I’m a concerned parent. I care about what my kids eat. I don’t want my kids to develop an unhealthy relationship with food. I don’t want my kids to become part of the childhood obesity epidemic (unlikely given both their parents have super-high metabolism but still). We have gotten used to half juice half water (news flash: drinking lots of “healthy” juice — while slightly better than soda — is not too different from mainlining pixy stix!). Undiluted juice now seems unbearably sweet – how did we ever drink it straight?
But kids are kids. They gravitate toward the sweetest option available every morning. When the choices are Kix (3g sugar), Chex (2g sugar) and Cheerios (1g sugar), they eat the Kix. When the choices expand to include Maple & Brown Sugar Quaker Oatmeal (12g sugar), they pick the oatmeal almost every time.
So I’ve taken to removing a heaping spoonful of sugar from the packet every morning. It’s kind of a pain, so when Quaker changed the recipe and reduced the sugar by 25% I was pretty stoked. I tried it, it tasted fine. My kids noticed it was different but did not care one iota. If anything, I think they liked it better. I stopped buying the store brand since it still has the old super-sugary formula.
Then came the backlash. Someone actually made a facebook page pleading with Quaker to change it back. Stories upon stories poured forth, stories of people disgusted with the new formula, forced to throw out these vile, not-as-sweet packets. Quaker was accused of elitist socialism. And Quaker is forced to acknowledge that it has made a mistake of “new coke” proportions (ironic since new coke actually had more sugar), and they restore their “classic recipe.”
So, I’m back to spooning out chunks of sugar from the packets. And wondering why they can’t use the shelf space currently filled with “Dinosaur Egg” oatmeal (the eggs are little nuggets of solid sugar) to stock the reduced sugar boxes alongside the classic recipe.
No, let’s ruin our health and bankrupt the country treating early onset diabetes. Let’s drag everyone else in America down into this pit with us.
Yay!