When I was a kid, I participated in the sugar-rush ritual of finding the hidden easter basket filled with approximately ten pounds worth of sugar-filled chocolate, jelly bean, marshmello and who-knows what other forms of colored and disguised sugar cube treats that I would absolutely devour over the coarse of the rest of the day.
While on my sugar high and annoying the living hell out of the rest of my family between my complaining, whining, possibly swearing and other altered-personality traits associated with the consumption of the various forms of legalized and tasty coke, crack and meth substitutes, I had little interest in just about ANY other form of food.
I could have literally LIVED off of this basket of dopamine-enhancing dope, and would have had it not been for family intervention (appropriate word, no?) to force me to eat something…anything…worthwhile with which to obtain more nutrition.
I remember going to a local family-owned store that was within biking distance back in those elementary school days with my friends, all of us having saved up and/or somehow borrowed (stolen?) enough money to afford to buy the candy that this store sold to all the neighborhood kids who could bike out to it. The store sold only bare-bones groceries, cigarettes, and candy, and little else.
We would get our little brown bags filled with as much of a wide assortment of the candy as we possibly could afford, and eat it both on the way home, a couple miles worth of biking, and then dump it out on the floor to the jealousy of the siblings who did not give us some of their spare change to have us pick up for them, the candies of their choice in turn.
This was our “drug” of the day.
We discovered cigarettes and the rest later on.
But make no mistake…this was most certainly our drug fix. Some kids would become irritable, impatient, moody and other unpleasant behavioral patterns would emerge if this “fix” was not tended to on a near-daily basis.
Ever see the children at a fast food restaurant, non-stop crying or screaming, sugary soft drink and junk on the plates in front of them?
When will the health of us all over-ride the demands of our tastebuds and the pockets of processed food company shareholders?