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| Cannabis = no big deal / Sugar = 😱 |
The Great Sugar Prohibition
I remember being insatiable to sugar as a child, at its
mercy whenever it was near. My mom was convinced I had a sugar addiction. I knew sugar as something forbidden and heavenly tasting. White sugar was not allowed in our hippie household
when I was little. But in my childhood, aside from my mom no one really cared
about sugar until later, around the mid-80’s. Quite the contrary in the 70’s,
sugar was often used to market foods! Cereals were branded with sugar in the name!
(i.e., Sugar Smacks, Sugar Corn Pops)
The first word I remember learning to read was “sugar”. My mom insisted that I be allowed the freedom to choose what kind of cereal I wanted, as long as “sugar” wasn’t one of the first three ingredients. As a result, at the ripe age of 3 years old, I understood what “ingredients” were, where to find them on the box, and how to review that list of data for “sugar”, like a word search I always felt hopeful to win (by finding it way down the list).
Little did I know the game was rigged. And my mom knew it. But she was teaching
me to fish, as the saying goes. She wanted me to experience the lesson rather than
just being told “no” …a true hippie perspective in raising kids.
Back then, even Cheerios—yep! toddler-friendly,
heart healthy Cheerios!—relied on sugar as their third ingredient, making it
ineligible for representation in our cupboard. Any cereal I wanted and aisle researched,
from Corn Flakes to Cheerios to Wheaties, was not allowed in my sugar-free
household. Nope. I got Grape Nuts. God, how I hated them! I couldn’t even wrap
my head around the name—Grape Nuts--being they were neither grapes nor nuts. Come
to think of it, I never really knew what, exactly, Grape Nuts were…?
If I wanted them to taste like
anything at all, I had to pound the block of brown sugar from our pantry on our
tile kitchen floor to break it up enough to sprinkle some on my cereal, only to
watch it immediately sink to the bottom... disappearing until those last couple
sips of milk when it would suddenly reappear thick and confident, like a
strapping super hero an hour late to the crisis.
My mom’s sugar prohibition continued
for years. Eventually she would become consumed with juggling work and duties
at home so she lightened up a bit over time. And when my parents split up when I was 7, I quickly realized my sugar loving genes come from my dad. Oh, how I relished the freedom of Trix and Lucky Charms for the first time in my young life!
The contrast between the cannabis-friendly/anti-sugar household went totally unnoticed by my family until recently when I started realizing just how these contrasts have shaped me into who I am today. Looking back it seems so odd, though!
My mom was right, I do have a sugar addiction. But she taught me well ...to pay attention, read labels, cook at home, listen to my body. Dad taught me that ice cream is one of life's necessities, non-negotiable.
I have not eaten Grape Nuts since I was a kid. I know my palette has developed, and I may like them as plenty of others do. I. Just. Can’t.
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