The Sugar Behaviour Complex

When you have a kid you start losing the you of the past who finished work and went to cool bars and nice restaurants with your single friends. Now what you have to look forward to on a Tuesday evening is your child's friends birthday parties. A plethora of excitement, gifts, songs, playing......and sugar.

I'm still quite precious about what my toddler eats. It was always important to me not to raise a kid who turns out to be fat or unhealthy or generally not arsed to move away from the Xbox and Doritos. Mostly because I was that kid, and it took me a long time after my teenage years to correct my health and eating habits.

Anyway, so you have the balloons and the music, the snotty, gleeful kids. Then the main feature, the food spread. Oh how I used to love a party food table. I was that larger, pink faced, slightly sweaty child who spent whole 2 hours hovering around the crispy cakes and cocktail sausages. Now I'm a parent myself, and more awake to the idea that what we put in our bodies pretty much is what we get in return. Piss in your car engine and you ain't going anywhere kind of thing.

I understand it's a party, and everything in moderation. Gota live a little bit sometimes, and living is one word to describe the actions of a small child after hundreds of grams of processed sugar in the form of cakes, sweets and fizzy drinks. They are totally mad, off their heads, climbing the walls. Their parents are dying inside, trying to make them more controllable so they're not shown up in front of the other parents. Worrying about how they are ever going to get to them asleep in bed tonight. Trying to cover the cherryade stain on the carpet they are 98% sure their little angel made while simultaneously trying to talk said angel down from making the jump from the TV stand to the antique armchair, with roller blades on.

Why do we do this ourselves and our children? I saw one mum get so cross with her 4 year old son that she took him home early, after a quiet telling off in the hallway that she thought no one heard. It's like the connection between sugar intake and behaviour doesn't exist.

We all know that when blood sugar levels rise too high the body produces a large amount of insulin to remove sugar from the blood and into the body's cells. This causes blood sugar levels to drop which creates a craving for more sugar, thus turning your sweet (mind the pun) little angel into a possessed, demonic delinquent. Another side effect created by a large sugar consumption is one of immunity, or lack of. Your immune system requires Vitamin C to do its job of fighting off bacteria and viruses. However, because sugar is broken down into glucose, and glucose is very similar in its chemical structure to Vitamin C, this means your body often grabs the glucose instead of the Vitamin C which lessens your immune systems' ability to fight off the invader. So the cold your kid picks up after the birthday party could have been down to other parents allowing their children to spread their germs....or it could be your kid was already dealing with something but the mega sugar intake has disallowed their body to deal with it properly.

So next time you get invited to a birthday party bring your own food, or prepare for Armageddon - but don't blame your kids!