Conditional Sugar Bans
My mother banned sugar cereal in our house.
When I was a child, my mother would not allow sugared cereal in the house. That meant no Sugar Smacks, no CoCo Puffs, no Corn Pops, even Frosted Flakes were banned. This was juxtaposed with the fact that there was always full 12 pack of Coca-Cola sitting somewhere in the cupboard.
My mother loves her Coca-Cola Classic, a guilty pleasure perhaps she developed well before I was born. All of the patience she developed after a career as a social worker melts away, if you dare give her Pepsi or RC Cola. DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. One time when we were grocery shopping there was someone at the store handing out samples of the newest Pepsi product. The demonstrator claimed the drink tasted just like Coca-Cola, and to prove it, she had customers take a taste test. Most could not taste the difference, but my mother–before even taking a sip–could already tell which drink was Coca-Cola and which was the new Pepsi product. The woman was not pleased and it quickly became clear that we should move along. My mother scoffed and walked off supremely disappointed that the person actually thought she would fall for such a rudimentary test. No matter the contradiction, her love for Coca-Cola—and sweetened Tea (both hot and cold)—did not prevent her from issuing an embargo on all cereals with artificial sweeteners.
My siblings and I could protest, strike, petition, and sulk all we wanted. She simply would not budge.
“I wasn’t going to have my kids hopped up on sugar,” she told me years later. “You all were already hyper enough as it was, I didn’t need to add any more fuel to the fire.”
She was pretty successful. It was not until I was in middle school when she, at my brother’s request, approved the purchase of Cap’n Crunch.
But her fight was doomed from the beginning. You see, my father had been buying us ‘healthier’ sugar cereal for years. We had a menu’s choice of Frosted Flakes, Apple Jacks, Frosted Mini-Wheats, Fruity Pebbles, Fruit Loops, and so on, but not all at the same time, of course. I am fairly certain he was aware of the prohibition at my mother’s house, but to be honest, it wasn’t until I wrote this piece that I thought my father might willingly be breaking the embargo.
Both of my parents had cokes in the house. My dad hid his, leaving them for special occasions.
Outside of the sugar cereal and ice cream, my father was pretty frugal on other sugar products as well. For example he very rarely kept Cokes at his house, if he did, they would be hidden or used for very specific things, like pizza night or watching a ball game. Maybe this was his way of countering whatever my mother had decided. A small, subtle guerrilla operation that was too insignificant for my mother to thwart. Needless to say, it never morphed into a full blown conflict, thankfully.
But the biggest violator of my mother’s ban on her children’s consumption of sweetened cereal was not my father, it was her father—my grandfather. There is no question whether or not he was aware of the embargo—he was. He willfully and knowingly chose to ignore it. Nothing my mother said or did could have convinced my grandfather of the merits of her moratorium on sugar filled cereals. I am not sure she even put up a fight. Her acquiescence was likely due to her in depth knowledge that his stubbornness—which she picked up from him and subsequently passed along to me—would likely further entrench his position if she were to protest loudly.
He was smart enough to limit his violations to only when we visited him and my grandmother in Paducah, my mother’s hometown in Western Kentucky. That was one of the many things I learned to admire—and have attempted to mirror—about my grandfather. He knew where the limits were and danced right up to that line, just enough to make the other side nervous and begin a protest, only to back away before they really had a case.
A few times a year we would make the three and half hour trip to Paducah by way of the Western Kentucky Parkway, easily the most boring highway in America. As kids, the trip seemed to take ages. Each hour felt like a millennium. But my brother and I knew what was waiting for us when we arrived, so in our minds, the arduous journey down the mind-numbing parkway was well worth it. Shortly after our arrival and the routine of expected familial greeting formalities, we would be headed right back out the door with my grandfather.
My memory has it that he would already have his coat on, keys in hand, ready to take us to the grocery store—in clear violation of my mom’s orders—to pick out the sugar filled cereal that each of us wanted. An added bonus: he did not force us to make a consensus decision. One box a piece. According to my uncles, we would bust back into the house high-stepping like a drum major, boxes-over-our-heads in celebration of flouting our mother’s rules. As we were celebrating, my grandfather would scurry into the kitchen, grab two bowls, two spoons, and the milk, so we could eat our treasure with haste.
“I think dad felt sorry for you,” one of my uncles later told me. “The funny thing is, we didn’t get sugar cereal either.”
Bastani from my favorite ice cream joint in DC—Rosewater Creamery.
I was particularly notorious for adding more sugar to the already over sweetened cereals. Maybe it was the excitement, or maybe it was an attempt to pack in as much sugar as possible before the prohibition began again a few days later on the Western Kentucky Parkway. Most likely, it was because I knew I was in a safe zone, free from reproach. Regardless, I consumed as much of the sugar packed breakfast product as I could. As my siblings and I grew older, our mother loosened her restrictions. For example, I do remember adding sugar to Product 19, which for some reason, I’ve not found in ages. Since I remember doing it on a regular basis, it had to be done with my mother’s approval because I know she would likely rush into the kitchen the moment the spoon hit the sugar bowl.
Even though my mother stood her ground on artificially sweetened cereals, she wasn’t draconian in her prohibition of all sugars. We still had ice cream, cakes, baklava, white sugar (for sweetening tea and the aforementioned Product 19), Drumsticks (those mass produced Ice Cream cones that are magnificently delicious), and Oreo cookies, just to name a few overly sugar-infused products. Looking back, it seems my mother was simply trying to exert some control amid our sugar saturated lives.
In a way, her attempts at discipline via sugar limits have helped control my sweet tooth. Although, I must confess, chocolate chip cookies, bastani (Persian saffron-infused ice cream), and doughnuts have become my weaknesses.
I guess the only way forward is to embrace delayed gratification.
