When I was a kid, I didn’t have many restrictions on sugar. My brother and I ate all the sweet cereals like Super Golden Crisp, Pops, Honeycomb, Cap’n Crunch, and Lucky Charms. We had Hi-C and Capri Suns in our lunches, as well as Fruit Roll ups for a snack, and of course Lunchables or sandwiches on white Wonder Bread. We bought candy and ice cream and grab bags from the ice cream truck almost every day. I grew up on 7-11 slurpees and never met a Coke I didn’t like! That’s not to say that we didn’t eat healthy — almost all our meals were homecooked, healthy Korean food, but my parents just didn’t worry too much about sugar.

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Though I always have a twinge of nostalgia for the more carefree good old days, I think it’s good that parents these days are much more mindful about what their kids are eating. I think about this often living in the Philippines, where everyone loves very sweet food, and candy, chocolate, powdered juice drinks and soda flow freely. Cavities are a very serious problem here. I actively think about restricting sugar, whereas in the US we had so many healthy options that we just don’t have here. It’s hard though because sugar is everywhere — sweetened drinks are usually free with every meal!

My Swedish friend here follows a Swedish tradition where kids are allowed pretty much unlimited sugar on Saturdays. That gives the kids something to look forward to after the school week, and they don’t feel deprived of sweets since they can indulge on that one day. When her daughter comes over on a Saturday, she brings a trove of chocolate and candy that she shares with Charlie and Olive because it’s too much for her to eat. I do ascribe to the idea that denying your kids of something too much only makes them want it more, but I can’t get on board with unrestricted sugar, even if it’s just one day a week. My friend’s daughter is a very mellow child however, whereas Charlie was less than mellow for most of his years, so I’ve always thought about the effects of sugar on him.

I control how much sugar my kids eat by keeping it out of the house because I don’t like sweet things myself. Since I buy all the groceries, I have all the power! These are my general rules:

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  • no soda, except on special occasions. I very rarely drank soda throughout my entire 30’s when I lived in New York so we never had any in the home. Charlie loves orange soda that he gets to drink at birthday parties, but Olive doesn’t like soda of any kind. They both never tried soda until we moved to the Philippines.
  • no juice. The only beverages we have at home are water, boreecha (a Korean barley tea) and milk. Instead of juice we make fruit smoothies.
  • I very rarely buy sweets of any kind at the market. I rarely even eat fruit because it’s too sweet for me, so I don’t buy things like sugary cereals, candy, cookies, even chips at the market. But when we’re out and about, I will buy them candy treats like cotton candy from time to time, and they get ice cream a couple times a week too.
  • dessert is fresh fruit. I always prepare a large plate of fresh fruit maybe an hour after dinner. This was my dessert growing up too.

These rules are stricter than pretty much all my parent friends here, but I think my kids have a healthy relationship with sugar. They  know the rules and don’t binge (our Halloween candy was leftover for months) or crave it too much. Since they almost never see me or Mr. Bee eating anything sweet, I think it’s a normal part of their lives that we don’t really have sweets in the home.

Do you have any guidelines you follow when it comes to sugar and sweets for your kids?