Craving Sugar Like a Drug

My 4-year-old woke up hungry this morning, and while I was making my slow, bleary-eyed way toward the kitchen, he scampered on ahead and took matters into his own hands. When I arrived, he was sitting on the floor scooping out knife-fuls of vanilla frosting from a container that had been up toward the top of the fridge.

We have a house rule that we eat healthy food before sugar, and the boys know they’re only allowed one serving of sugar per day. That second rule is a little more flexible, but in general it keeps the kids from begging for sweets all day long. They know that the more they ask, the less likely I am to give in on sugar #2.

But this is the first time one of them has blatantly helped himself to something he knew he shouldn’t be having, and as I stood there sleepily debating how to respond, the 7-year-old piped up, “What makes us like sugar so much?”

It was waaaaay too early for all this thinking!  But in a weird quirk of fate, the public radio station KWMU came to my rescue, with a Morning Edition story about how overeating sugar affects our brains much the same way drugs do. That is, it makes us feel good – and if we eat high-sugar, high-fat foods, we feel really good. Briefly. If we continue to overeat sugar, our brains will become wired to crave more in order to get the same effect.

Perhaps the 4-year-old had already consumed enough frosting for the happy effect, because he didn’t create too much of a fuss when I took the bowl of kiddie crack away and steered him toward blueberries instead. I put the frosting back (on a higher shelf!) and, feeling a twinge of guilt, cooked a real breakfast.

By Amy De La Hunt, Health Blogger for SmartParenting