastic radiation enduring cooking implement we had. and in fact they still have - to the extent that if i want to make fresh coffee or heat even water without the use of the microwave i am given the - you are insane look. to make matters worse they have one of those flat topped electric stoves which just freak me out - but that's a different story.
so in this land of convenience food there were also the staples of sandwiches on white bread and cereal. now - i have told others before about the super sugary kids cereal - which we got to pick out. my brother and i shared negotiations but there was no parent veto on the cereal - whether it be fruity pebbles, crunch berries, smurf cereal or frankenberry. (for the record - i still dream about the blue smell of smurfs cereal). the sandwiches were usually either bologne and ketchup or peanut butter and jelly. however - the other night i remembered a staple of our homesteads snack food / school lunches. the sugar sandwich. as a child i thought nothing of this. it was as usual as maple trees and hot dogs. in retrospect my logic brain knows to be horrified, but somehow i still feel very affectionate towards the sugar sandwich. what it consisted of was white bread, buttered(or margarined really) and then covered in sugar and folded in half. if some sugar didn't spill out when you went to eat it - then it didn't have enough on it. this snack was family wide and often made for either of my parents when they had just gotten home from a long days work.
there are other bits of hilarity. a family of four ranging from 4 - 45 in age going through two cases of coca cola classic a week. hi-c being considered healthy. capri sun being considered REALLY healthy...
the counterpoint to all of this was the making homemade bread with my gandmothers recipe (and no bread machines), making traditional cornish pasties, canning food, going to U-Pick farms in the summer and spending entire weekends picking bushels of green beams, corn, beets, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, making our own jam, grinding our own sausage, the whole hunting / venison thing, etc... in some ways i know i got my love of cooking and food from all of these influences. from how good food tasted from our vegatable garden, from when i picked it myself, from it being fresh cooked that very day in a pit fire or on the stove. i know how not to be afraid of a fryer or a pressure cooker or a slow cooker. and i lived for many years as a vegetarian in a house of meat eaters thankful for the microwave where i could make the griller w/cheddar on an onion bagel sandwich that was the staple of my diet from 13 - 20.
i remember how spazzy i always was as a kid though. and how tired and stressed my mom always was. i wonder if she had us eating a few more veggies and protein and less sugar how much easier it might have been on all of us? how much did so much sugar shape my personality? it's ironic that since 2001 i have (with a few months exceptions here and there) eliminated sugar from my diet. and i feel so much more clear headed. of course - it's also my primary comfort food. not only for the rush and energy - but it tastes like home. like the good times on the couch watching teevee with my mom and playing monopoly. of course the spaz and crash model i still work with - having just flipped over to it being primarily caffeine instead of the excellent caffeine sugar cocktail.
it's funny how revolutionary it was to me when i realized that what i eat (not just eating period) effects my mood. it still is really. how a choclate croissant for bfast is a recipe for a hard and stressed out morning, but eggs and bacon will have me efficient and calm. i still try to get my head around it... i suppose its a process...
