Candy

Young alpha

From Jimmy Kimmel, parents told their kids that they had eaten all their Halloween candy and filmed the reaction.  This one is priceless all the way through.

Hat tip to Hooking Up Smart.

When divorce causes a sugar arms race

What effect does divorce have on children's health?  The initial stages of many divorces can be very acrimonious.  During custody battles, and in the years after, both parents usually have a strong incentive for the children to like Mommy or Daddy.  More and better Christmas presents.  New toys all the time.  But the easiest way for parents to control (and please) their children is -- you guessed it -- sugar and candy.   The same stuff that we warn children to fear when in the hands of strangers. 

A divorce can make it harder for each parent to make decisions that are in the long term best interests of the child.  Rather than suffer through a tantrum, much better to just give in to his demands for a Kit Kat.  Rather than seem mean, much better to give her a little something sweet.  Don't we have fun when we see Daddy?  He gives us candy.  Don't we have fun when we see Mommy?  She gives us treats.   It's an arms race with no winners.  Denying short term enjoyment is easier to do when you aren't battling with your former spouse for the primary affections of your child.  

I get that there are plenty of married parents who use sugar to control their children.  I get that divorce is sometimes necessary.  I get all that.  That's not what I'm talking about.  Got any perspective on this issue?   Please share it in the comments.

The White Man's food and tooth decay

This is Killjoy Week at Hunter-Gatherer.  I've railed on the evils of gourmet cupcakes and candy's powerful sway on children.  I'd love nothing more than to villify raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens based on health grounds.  (Hmmm...both are too sweet?)  Okay, so you aren't splurging on cupcakes everyday, you might not have kids, and if you do, Halloween only comes once a year -- why does this matter?

Let's take a look at cavities.  There is clear evidence -- archaelogical and anthropological -- showing that hunter-gatherers have dramatically fewer cavities than agriculturalists who came after.  Here is data based on skeletons in North America around the transition to agriculture.  Before agriculture, fewer than 5% showed signs of a cavity at death.  That jumps to over 20% with agriculture (around 500-1,000 A.D. in this case).  Remember that these people aren't eating hard candy and Twizzlers, they're primarily adding more grains and grain-products to their diet.
 
 
Full paper here, via Nat Geo's Spencer Wells and his new book, Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization.  
 
Of course, this is old hat to people in the paleo community, primarily due to the research of Dr. Weston A. Price, a dentist from Cleveland who traveled the world in the 1930s looking for isolated peoples living their traditional diet.  His mangum opus, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, documented case after case of healthy teeth among people eating their indigenous diet, and those same people ravaged by dental problems as soon as they started eating the White Man's food.  Dental problems were one of the worst ongoing health epidemics in the world leading up to regular tooth brushing and fluoride in our water supply not so long ago.
 
Looking at the pictures below reminds me of those frightening before and after photos of meth addicts.  At left, healthy people who eat traditionally.  At right, people from the same tribe who eat the White Man's food.  
 
Don't forget to brush your teeth.  And beware the White Man's food.
 
 
                          

 

Don't take candy from strangers

This is one of the first lessons we teach children. Don't talk to strangers, and never ever take candy from a stranger. But why do we have to tell this to our kids? Is it because they're naive? Is it because kids are just too trusting?

As it turns out, small children come equipped with a pretty strong preference to be physically close to their mother, father, and other relatives.  By relatives I mean genetic kin, or those living in such close proximity that they are presumed to be genetic kin. This is why children cry when mom and dad go out to a movie, why it's hard to drop off kids at school for the first time, and why kids are more likely to get homesick than adults. It's a pretty simple rule: Trust people who have the same genes as you.  It's no different in most of the animal kingdom.

Candy is a safety-override switch. The appeal of sugar, particularly once a child is hooked on it, is so strong that it overwhelms the evolutionary mechanism that has tended to keep children safe for time immemorial.  Of course, sugar is what most parents use to control the behavior of their children.  A devil's bargain.

 

So as not to be a total killjoy, here is Jerry Seinfeld on the power of candy (the first 1:30).  Sometimes it takes a comedian to point out the absurdity of the mundane.

 

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