The Imperfect Parent - Articles || Sugar On My Mind

PUBLISHED January, 2005
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Sugar On My Mind

Why I became a sugar addict, and why my mother is to blame.

by Melanie Springer Mock

One kitchen drawer holds my candy: Sweet Tarts, Sugar Babies, Spree, Gobstoppers. It’s not inconspicuous, this drawer. My husband Ron knows it’s there, as do most visitors —- the latter, admittedly, only because Ron delights in revealing my sordid addiction. “Look at this,” he’ll say, yanking open the drawer. “My wife’s habit.” As if anyone cares about a 36-year-old’s penchant for what the grocery stores label novelty candy.

I blame my mother. For my addiction to junk food, that is, not for a marrying me off to a husband who mocks my weaknesses. I do not, however, blame my mother for my tendency towards being a tightwad, or for the ease with which I cry, or for the genes that dictate I will have a large butt tapered into fairly attractive thighs and calves. But for cultivating in me a constant craving for sugar, my mom is fully culpable.

Like most mothers, my own meant well, not reckoning that her best intentions as a parent would disfigure her children -- or at least this child -- permanently. Oprah, that paragon of modern wisdom, consistently reminds her viewers that mothers will always do what is best for their children, because that’s the best they know how to do. The sentiment always seemed an Oprah-sized evasion of responsibility for some mothers, including my own.

My mom’s best intentions included raising us to be healthy eaters who made wise food choices. Choice, of course, was a mother-loaded term; that is, she defined what choice might mean. We were therefore free to “choose” our snacks from a pantry rich with food lacking sugar or processed ingredients; with food freighted by dark grain and fiber; with food packaged in plain boxes unadorned by cartoon characters or the promises of free stuff.

(The pantry also included the opening to long-defunct dumb waiter, into which I tossed half eaten dark grain and fiber products. I imagine the home’s next owner discovered a pile of half-eaten, no doubt composting, health foods. But I digress.)

Who knows if this was the best my mom knew how to raise us. After all, my siblings and I were children long before organic grocers offered aisles of tasteless food substitutes: there were no soy chips, no soy chocolate milk, no soy candy bars, no soy hotdogs. Instead, there was squishy and tasteless tofu, of which we ate plenty. I still wonder who told mom that feeding her kids tofu for breakfast was the best she could do for them.

I imagine the "More-With-Less" cookbook may have put this bug in her, umm, ear. The book advocated healthful foods and back-to-basics organic cooking long before such was vogue, and plagued my childhood, in great part because of its guarantee that a snack could easily (and cheaply!) be made of raw oats, wheat germ, dried fruit, and a dab of homemade molasses -— the more with less answer to white sugar.

For my mom, that cookbook was a culinary Bible, a locus of faith and praxis; the book provided wise proverbs about wholesome eating and the recipes to put healthful idealism into practice. We had "More-With-Less" for every meal: homemade granola for breakfast; homemade bread and peanut butter for sandwiches at lunch; and a tofu or chicken casserole for supper, named by its contributors as “Tangy Tofu” or “A meal for thousands, made from one chicken.”

That cookbook finally led me to a preadolescent life of petty crime and prevarication. Mortified that mom fed one of my guests a wholesome supper of three-bean casserole (lima, garbanzo, kidney: the three worst beans possible), I began lying to friends about coming over to my house. My sister was sick, I would say. Or, Mom would rather I eat elsewhere for a few weeks, while our house underwent extermination.

I also took my love for refined sugar underground, knowing my needs would never be met by a daily teaspoon of molasses. Every afternoon, I pinched a buck or two from mom’s purse, snuck uptown, and blissed myself on the Ben Franklin’s candy aisle. Usually, I’d take my purchase to the public library, downing several pixy sticks over an Encyclopedia Brown. By supper my taste buds were numbed by novelty candy, and I returned home to a "More-With-Less" meal, half of which would subsequently be tossed into the dumb waiter.

Somewhere in the late 80s, my mother abandoned her healthful crusade. Perhaps she finally recognized my subversive assault on her cuisine (the pecuniary losses from her purse; the rotting food in our dumb waiter). Perhaps my father’s purchase of a new grill, and a subsequent taste for red meat, tolled tofu’s death knell.

But the damage was done. I had become an addict to the very thing from which my mom had tried to save me: junk food. Because I had no Lucky Charms for breakfast, I bought them in the biggest boxes possible; because (ostensibly) I had no candy for dessert, I filled up in the check out line. Even now, I am the only adult who orders Sour Patch Kids at movies, or eats Tangy Taffy while working at her desk. Sugar has become my master; I am its slave.

Like most parents, I vow not to repeat the same mistakes my own made. My son knows where my novelty candy resides, and helps himself when he wishes. We share bowls of Lucky Charms in the morning, and fight over the marshmallow blue moons and yellow stars. His snacks have no molasses or wheat germ; his suppers, no tofu.

This parenting strategy, I’m sure, will work. Some day, he’ll be snitching from my purse for a stealth trip to the local co-op, where he’ll fill up on organic vegetables and granola. I have an unused copy of "More-With-Less" ready, when he decides to come clean.