“It’s sweet!” Hugo exclaims, his eyes lighting up with delight as he moves in for another taste.
This is paradise for a child’s palate. Even spicy foods have a sweet undertone, and there is often a small pot of sugar on the table if it’s not sweetened to your liking.
Foods I tend to think of as savory often come with an unexpected sprinkle of sugar: popcorn, crackers, nuts. My fried rice at lunch today had chunks of pineapple. The rice and quail egg buns we bought on the street were sugary, too.
At home, I tend to be pretty careful about not feeding him too much sugar, but here that’s just an impossibility.
Today at the coffee shop I bought him a pink milk, not really knowing what a pink milk was, but reasonably sure it was going to be sugared beyond adult palatability, a liquid symbol of all my poor parenting choices.
Nothing like a not-so-healthy dose of poor food choices to make you feel like a bad parent. Tom gives me the stink-eye every time I give Andrew a bite of ice cream!
If only this pink stuff was made of ice cream, I wouldn’t have felt so bad about it! He ate a bunch of broccoli at lunch so it all balances out, right??