This page was created in 2013 to bring together several ideas involving parental belief about sugar.

This website has for many years had information refuting the idea that sugar is addictive, or that sugar makes kids hyperactive. There are dozens of descriptions of kids choosing other foods over sugar when there's an array and sweets are as readily available as any other food. Links to those are in the column to the right. Below is from a discussion from Radical Unschooling Info about *why* the belief is so prevalent.

"The ideas in my head weren't my own."

Meredith:

What makes so many erroneous beliefs tenacious is "variable reinforcement" - when something correlates only some of the time, people actually believe it harder and longer than if there's a clear relationship every single time. It's the root of superstition, and it's true of any creature with a brain - not just human nature, but animal nature. We're instinctively superstitious ;)

When are kids actively given lots of sweets? At exciting events: parties. So Some of the time, kids+sugar correlates with lots of running around in excitement.

The other key factor is that "everyone knows". A great deal of parenting "wisdom" is made up of things "everyone knows" because everyone repeats them back and forth, over and over. Like "you have to go to school to learn" and "children need rules". Some of the things "everyone knows" are completely wrong, but because "everyone knows" them, it's very, very difficult for people to change their attitudes even in the presence of evidence to the contrary.

It was really shocking for me to discover just how much of what I "knew" was a result of that repetition. I accounted myself an intelligent, thoughtful person, with strong "alternative" viewpoints, but most of what I thought I knew about parenting was based in a kind of cultural conditioning. The ideas in my head weren't my own. That's humbling.

I made a real effort to remember that unschooling is natural learning on the part of the learner, and that the experience of his relationship to sugar would just have to belong to him and sugar. Not to me and sugar.

Not the same choices "Happy, supported, trusted kids don't make the same choices as unhappy, controlled kids." —Joyce Fetteroll Sugar as a scary substance photo by Sandra Dodd

Joyce Fetteroll brought an article to an unschooling discussion, and wrote:

The article focuses on why human children spend so many years small compared to other mammals. But the interesting part for unschoolers is

"From about the age of four to puberty, the young brain guzzles glucose – the cerebral cortex, its largest part, uses nearly (or more than) double that used earlier or later in life. This creates a problem. A child’s body is a third of the size of an adult but its brain is nearly adult sized. Calculated as a share, a child’s takes up half of all the energy used by a child."

Glucose in the bloodstream -- that all cells use as energy -- comes from simple carbohydrates (sugars) and complex (starches). 4 to puberty is the big period when kids are most drawn to sugar and carbohydrates. (Capt. Crunch is like pure energy gold ;-) (It's also when their palates narrow too. So maybe there's a connection there too.)

Which is more back up for why children's food choices should be honored. They know what their bodies need. Why Do Human Children Stay So Small For So Long?
December 11, 2014 | by John Skoyles

Two stories of children completely deprived of sugar—of kids without choices

In 1972 or so I was living where we had one irrigated field, and rows of vegetables. We were keeping a 4 or 5 year old niece who was never allowed any sweets at all. With two adults and two older kids in the house, at one point we lost her. In a panic, people started looking everywhere she could be, and finally she was found in the garden between rows, with the bag of sugar from the pantry. It was about half of a 5 lb. bag. She had it on the ground, eating sugar by the handful as fast as she could.

The scariest thing is she was hiding, and there were dangers. There could have been water in the ditch, and there were other safety concerns.

Below is a story of her and her younger sister:

I took two little nieces to the zoo in the mid-'70s. They were hippie kids who had been raised in the country, in a sugar-free environment. The younger one acted nervous from time to time, and finally pointed at someone eating cotton candy and asked me softly, "Why are those people eating toilet paper?" I did the only educationally appropriate thing, and bought her some. The three of us together didn't finish it.

True Tales of Kids Turning Down Sweets Monkeyplatters Other prejudices