Taking Candy
from a Baby
Written By Steve Almond
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He's a certified Candyfreak. He's also a concerned dad. At Halloween, worlds collide.
Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at how this sweet candy kitchen was created.
Can you guess the 26 types of candy used to create this masterpiece?
There comes a moment in the lives of all parents when we must confront our vices and the dark possibility that we might pass them on to our children. For me, this moment came in the winter of 2006. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I was lying on the sofa with my daughter Josephine. Also on the sofa was a box of chocolates.
These weren't just any chocolates. They were chocolates I had designed at the behest of a company called Granny's Chocolate Creations, in Gilbert, Arizona. The owners had read my nonfiction book Candyfreak and asked me to send along my recipe for the perfect chocolate. Each piece consisted of a dollop of soft caramel sprinkled with crisped rice, enrobed in Belgian dark chocolate and dusted with cinnamon.
I had already eaten two of these transcendent morsels and was in a state I would describe as choco-euphoria. Life seemed wonderful, beautiful and without fault, and, as I picked up a third piece, I noticed my daughter gazing intently at me and the chocolate. It occurred to me that she might want a taste, and that I should offer her one. Yes, that was what I needed to do. After all, Josie was eventually going to get her first taste of chocolate. Why not share that joy with her?
I suppose I should mention that Josie was not quite 3 months old.
At this point in her young life, she had consumed exactly two foods: breast milk and formula. In fact, when I held the piece of chocolate to her mouth, she had no idea what to do. But the aroma must have reached her wee nostrils because before long she stuck out her tongue. Her eyes grew wide. Soon she was licking — and then gumming — the chocolate.
It was then that my wife Erin walked in and said, "What in God's name are you doing?"
"Look," I said. "She likes it!" I pointed to the brown smudges ringing our daughter's tiny lips.
"She's not supposed to have chocolate until she's a year old!"
"It's just a little bit," I said.
My wife gave me one of those looks, the kind that suggested I was on the cusp of transforming a bad situation into one requiring fairly prompt medical attention for yours truly. It was at this moment — as I removed the piece of chocolate from Josie's mouth and watched her paw the air with sugar-shocked betrayal — that I knew my addiction, my documented lust for candy, was going to haunt my daughter as well.
And so it has come to pass. In the two years Josie has been alive she has consumed brownies, Tootsie Rolls, Starbursts, ice cream, cookies, and several hundred jelly beans. Just yesterday she unearthed a forgotten cache of chocolate truffles in my desk. The week before that, it was a chocolate-covered granola bar from the diaper bag.
When I asked my wife if she thought Josie was eating too much candy, her response was grimly revealing: "Well, I don't think she's ever had, like, a Snickers bar."
I report none of this with pride. If you can believe it, my wife and I actually consider ourselves health-conscious parents. We've cut soda out of our diets. We eat wholewheat pasta. We make salads most nights. And yet, when it comes to the sweet stuff, we're both hopeless junkies in a world all too willing to enable us.
Ever since my book was published, candy has come into my life unbidden and in great volume. Confectioners send me boxes to sample. Friends who find new delicacies buy extras for me. Fans of the book come out to readings and — I kid you not — throw candy bars at me.
A more reasonable person would be able to resist these temptations. But then, I'm not reasonable when it comes to candy. And neither is my wife. A reasonable person does not buy 14 boxes of Kit Kat Darks (504 bars) and store them in a climate-controlled candy humidor. A reasonable person does not build a 35-pound candy pagoda.
If it was just me and my wife, such behavior would rank as decadent, eccentric, but essentially lovable. Now that Josie is in our lives, however, the candy thing has taken on a distinct whiff of bad parenting. Without meaning to, we're raising a baby candyfreak.
This, then, is the crisis we face as we approach Josie's third Halloween. In a sense, it's a crisis that every mom and dad faces, because Halloween is basically the Waterloo of nutrition-conscious families. It is a holiday designed to smash all the careful messages we send to kids the rest of the year.
