Twenty years ago, I met a couple with a young son who decided not to let the kid have sugar. I wonder how that might have worked out for the kid now that he’s grown.
I assume the kid hit 18 and went on a sugar binge as soon as he tasted it the first time.
Anyone have experience with this?


It’s just Puritanism and has all of the drawbacks of an overreaching authority.
Those kids usally binge on sugar once they hit adolescence and are away from thier parents. Great way to create a substance abuse issue. It’s what happens every time you do shit like this.
Prohibition is a method of control that requires a hell of a lot of restrictions to work. And even then it has a high failure rate.
Counterpoint, I see parents giving sodas to toddlers all the time. Reminiscent of that scene in Idiocracy where a parent tries to get their baby to drink Brawndo.
But sugar can cause a slew of problems in kids like childhood obesity, diabetes and
hyperactivitymood swings due to changes in blood sugar levels. The sugar industry has done its best to convince people it’s harmless while packing cheap foods full of it to make it taste better. Countries that consume large amounts of cheap foods like the US have higher obesity rates.Blah blah moderation and all that, but when all you can afford is the cheap shit it’s harder to avoid sugars. Kids finding they might have a sweet tooth when they get older is a tiny concern.
My mom kept the fridge stocked with sodas when I was a kid, mostly because I had friends over often and she wanted them to feel welcome. I usually drank soda because it was convenient; quick, cold, no dishes. Over years I downed thousands of sodas. It didn’t even occur to me that I didn’t even like it that much.
Now I drink so much water. I’ll have a soda a few times a year, but if I’m thirsty water is king. I feel like a kid who got caught smoking forced to smoke a whole pack.
My family growing up went to having 1l of coke for everyone to share on Sundays, when shit was super expensive, to 600ml or more per person per meal over about 10 years when it got cheaper. I got myself to the point that I would go to a friend’s house, and feel thirsty and refuse to drink water, which was the only thing available. That’s when I noticed my family had a problem.
I didn’t quit cold turkey, but when I reached 26 I remember drinking soft drinks less than once per year. Best decision ever. My mum didn’t go over weight not sure how, but developed diabetes. Only then she switched to diet coke, but kept drinking that like I drink water.
Zero calorie soda tastes good, which makes me not trust it at all.
Well that doesn’t sound like a good faith argument.
Dosent to me at all
They didnt even really counter your point, they gave another perspective to form a stronger argument of what your message was already saying
Parents should teach and guide their children moderation, especially for such common and addictive substances like sugar, especially when without moderation serious health and quality of life damages can apply
If a parents goal is to raise healthy humans with a high quality of life - they should be teaching and guiding children into moderation, not prohibition and the shame that goes with it, not hedonism and the shamelessness that goes with that
Its not that sugar is some fearful substance that should be prohobited outright, but its also not a substance without issue and should be moderated and controlled if modersation is not yet possible for such a still-developing human
There are many such substances that need this parental guidance, sugar is just the most obvious one to younh parents - a toddler probably/hopefully isnt hitting a 40 or a roach
They didn’t address my point at all and went for the extreme opposite. As if it was a gotcha.
The world must look so small and scary from your perspective if you think this was opposition to you. Its not.
Nah man, I just dislike when people do shit like he did thinking they have a point.
Also nice knee jerk reaction.
Edit: in what world is a counterpoint agreement?
This is so frustrating
The commenter was building on top of your argument
You said prohibition wasnt healthy
They said total absence of control wasnt healthy
They implicitly agreed with you that prohibition wasnt healthy
I then spell it out for you that the message being built, that almost certainly you also agree with, is that moderation is the answer.
A counterpoint turns a random point into a line, a line into a polygon, a polygon into a solid, etc.
That counterpoint gave your message an extra and important dimmension. They thought your message was correct but lacking neccisary nuance.
For some reason you got peeved with that, and i think that looks poorly on you, not anyone else.
Counterpoints aren’t agreement
Edit: No 3 paragraph retort? @cAUzapNEAGLb@lemmy.world
One of the things that makes me ignore my mastodon account is how quickly people take offence there, even going so far as to try to shut down conversation threads on their posts as though they don’t expect any depth or variant viewpoints. While there are lots of “reply guy” types over there, even the hint of disagreement, perceived or real, is seen as objectionable.
This response is similar.
I’ve seen the opposite be true. Family members that grew up with Candy/Sugar never left it behind and have impulse control issues that led to substance problems.
Those that had very limited sweet stuff, are able to moderate, or don’t enjoy sweets as much, and haven’t had substance issues.
I think the key factor in substance issues tgough is the persons genetic predisposition and trama.
What is trama?
Like trauma but U weren’t involved
Thank god!
I’d be interested to read some real literature on this. Obviously moderation is the best behavioral choice in the context of life and society, while no refined sugar is obviously the best choice for health.
But if you had two groups of kids, one who was given no sugar and one who was given too much sugar, I bet the former group ends up healthier the vast majority of the time.
I think the real issue is simply that excess calories (and sugary foods are highly dense in calories) leads to obesity. And obesity in childhood lends itself to continued obesity through adulthood, thus higher rates of things like diabetes and high blood pressure.
I think the whole argument about sugar itself is a bit of a moot point. It all comes down to whether or not you let your child become obese while you are still under their care.
I grew up in a household with a lot of sugar. I turned out just fine. Two of my siblings struggle a lot with obesity, and one has been overweight since childhood.
Was an absolute soda chugging fiend in college, until a root canal brought me down to earth.
Bingo!