I saw this today and was encouraged - maybe like smoking 30 years ago, the change is taking place and it is happening in the right place - the home.
"That's particularly true for kids. NPD reported these shifts in behavior for children younger than 18, last year vs. in 1998:
• Drank fruit juices 16 fewer times than in 1998.
• Ate cookies eight fewer times than they did 15 years ago.
• Ate ice cream seven fewer times than in 1998.
• Ate cake five fewer times than 15 years ago.
Not that some sweets aren't on the increase. Yogurt consumption, for example, is way up. Kids ate yogurt on 23 more occasions in 2012 than in 1998. And they ate fruit rolls four more times last year than they did 15 years ago.
But overall, children are reducing sweets consumption at a faster rate than grown-ups. "Parents are clearly controlling the amount of sweets their kids are eating," Balzer says.
Parents like Charlene Florian.
Before she had kids, her favorite treat was a Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream cone. Florian hasn't just mostly cut out ice cream. Since her 8- and 9-year-old daughters were born, she has eliminated virtually all refined sugars from her diet and her family's. When her kids do eat sweets, it's usually things sweetened with honey or unrefined maple sugar.
Little wonder neither daughter has ever had a cavity: no refined sugar.
"I will never let it come in the house," says the skin care business owner who lives in Newport Beach, Calif. "If they decide to eat it when they're older, that's up to them. But they both accept that as long as they live at home, they won't have sweets."
She makes occasional exceptions — outside the house. And when she makes those special treat trips to Häagen-Dazs with the kids — and they get the cookies-and-cream ice cream — she forbids toppings.
As for those sweet treats that her kids bring home from birthday parties or on Halloween, "I'll eventually toss them in the trash, and they won't even notice."