And just to be clear: I agree with those messages. I know (oh, do I know) that developing bad habits around candy leads to all sorts of health problems later on, the least of which are cavities and high cholesterol. I know that using candy as a de facto antidepressant only makes matters worse because your blood-sugar level eventually swoons. I can only imagine what this roller coaster does to kids. Actually, I don't have to imagine: When I come home from the gym to find Josie tearing around the living room in a half-torn-off diaper, howling, chances are there was a cookie involved.
I asked my pal Zach how he manages Halloween because he's got twin girls a year older than Josie. "They don't get many sweets in general," he reported, "so they don't really know what they're collecting on Halloween. The candies are like toys to them." As Zach said this, I remembered being at his house and hearing one of his daughters beg for broccoli, and finding myself irrationally disgusted. Clearly, he was not going to be any help.
So I called Evan, a friend who happens to be an endocrinologist specializing in diabetes and obesity research. I've consulted with Evan about my own health, in particular my record-setting triglyceride levels. This time, I wanted to know how he handled the Halloween psychodynamics with his two kids.
"We don't demonize Halloween or build it up excessively," he said. "We let them fetishize over their candy for a bit. Then we let them eat two pieces, then one after dinner each night until they get bored or forget about it."
This sounded great — until the part about "forgetting." Josie has a mind like a vise when it comes to candy. She doesn't forget. And she doesn't forgive. Deny her a jelly bean after you promised her one — the night before — and you are bucking for a meltdown.
And then I turned to my dentist, whom I refer to — until now, behind her back — as Dr. Pain.
"It's important to explain to your child why you don't let her eat candy all the time," she said. Then she detailed for me the horrible things that can happen to children's teeth. But I doubted that warning Josie about "acidic decalcification" and "enamel erosion" would make much of an impact.
Given Dr. P's hard line, I was curious what she gave out for Halloween. "Well," she said softly, "I used to give out a little toothbrush and toothpaste, but the kids didn't like that and they stopped coming to our home. So now we give a little candy."
My point precisely.
Now clearly desperate, I decided it might be best to go back to the roots of my own candyfreakdom. Yes, I called my mother. She sighed when I brought up the topic of Halloween. A long sigh. "I remember that you guys used to go out for hours, and you'd come back with giant pillowcases, full all the way to the top."
"Yeah," I said dreamily. "Those were the days." I immediately had a powerful memory of sitting in our den, sorting the haul according to a strict hierarchy: candy bars, followed by fruit chews and caramels, hard candies, and gum. It wasn't beyond me, in my addled state, to mass the candy into a small pile and dive into it.
"Actually," Mom said, abruptly ending my reverie, "all that sugar just got you overexcited, and then cranky. Your father and I had too much of it around. We should have provided more supervision."
"Why didn't you?" I said.
"Oh, I don't know." My mother sighed again. "It just seemed so important to you. We didn't have the heart to rain on your parade."
I could tell some part of her had enjoyed presiding over my frantic pleasure, and this was how I felt about Josie, the same pathological need to see her happy.
But talking to my mom made me realize something else: You have to say no. And not just to your children, but to yourself. I needed to do it for Josie's sake.
So the past few weeks have been devoted to a kind of in-home detox. We're phasing out desserts. We're reaching for raisins and grapes. How do I feel about this? Frankly, to quote Josie, "Papa sad." The jones doesn't just go away. Raisins are no substitute for M&M's. If there's one silver lining, it's that I'm more grateful when I do allow myself candy. A lot more grateful. Like, so grateful that last time I ate a truffle, I nearly wept.
As for the big day itself, we're going to emphasize the other fun stuff: the decorations, the costumes — the theatrical rather than the calorific. We're not going to take Josie trick-or-treating at all for another couple of years. By that time, we hope, we'll have established a healthier relationship toward sweets ourselves and passed that along to her. You can't honestly expect any child to ignore her inner candyfreak when Halloween rolls around. That would be unnatural, and even a little cruel. But you can help her understand that Halloween is only one day. Even if we all know it's the best day of the year.
Josie, Erin, and Steve hear the best way to limit candy consumption is to keep it out of the kitchen.Note: Check out Steve Almond's book of essays, Not That You Asked: Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions, now out in paperback. (Oh yes, it goes way beyond candy.) To find out how Josie's sugar-free Halloween played out, click here
Next: The Freak's Favorite Candies
