*Guest blog* | Sugar: the root of all evil.
One of my friends Sadie started researching into what she was feeding her toddler, Noah, and she was shocked by some of the findings – she wanted to share with you and used my site as a way of doing this – here’s Sadie’s ‘Sugar is the root of all evil’ post…
Thanks for taking the time to read my guest blog. I do not claim to be an avid ‘blogger’ but when I have something that I feel passionate about, I sometimes find writing it down helps and in this case, thought it might help someone else. Even if it is just one person, I will sleep more soundly knowing my time wasn’t wasted!
So. Background. My gorgeous boy, Noah, is two and a half. He is a 35lb ball of ginger energy. He has never slept well. He is only now going through the night from 7pm until anytime from 4.30am in the morning. My husbands eye bags and mine are the size of suitcases and I have crow’s feet, which would be more accurately described as T-Rex feet descending out from the corners of my eyes. The Botox bill can come out of his savings….
I am not a hugely health conscious person but I do try and feed Noah well. I have noticed recently that I am sliding down a slippery slope of lazy snacking, when filling up his lunchbox.
A typical day for Noah food wise would be:
Breakfast – Porridge or Weetabix
Morning snack – a packet of Quavers/Skips
Lunch – scrambled eggs on toast
Pudding – a Munch Bunch yoghurt
Afternoon snack – Barney bear or a Mini Roll – something like that and some raisins
Dinner – Ham sandwich
Pudding – fruit/ice cream/another yoghurt
Supper – sometimes a Weetabix or hummus and crackers
Drink – watered down squash
It doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Let me enlighten you. Munch Bunch yoghurts come in 42g pots. In that one pot, there is a whole teaspoon of white sugar in it! How disgusting is that?! When you think how small our little guys are, that is a hell of a lot of sugar to put inside that tiny body in one quick, probably quite messy, helping. OK, next up, my old friend Barney The Bear. These small fella’s have nearly 2 teaspoons! 8.8g to be precise! In one bloody bear! These bears are no longer welcome at our teddy bear picnic.
Raisins. How could they be bad?! Dried grapes right? WRONG! These little suckers are full of sugar too. When you think, they are grapes. Sugar naturally occurs in fruit, as you know, and there are loads of raisins in a tiny box, alas, loads of sugar going into a tiny little mouth! I am not going to continue to outline the (not so) nutritional values of the foods he eats…. But you get my drift.
So what I do now is consciously not give him any additional sugar. Instead of watered down squash, for example, I cut up freshly squeezed lemon and lime and squeeze the juice into water, which he loves. I made some cheese straws for him to snack on. I have completely cut out rubbishy yoghurts. Instead, I give him Greek yoghurt and fresh fruit. I made a banana loaf using Rice Malt Syrup instead of sugar and he absolutely loves it! (it’s lovely with a cuppa, might I add!)
He hasn’t had half the amount of nervous energy he had the week before, when I was tearing my hair out! So I must be doing something right! He is sleeping better (touch wood!) and we are having far less disagreements ending up in naughty step visits!
