Q Dear Grit Doctor, tell me you are joking that you don't have a box overflowing with biscuits, bars and crisps at home for the kids. Mine would go on strike if I removed them, and I would run out of ideas and patience. They get awfully grumpy without a biscuit. I have teenagers and they just wouldn't put up with it. Jen
A I really don't have that sugary gunk at home anymore: I still have the biscuit tin, but it has only healthy treats in it: gingerbread men sweetened with apple juice and packets of raisins for the twins and whatever we may have – very occasionally – baked together (flapjacks, dark chocolate chip cookies, that kind of thing). But gone are the Breakaways, custard creams, mini cheddars, crisps and standard chocolate Digestive fare.
Do I miss them? A little, yes, especially right now typing this and thinking how well a chocolate Hobnob would marry with my cup of tea. Does my husband miss them? Most definitely, but he is a self-confessed crapoholic who needs to keep temptation at bay so is eternally grateful for my treat-tin cull.
But, interestingly enough, I think the kids miss them the least. Their expectations lowered so quickly it genuinely surprised me how easy it was to turn them on to the less sugary stuff such as raisins and gingerbread biscuits [see note 1].
The key is to delude them into believing it is still a treat – the treat being given permission to climb up, open the tin and discover something edible within. And not having all that sugary rubbish at home doesn’t mean we never eat it at all. But it does ensure that we are not eating it every day, or even every week.
I accept teenagers are infinitely more complex creatures and far harder to delude. So I suggest you begin your treat-tin cull with this little experiment using their favourite packet of crisps: Cook up one crisp on a silver spoon and watch how it burns. Be sure to comment on the filthy black smoke coming off it, how foul-smelling it is, and note that it takes ages to burn away, leaving a pool of dark acrid fat on the spoon. Dare one of the little darlings to drink it. They won't be tempted, and with luck this little exercise will deter them crisps long enough for you to introduce some healthier alternatives into that tin without the risk of an almighty strop. Plus, you will not be tempted to buy them again. Ever.
Back to that tin. Custard cream, anyone? There is a good reason why biscuits are so cheap, made up as they are in factory vats, chock full of HFCs – an insanely cheap sugar manufactured from corn but artificially engineered to be even sweeter than the white stuff and trans fats [see note 2]. Just a cursory glance at the ingredients list of a bog-standard packet of custard creams will read more like a chemistry lab experiment, so indecipherable is the language from words we ordinarily associate with real food.
Because they are layered up with intoxicating combinations of the dodgiest synthetic sugars and fats, we are rendered incapable of just eating the one and moving on. Bear in mind that we get more than enough sugar from pasta, milk, bread, cereals, fruit and vegetables to take us to the World Health Organisation maximum daily limit way before we add in cakes, muffins, puddings, pies, cookies, yogurts, drinks and so on [see note 3]. Just one solitary fruit juice has us teetering on the daily maximum amount before we've even sat down to eat breakfast. So you see now where that tin is taking your family: way, way beyond sugar saturation point.
Stiffen your resolve
Don’t bother telling your teenage kids about all this: they won’t listen to a word of it, I am writing it so that you have it ringing in your ears on your next supermarket shop, to help you steer clear of the crap aisle and to stiffen your resolve in the face of any teenage objection. But don’t go nuts and empty the tin in a panic. Notwithstanding the urgency of the situation, I recommend a slow weaning process for the whole family. Swap one type of crappy treat for another healthy one and/or phase them out gradually so it doesn’t become a huge bone of contention for you all to choke on. So, for example, once you’ve fired those crisps from the tin, in their place you might have homemade popcorn, or bake slivers of their favourite vegetables: courgette, butternut squash, or carrots to create vegetable crisps. And eat them with a homemade veggie dip. Or, for grit fiends, ricecakes.
Ultimately, you have to be gritty about it and stick to your guns. Remind yourself that you, and not your teenagers, are in charge. If you are footing the bill for all this crap and choose no longer to do so, they will just have to suck it up. You are not under any obligation to feed their sugar/junk/processed food addiction and are doing them no favours whatsoever in allowing them to eat all this crap.
The Grit Doctors says: An oatcake tastes plenty sweet enough when there are no digestives on offer. Note 1. Note "less sugary" rather than "sugar-free": a misnomer of the highest order when you consider that all carbohydrate breaks down into sugar. To have a sugar-free diet would be to eat only fat and meat. Which is utterly daft.
Note 2: HFCs are widely agreed to be the worst type of sugar, manufactured in factory vats, designed to give food a longer shelf life while effortlessly raising the risk of heart disease in consumers.*
Note 3: The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends no more than 10 teaspoons of sugar a day for an adult. More recent draft guidelines from WHO suggest that a reduction to below 5 per cent of total energy intake per day would have additional benefits. Five per cent of total energy intake is equivalent to about 25g, or six teaspoons of sugar per day for an adult of normal body mass index (BMI). And guess what? A glass of freshly squeezed orange juice can contain eight teaspoons.
Ruth Field is the author of Run Fat B!tch Run, Get your Sh!t Together and Cut the Crap
*(This article was edited on March 3rd, 2015. HFCs were incorrectly referred to as a fat rather than a sugar in Note 2 )
