Evil is easy to spot. Especially when it’s in a cereal box aimed for little kids. I believe in the evil of Apple Jacks, Cap’n Crunch and Froot Loops. If it has “Frosted” in the name, my hand backs away from it, as it would if someone offered me just a taste of crack cocaine. No, no, I think. That wouldn’t be good. And of course I know intuitively that Cocoa Puffs cannot be something a good mother would allow in her child’s cereal bowl. Not just is it a sugary cereal – but it tastes like chocolate. It must be bad for you. You cannot have chocolate or sugar for breakfast.
Last year, an environmental working group (named, auspiciously, the Environmental Working Group) came out with a list of the 10 worst children’s cereals. Top of the list: Kellogg’s Honey Smacks. A mere cup of these tasty morsels have, they claimed, with an almost audible shriek, more sugar than a Hostess Twinkie. There are 44 other children’s cereals that have more sugar than three Chips Ahoy! cookies.
OMG – what are we doing to our children?
The article, and the health expert it quotes, urges “national outrage.”
Before you line up with posters, start an email chain to your local congressperson, and boycott the large national food corporations that are poisoning the very fabric of this nation, however, you may recall that the media has recently published a different set of scientific findings. Dieters who eat dessert after a healthy breakfast lose more weight and keep it off longer than dieters who just eat a healthy breakfast. Real research, conducted in a well-controlled study, with people who actually need to lose weight. Two groups, both low calorie, but one had some of the calories in the form of dessert that came right after breakfast. A slice of cake, or a cookie, even a small bowl of ice cream, to top off breakfast, seemed to cut cravings for sweets for the rest of the day. People were less crazed for sweets by staving them off first thing in the morning. So they lost more weight, kept it off longer.
I like the underlying feel of this. It’s like taking homeopathic principles to the next level – just the faintest, untraceable amount of something can provide the opposite effect. Although a slice of cake and a few cookies are clearly more substantial than the usual tiny white homeopathic pellets.
Yesterday I happily tried dessert after my egg-white/spinach/onion/bell pepper omelet and ½ banana. I’d made a coffee cake from a box (with “real pudding in the mix!”) the night before. I rarely remember that sweets come in vanilla and can be moist and delicious without a whiff of chocolate. And even more rarely buy dessert mixes. The universe must have been pulling me to try my own experiment. It was just as delicious for breakfast as it was the night before, fresh out of the oven. Still moist, still cinnamon-sugary-crumbly-topped sweet. Perhaps even more decadent as it was at the “wrong” time; kind of like sneaking away for a nooner, where brief, hurried minutes seem so much better because the treat has come when it’s not supposed to.
Sugar in the morning may not be evil. Maybe it’s just supposed to be naughty.
Maybe kids should be fed things that are primarily healthy for them and then given the slightest top-off of a treat every now and then. Where’s the harm? One day they’re gonna learn about hidden pleasures and stolen moments. They’re gonna want the decadent thing at the exact wrong time. Why not teach them how to embrace that kind of longing? Take the addictive frenzy out of sweets by giving moderate access to them, especially at a time of day that might ward off a later crave/craze. Maybe then when parents bring in doughnuts to school, it won’t create the kind of frenzy it does now, with all school work and conversations ground to a halt as children swarm in a mad rush toward the over-sized box, eyes wide, bodies bobbing in anticipation, the exact kind of buzzing, vibrating, impatient-for-the-fix behaviors seen outside a methadone clinic before it opens.
Research is on my side. The psychology of cravings is behind this. Addictions are created not by faulty parenting or abuse or bad family dynamics. Well, maybe these play a role. But really, they’re caused by a lack of moderation, a lack of sanctioned naughtiness. Don’t quote me on this. Don’t tell this to your great-auntie who’s been tippling back scotches for 30 years. Or your cousin Bob who’s pushing 330 pounds. But if great-auntie and cousin Bob could have found moments of pleasure and sinfulness they could savor, they might not have needed to stockpile a whole way of life that gives up all power and control to an urge. Being “bad” would be good. And then there’s no greater draw for the bad.
I think I just flipped it. I’ve found the yin to this yang. I’m going on a campaign for naughtiness. To add more moments of savoring something I’m not supposed to at any given time. Sneaking a piece of perfectly roasted chicken skin before I serve it; turning up the music in the morning when I’m making breakfast; sitting longer with a good book before I get up; enjoying a hot shower long enough to waste some water while my muscles ease that much more; spending more time on the phone with friends even when our children or husbands might need us; spending just the tiniest bit more of this summer’s vacation budget to stay somewhere with a hint of indulgence; stealing a kiss (or more) when my husband doesn’t expect it; and definitely having something for breakfast I’m not supposed to.
Mmmmmm. I like this.