Sweet as Pie

Baby came to her mom’s birthday party at a restaurant tonight. Her mom, for health reasons, refused dessert, and we declined to feed baby anything sugary as well. Indeed, she hasn’t had any refined sugar in her first eleven months of life. It’s pretty close to stunning how upsetting members of my wife’s family find the idea of baby not eating sugar to be, and who can blame them? Eating sugar is one of the most ritualized bonding exercises in America. Refusing to eat sugar with someone is tantamount to saying, “I don’t like you.” What we intend by keeping baby sugar-free, though, is simply to allow her mind and body and spirit to develop as free of unnecessary highs and lows as possible. We do, for the record, share blueberry pancakes made with whole wheat flour and maple syrup (rather than white sugar) with our little princess – and she has yet to complain that it wasn’t sweet enough once.