Sweet Little Lies

Sugar, it seems, is the scariest part of Halloween. At least that’s what you’d think judging by all the ‘healthy’ sugar-free recipes and strategies to dupe our kids into handing over sweets in return for a toy (looking at you Switch Witch).

This same scene plays out around every major holiday: Easter, Christmas, and Halloween being the worst offenders in terms of sugar scaremongering. I thought it was a good time to go deep on sugar and sweets, in hope of allaying some of those fears so we can just, I don’t know, enjoy Halloween and get on with our lives?

I asked on Instagram what people heard about sugar in the playground and in those GD awful WhatsApp parenting groups. And here’s what y’all came up with. Well some of them. There are definitely enough sugar myths for us to do a part two, but this was getting unwieldy, even for me.

Let’s go:

Sugar causes ‘hyperactivity’

You know the drill. Your kid goes to a birthday party. Overloads on sugar. And comes home totally strung out. After a few hours of trying to harness this chaotic energy, your kid eventually crashes hard. You cuss out the parents who had the AUDACITY to serve all the sweets at the kids’ party and mentally ban your kid from ever eating sugar again.

But guess what? That chaotic energy wasn’t because your kid was overloaded on sugar.

Before we discuss why, I want to address the ableist language in the room. ‘Hyperactivity’. This term is almost always used in a pejorative sense. ‘That kid is so hyper, their mum just lets them run wild’. By framing hyperactivity as ‘abnormal’ or pathological, we are favouring neurotypical standards for behaviour: stillness, quiet, calm. For (some) neurodivergent folks, stimming - which can involve a number of different behaviours including: fidgeting, flapping arms, rocking back and forth, or running at top speed - are not optional. They are absolutely essential for self-regulation; without it they could become distressed, or even meltdown (and I do not mean throw a tantrum a la my toddler in the middle of Tesco). If we only accept kids’ exuberance and energy in certain situations or contexts, or at certain times, that’s ableist.

So, how is it then, that sugar has become connected to big bursts in energy? This theory emerged at the dawn of the crunchy, wholefoods, socks and sandals era. In 1973, a pediatrician and allergist named Dr Benjamin Feingold, published the Feingold diet as a protocol to ‘treat’ hyperactivity. In it, he advocated for the removal of foods containing salicylates, food colouring, and artificial flavouring from kids’ diets. Although sugar wasn’t named as part of this protocol, many parents extrapolated it to mean ‘remove all food additives’, including sugar.

In a case study, published around the same time, a doctor removed sugar from a single child’s diet. Their behaviour reportedly improved. This confirmed what many parents believed was the culprit for wild behaviour: sugar.

A case study with an individual child can scarcely be called science, yet the seed was planted and remains pretty firmly rooted, despite much harder evidence to the contrary.

In 1995, researchers published a meta-analysis of several smaller studies exploring the relationship between sugar consumption and behaviour. This is like the granddaddy of study designs because it means we can be more confident that the results weren’t achieved by accident or random error. This analysis was especially robust because they had strict inclusion criteria - meaning they tossed out any trash studies, and only included ones with really well-defined parameters. This included knowing exactly how much sugar the kids were eating, comparing kids who ate sugar with those who had a placebo, and both the kids and the families being oblivious to what experimental condition they were in (i.e. sugar or placebo control) so their perceptions couldn’t influence the results.

And guess what they found?

‘Sugar does not affect the behaviour or cognitive performance of children. The strong belief of parents may be due to expectancy and common association.’

To test the theory that parents expect their kids to get worked up into a frenzy after eating sugar, scientists recruited 35 kids aged between 5-7 and their mums. The kids had all been identified by the parent as ‘sugar sensitive’. They were then randomised into two experimental conditions: one group of parents were told their kids received a high dose of sugar, whereas the others were told that their kid received a placebo containing a sugar substitute instead. The parents of the kids in the sugar group reported that their kids were significantly more ‘hyperactive’ compared to the control group.

But here’s the thing. None of the kids actually consumed any sugar. The whole thing was a ruse.

The researchers also couldn’t help but engage in some mother shaming too: ‘[mothers in the sugar expectancy group] exercised more control by maintaining physical closeness, as well as showing trends to criticise, look at, and talk to their sons more than did control mothers’. I mean, how dare these parents LOOK AT THEIR CHILD. For me this goes back to our social conditioning and our neurotypical and ableist standards for kid’s behaviour. I’m pretty sure those mums were just trying to avoid the mortification of being judged by other parents, as opposed to being total control freaks or ‘bad parents’.

But it does highlight how strongly we have internalised the ‘sugar is bad’ rhetoric and how it maybe has a bigger impact on our own behaviour than that of our kids.

OK, so, I know what you’re thinking.

‘But I’ve seen them get super amped up after a party. OBVIOUSLY it’s the sugar’.

Alright friends, let me introduce you to a little concept called confirmation bias. This is the (very human) tendency to look for evidence that supports our worldview. We believe that kids will get hopped up on sugar, so we look for clues that it’s the sugar causing the ‘bad behaviour’.

‘Studies suggest that what parents are picking up on is actually behavior that they are uncomfortable with (non-compliance and irritability), and then labeling that as hyperactivity’ says Kristen Scher, a parenting coach who supports families to have a positive relationship with food and bodies, who is also an ADHD’er. She goes on to tell me how this narrative is rooted in ableism.

‘Doing so stigmatises people who actually have ADHD by associating hyperactivity with undesirable behaviour. This negative thinking about hyperactivity is pervasive.Take one look at the Google results about ADHD and you’ll find plenty of articles and books all about how parenting a child with ADHD is “unbearable” and how important "controlling your kid with ADHD" is. This perspective is inherently ableist because it posits that ADHD is a negative thing and that any symptoms should be stomped out through behaviour modification.’

Look, you’re not imagining it. Kids get super excited at birthday parties, and at Halloween, and other celebrations where sweet foods are involved. But that doesn’t automatically mean it’s the sugar. Parties are exciting. Being with your pals outside of school is so fun. Getting presents is fucking awesome when you are ten. There are so many other variables that get kids pumped up. What can make them feel even more wired is if this is the first time they’ve seen sugar in a while, which leads us to…

Sugar is ‘addictive’

This is a given, right? We’ve all seen the headlines that equate sugar with hard drugs. We’ve seen our kids demolish their entire Easter stash in a one-er to the point of making themselves sick. And maybe we’ve even experienced it ourselves; a sense of feeling out of control or compulsive around food. Especially around sugar. It hits us right in the dopamine receptors.

Intuitively, sugar addiction just makes sense. This is why it feels so difficult to untangle.

But, I would like to offer another way to frame ‘sugar addiction’. And if it resonates with you, that’s cool. Equally, if it doesn’t, I can hold that we have different views. It’s all good.

Here’s my take. Feeling obsessive, compulsive, and out of control around food, especially sweet foods is a hardwired biological response to feeling the threat of, or actually, being deprived of that food. To help describe this phenomenon, I like to use the analogy of a pendulum that swings between Dietland and Doughnutland that I learned from the therapist Deb Burgard (which sidenote, also helps explain why diets usually don’t work for most people).