I recall Ding Dongs, HoHo's, Hostess Cupcakes, Twinkees, those apple & cherry pies ... all of which I ate. I think some manufacturer's of foods today have added ingredients to basically hook someone on a given food, maybe like people get hooked on cigarettes. But again the choice is there for each of us to make.
No denying that, our whole culture has embraced junk food for too long. The thing about giving it to kids is that there is evidence that it rewires the brain. Sugar is addicting. The brain lights up like a Chrismas tree, like a coke addict's brain, when sugar is consumed. This stuff needs to be kept away from kids until they are old enough to make better choices, and old enough to have healthy metobolisms established.
But sugar has always been addicting. Kids have always tried to eat their whole Halloween stash in one night. It was good parenting that stopped them. I remember begging my father for an ice cream cone. We'd go every Sunday to the next town (our town has "Blue Laws" and closed stores on Sunday) to get a vanilla cone. It was a treat. Your argument is absolving the parents from their responsibility. That is where it fails.
Precisely. Who among us would not love to go gorge on ding dongs or ice cream? I love vanilla ice cream. It's my weakness. I allow myself a little bowl of it as a reward, but I'd just assume hook up a feedbag around my ears and eat the whole container. I don't. Self control stops me.
My argument is absolving our kids of parent level responsibilty. No one thinks kids have the quality decision making adults do. The younger the child the more true this is. So yes to good, reponsible parents, but they don't have their kids all day--the schools need to stop selling bad foods to our kids. It doesn't matter that today's adults ate junk when they were kids, today's adults are fat and passing it on in utero.
And some kids crash & burn in class ... they literally fall asleep with head on desktop further contributing to their weak test scores.
I'm not saying that kids can make the right decisions for themselves. But we were just fine deciding what to buy for lunch when we were in school. Once we go home, we ate dinner that parents made for us. It was balanced, and we ate it. If we didn't, then we went to bed hungry without desert. But we exercised our assess off. Thus, what we ate at lunch was not a factor. You keep ignoring completely the role that exercise plays. You've avoiding bringing it up or answering anything on it I've mentioned. Why is that?
I've been at the grocery twice recently where I happened to be in the same aisle as candy ... so what do I see that I love? Candy corn! Has to be 99% sugar and if/when I buy a bag I can eat a ton of it in one sitting. I had it in my hand last time but put it back as I knew I had little willpower to eat just a few pieces at a time.