I’ve started spending a few weekday mornings a week writing at my local Starbucks. At five o’clock in the morning, it’s just me and the baristas. They work the drive-thru line and I write. Around 7, people start to trickle in for pre-school frappuccinos with their kids or pre-work donuts with their mentors.
Last week a middle-aged man and his wiser and older mentor sat at the table next to me. I smiled and greeted them and tried to get back to my story idea, but the frappuccino and the donut on the table across from me hijacked my thoughts. I pulled up the Starbucks app, scrolled down to the Bakery section and then down again to Danishes & Donuts. I selected the glazed doughnut and took a screenshot. Four hundred and eighty calories and 30 grams of sugar. I did the same for frappuccinos, snapping a screenshot at the bottom of the page for the grande Mocha Cookie Crumble. Four hundred and eighty calories and 55 grams of sugar. The reasonably fit middle-aged man sitting at the table next to mine was having 85 grams of sugar for breakfast. Once I saw this, I could not unsee it: Caramel Ribbon Frappuccinos for fifth graders and cinnamon coffee cake to kick off freshman year of high school.
I don’t believe in demonizing food. I love a good Trader Joe’s chocolate-covered chocolate chip dunker after dinner a couple of times a week, but 85 grams of sugar is more than three times the daily recommended added sugar intake for teenagers–and this was just breakfast.
I sat there thinking about every Instagram post I’ve seen of toddlers putting down peanut butter and jelly donuts for breakfast. Donuts are so trendy right now, aren’t they? Last year, a swank donut shop opened near us. They serve butterbeer and toasted coquito donuts, and every time I drive past the beautifully remodeled building with that inviting patio, I reconsider my stance on donuts. What is not to love about a buttery vanilla bean dough topped with a sugary browned butter and fancy salt? It’s just a donut, right? What is the big deal? Then I remember how I felt the last time I ate vegan icing between two vegan oatmeal cookies because it was there and it was vegan. For ten glorious minutes, I nibbled what was essentially a vegan whoopie pie, and for three decidedly inglorious hours, I thought I was going to die of exhaustion from the crash.
If you’re thinking sugar doesn’t affect you that way—if you’re thinking you don’t even notice a crash, maybe you are getting your next fix before the crash can happen. Or maybe, the crash is your normal state of being—maybe you are low key crashing all the time. Give a kid a donut for breakfast and wait for the meltdown that ensues. I think we tell ourselves the meltdowns are a normal part of parenting toddlers, but the longer I parent my own toddlers the more I realize meltdowns vary in severity, and the variations are directly related to food.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend zero added sugar for children under two-years-old because we know sugar rewires the brain and can affect a kid’s taste preferences for life–FOR LIFE. I appreciate a good guideline, so I can count the number of grams of added sugar my kids have had in their lives on my fingers. And as long as I keep them fed and rested, my kids’ meltdowns last only as long as it takes for me to distract them with a different toy.
I don’t want to debate how every kid is different and how I have no way of proving my kids’ lack of tantrums are a byproduct of their sugar-free lives, because those things are true.
But you know what’s also true?
Sugar causes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease–even in kids. It can cause diabetes and can increase your risk of heart disease. Sugar creates highs and lows that can make it hard to focus and it’s addicting.
I believe if I asked any of the lovely people eating 85 grams of sugar for breakfast at my local Starbucks if they knew all of this about sugar, they would say yes. At the very least, they would say they know sugar isn’t good for them. Some of them would say they don’t eat that much sugar. Some of them would tell me to shut up and stop stealing their joy. Even though it would be so hard to shut up, I would, because I believe food should make us happy. I also believe food can help us live long, healthy, focused, creative lives when we delight in pumpkin instead of pumpkin loaf and actual chocolate instead of chocolate donuts or chocolate bars.
Unpopular opinion: the donut trend is dangerous.
Sugar is so pervasive on our grocery store shelves and it’s so intricately tied to our culture’s idea of celebration, that questioning people’s sugar intake is unpopular and offensive. But we are going to do it anyway because we believe our kids deserve better than 85 grams of sugar for breakfast.
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