Sugar —> meltdowns?

[Anonymous]

I mean, I can tell the difference in myself on days when I have a lot of sugar versus days I don't. Managed to get almost entirely off it and felt amazing. Ate some and felt awful. Headache, tired, afternoon energy crash. Rinse and repeat. (I am a life-long sugar addict.)

So it's not unreasonable to think you could observe the effect in kids. My kids tend to get hyper at night anyway. But on days they eat a lot of sugar, such as at a birthday party, there are tantrums to accompany the hyper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YES. I notice that my son gets very angry and aggressive after he has sugar.

I don’t care that it’s been “debunked”. There is 100% a correlation for my son. He’s a very mellow, meek kid and when he has sugar, he has RAGE.

This is the part the people do not understand. We are not talking about Larla running laps at Grandma's house.

PP here and exactly. My son doesn’t become hyperactive with sugar, he becomes angry. It’s not an excuse, because he never shows these behaviors otherwise!

[Anonymous]

OP, in your case it could be caffeine, not sugar.

Caffeine is a very strong stimulant, and even more so for kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, in your case it could be caffeine, not sugar.

Caffeine is a very strong stimulant, and even more so for kids.

(Brownies and chocolate both have caffeine due to the cocoa.)

[Anonymous]

My guess is that is the dyes and/or the preservatives in the flour. It's horrible and very real. I've seen some people react with rage. We are fine with homemade items.

A food diary is a great idea.

[Anonymous]

So science is good ... only when we want to believe it?

The reason kids get wild after eating sugar is because of a couple of factors. Parents expect it, and therefore when they see a behavior (no! I don’t want to put on my coat!) they assume it’s the sugar and react differently than they would otherwise. They treat it as a bygone conclusion and when their kids are running wild at a party shrug and say, oh well, sugar has done it again.

Another reason is that the times when kids eat a lot of sugar are when other pieces of the context are different from normal. At birthday parties, family events, etc. They tend to be larger events full of tons of stimulation, different accepted levels of behavior, etc. So what you might be attributing to the cupcake they ate might instead be a result of no nap, grandma’s here, massive over stimulation etc. But sugar gets blamed.

I do not disagree that we all eat too much sugar and we might feel better with less of it etc. I still, however, get sick of people blaming bad kid behavior on sugar. This myth has persisted because it’s very very convenient. Gets us off the hook and sends us to the aisles of Whole Foods looking for solutions.

If your child is turning colors or anything like some PPs have suggested above, of course look into an actual food allergy! But please can we give this one a rest otherwise?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So science is good ... only when we want to believe it?

The reason kids get wild after eating sugar is because of a couple of factors. Parents expect it, and therefore when they see a behavior (no! I don’t want to put on my coat!) they assume it’s the sugar and react differently than they would otherwise. They treat it as a bygone conclusion and when their kids are running wild at a party shrug and say, oh well, sugar has done it again.

Another reason is that the times when kids eat a lot of sugar are when other pieces of the context are different from normal. At birthday parties, family events, etc. They tend to be larger events full of tons of stimulation, different accepted levels of behavior, etc. So what you might be attributing to the cupcake they ate might instead be a result of no nap, grandma’s here, massive over stimulation etc. But sugar gets blamed.

I do not disagree that we all eat too much sugar and we might feel better with less of it etc. I still, however, get sick of people blaming bad kid behavior on sugar. This myth has persisted because it’s very very convenient. Gets us off the hook and sends us to the aisles of Whole Foods looking for solutions.

If your child is turning colors or anything like some PPs have suggested above, of course look into an actual food allergy! But please can we give this one a rest otherwise?

And I don’t get why you don’t think it could really be a thing? Do you think that even with data-driven research 100% of kids in a study didn’t react to sugar and so that’s why they could publish a paper with those findings? There’s still kids that do react to sugar!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So science is good ... only when we want to believe it?

The reason kids get wild after eating sugar is because of a couple of factors. Parents expect it, and therefore when they see a behavior (no! I don’t want to put on my coat!) they assume it’s the sugar and react differently than they would otherwise. They treat it as a bygone conclusion and when their kids are running wild at a party shrug and say, oh well, sugar has done it again.

Another reason is that the times when kids eat a lot of sugar are when other pieces of the context are different from normal. At birthday parties, family events, etc. They tend to be larger events full of tons of stimulation, different accepted levels of behavior, etc. So what you might be attributing to the cupcake they ate might instead be a result of no nap, grandma’s here, massive over stimulation etc. But sugar gets blamed.

I do not disagree that we all eat too much sugar and we might feel better with less of it etc. I still, however, get sick of people blaming bad kid behavior on sugar. This myth has persisted because it’s very very convenient. Gets us off the hook and sends us to the aisles of Whole Foods looking for solutions.

If your child is turning colors or anything like some PPs have suggested above, of course look into an actual food allergy! But please can we give this one a rest otherwise?

This. It is not a coincidence that this thread was started the day after a sugar-centric holiday that also just happens to fall on a long weekend with terrible weather, meaning kids and adults are cooped up and may be cranky. You see the same thing at Christmas. But it’s as likely your kid is responding to inadequate exercise, lack of structure or a shift in schedule, or just a shift in diet overall (if your kid never gets sugar and then suddenly gets a bunch because it’s a holiday, then yes, their bodies will respond to the abrupt shift in diet). It’s likely if they got sugar occasionally throughout the year, and then you limited the avalanche of sugar present at the holidays, they wouldn’t have a negative response. Restrictive diets with occasional binges are bad at any age.