Sugar isn’t just addictive; it’s evil

Jennifer Ditlevson Haglund

This year I decided my child was ready to trick-or-treat in earnest. She liked her monkey costume well enough. She might break down and cry before the fifth house, but she’d get loads of candy by then because she’s so cute.

By association, I reasoned, my husband and I would get loads of candy. My daughter is not old enough to understand ownership, so she wouldn’t know that I was planning to pilfer all the good stuff from her bucket and leave her with the graham crackers and stickers. It’s only responsible of me to do so. I’m protecting her from overdosing on sugar and sacrificing my self-control for her benefit.

Of course, I kept these thoughts to myself until my husband said it. He’s more transparent and honest than I am.

Now that I have a child old enough to participate in Halloween festivities, I can’t lie to myself anymore. I have a troubled relationship with sugar. I could easily become one of those parents on Jimmy Kimmel videos who tell their kids they ate all their Halloween candy. The problem is that I wouldn’t be joking and have a full bag hiding somewhere to pull out just in time to stop the tears. The candy would be gone.

It’s embarrassing to confess that I have yet to grow out of looking to score snacks. I’ve been a grown-up for too long to excuse my behavior. It’s so immature, greedy, and gluttonous of me to do, but I find myself a little too eager to score a cookie or piece of Laffy Taffy when I go to the bank.

My mother kept sugar out of her kids’ diets, and I should thank her for that. If I wanted to put myself on the couch for a minute, I could blame sugar scarcity for driving me to stoop so low.

Effacing my dignity every time, I have begged, stolen, and hoarded my indulgences.

Once, I asked my oldest brother if I could have a stick of Juicy Fruit; he told me I could sniff the wrapper if I liked and handed it to me. I’m not proud to say that I did.

Years later, I caught two of my brothers with a packet of gummy fruits at a movie. Convinced that they had bought them when I wasn’t looking, I demanded a portion. They promised that they’d just found them on the floor and they weren’t planning to eat them. I was so insistent that they were lying and denying me what I wanted that they eventually gave me the questionable castaway. If my mom hadn’t asked why they were laughing so hard, I might have eaten every piece of that floor candy.

I was the kind of kid who stored and rationed my Halloween stash for months because I wanted it to last forever. My siblings usually discovered my spots and took everything but the Mary Jane peanut butter kisses, also known as the nasty black-and-orange candy everyone hates. After being fooled so many times with bad trades or poor hiding spots, I learned to like it.

In college, my little brother and I would invent reasons to drive to the bank during its anniversary celebration year so we could get free cookies and coffee. The tellers knew what we were doing after the third time we had to go in just to check our account balances. After all, we did have online checking.

As an adult who can buy whatever kind of junk I want, I take my mother’s lead and don’t stock my place with sweets or prepackaged food. But that’s not the real me.

Driving to a teacher training course last week, I wasn’t interested in quality of instruction or thinking about taking notes. I was hoping someone was going to provide refreshments. If consuming loads of sweets didn’t affect my waistline, budget, or health, I would have a hard time restricting my intake.

Everything research tells us about sugar is true. It messes you up. It’s like a drug, and it’s scarier than any ghoulish face I saw on Halloween. It’s just evil.