Why should parents restrict children’s candy consumption?

Please don’t imagine that I will dispute the traditional prohibition against eating candy. On the contrary, I want to broaden and strengthen it. Further, I want the underlying wisdom of it applied with integrity and logical consistency: if a food causes your blood sugar to spike like sugar does, it may as well be candy.

Raisin Bran cereal? 45 grams of carbohydrate per cup, including 19 g of sugar. Do not be fooled by the word “bran” in the name to consider this food anything but what it is: candy.

Dannon® Fruit Blends Yogurt, Strawberry Banana flavored — 29 g of sugar in only 6 ounces (3/4 cup). This is CANDY. Do not imagine that any supposed nutritional benefit outweighs the insulin spike this causes.

Energy bars. I spent years kidding myself with these. I ate Clif bars, Luna bars, PowerBars. In the course of becoming adult, you learn to lock your doors at night, not give money to everyone who asks for it, react with suspicion to obvious predators. If you’re not counting the marketing machines behind health foods as predators, you are naive. Energy bars are snake oil. Energy drinks are even worse.

Fruit juice. Yes, I know the common belief that fruit juice is healthy. Fruit juice has higher glycemic index than fruit itself, and if it’s not 100% natural fruit juice, it contains corn syrup and/or other sugars. Even if it is 100% natural fruit juice, it is high glycemic index. Consider that a glass of orange juice consists of concentrated fructose from at least four oranges. It spikes blood sugar. It spikes insulin levels. It thus fuels a negative feedback cycle of hunger and drowsiness, hastens aging, screws up your mental concentration, exacerbates behavioral problems — the list goes on. The underlying wisdom is that high glycemic foods are unhealthy, and fruit juices are high glycemic index. Candy doesn’t have vitamins, and fruit juice does. But the insulin spike is far more damaging and does not justify the nutrient content of fruit juice; you can get better nutrients from vegetables and meat.

You must learn to call this crap what it is. If it has a high glycemic index, for nutritional purposes it is candy. We have exploding levels of obesity and diabetes — and other metabolic syndromes including neurochemical disorders — because parents are feeding their children candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner; and for in-between snacks. And most of them are doing so ignorantly, because the food item is not called ‘candy’. But it has the same ill consequences. Stop being fooled.