Are We Conditioned to Love Sugar?

            Like most young children, I adored candy. My parents often retell the story of the night where a seven-year-old me emerged from my slumber with smudged chocolate and sticky candy all over my face and hair. In one night, I had eaten a half a pound of Halloween candy.

            However, despite my late-night binge of Halloween candy, I believe that my relationship with sugar as a child is atypical to most other kids' experience. Throughout most of my childhood, I almost always had Oreos, cookies, and ice cream in my pantry or fridge available to me. At the same time however, the ready abundance of sugar available to me almost seem to make sweets less special. While most kids saw sugar as a treat or reward, I had always had a great amount of sugar accessible for consumption whether or not I did something good or bad. Although I enjoyed my sugared snacks, I equally enjoyed healthy snacks too – like vegetables, raisins, yogurt, and other unsweetened munchies. I was just as likely to sneak a plateful of carrots and ranch dressing into my room as I would a box of thin mints or Oreos. Either my parents are masterminds at manipulating me to eat healthy foods, or that by removing the “specialness” from something sweet some how toned down my love for sugar.

            In Shannon’s blog post, “Not so Sweet”, she talks about how much of the world views sugar as a delicacy or as a reward. We save rooms during our evening meal so we can have room for dessert – so our last bite can be something savory and sweet. In addition, many people also tend to eat ice cream or chocolate when we’re distraught or feeling sad. Do sweets really have such a positive affect on the brain? Or is it societally conditioned into our minds at a young age that sweets are a cure-all, almost “godly” ingredient compared to the rest? As someone whose family did not treat sugared food to be a reward or something to be considered special or unique, I would lean toward believing that sugar is, in fact, not a miracle substance and should be treated as a normal ingredient.