sugar: it's for kids

Yesterday, during a long stretch on the 6 train from Spanish Harlem to Chinatown (I wasn't feeling great, so I thought maybe some noodle soup would straighten me out. It did), I watched a woman feeding her two kids a series of snacks:

Oreo cookies
(then) peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
(followed by) fruit roll-ups
(ending with) apple juice

Which, in my mind, translated to:
Sugar
(then) sugar
(followed by) sugar
(ending with) more sugar

I don't judge this mom. This is how we're taught to feed our kids in the U.S. Pre-packaged food-like products that give our kids "energy." Stuff that our kids "will like."

Growing up, I ate two kinds of food: stuff that was tasty, and stuff that grown-ups put in my bowl and told me to eat. Things like: spicy fermented tofu, salted egg and pickled veggies with rice porridge for breakfast. Chicken curry with fried rice for lunch. Sauteed veggies and braised pork with noodles for dinner. Mangos or lychees for dessert. My diet ran the gamut. I was healthy.

After we moved to the U.S. and started assimilating to the lifestyle here, I was introduced to a different kind of diet. Big huge portions with lots of fat and sugar. A kid's dream come true. When I first tasted a croissant, I thought I'd discovered heaven. Mmm, fat carbs. Love fat carbs. Still do. My skinny jeans always complain.

But then something started happening to me. I started gaining weight. Lots of it. So much my siblings started calling me "The Blob." I didn't understand why. And I would cry in between large bites of Whopper with cheese. Why am I fat? Why are they calling me fat? Why does this Snickers bar taste so good? Gobble, gobble.

It was a difficult, confusing time.

Fast forward and here I am on the 6 train wondering how we can get moms to replace the oreos and fruit roll-ups with, say, bananas and whole wheat crackers.

One concern, obviously, is access to nutritious food. Many communities don't have that. The other is nutrition education. Many parents don't have the information they need to feed their kids a more complete diet. And then there's the underlying cultural desire for gigantic portions (the snacks this mom fed her kids probably had all the calories contained in a meal) and the fear that parents have of making their kids eat something "they don't like." Come on now.

Had I been calling the shots as a kid, I would have just had a giant Pixie stick funneling blue sugar directly into my gullet 24/7. Which, come to think of it, is kind of what we're doing now to our kids. It's hard being a mom. And it's hard to focus on health when an entire culture and industry is built around exactly the opposite. I want to know: how can we make it easier for everyone?

-the traveling cupcake