by Tara Shafer posted in Parenting

At some point over the course of a long northeast winter, the doldrums set in. In my house we got a little lax from a dietary perspective. The sugar started creeping in.
We stocked some junky snacks, it's true.
I am no sugar purist. If anything, I tend too much towards the permissive. (It was a slippery slope).
But at a certain point I decided that things had to change.
This summer we started a new regime. Tons of outdoor camps. No junky snacks. (Well, mostly).
I was feeling good. We were going to relearn how to eat. We were going to snack from the bounty of farmstand produce -- overflowing with finger-staining berries, suffused with the wafting smells of peaches and Hudson Valley humidity.

I had forgotten about the wall of snacks at camps, pools, everywhere. Someone once told me that there was a study done in which children were allowed to feed themselves from balanced offerings without guidance. By and large, these children made the correct nutritional choices. It seemed that they were actually programmed to know how to eat when left to their own devices.
UNTIL.
Until the introduction of salty or sweet options. At that point, all bets were off. The children gravitated towards these temptations.
So why oh why is there candy everywhere" At meets, at tournaments, there is sugar first thing in the morning. Skittles and Sour Patch Kids. Airheads. Ugh.
Increasingly there are healthy options too. But in the blazing sun of a late afterno...