Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikenyc | Hacker News Reader

We've successfully convinced our two-year-old that unsweetened, carbonated water is "juice". She frequently goes to restaurants and is very excited to get "juice" from the bar, and considers it a special treat. Eventually this will surely fail when her friends can explain reality. But until then it's working great to avoid massive loads of sugar in her early years.

View on HN

Not to hyperbolize like the other commentor, but I was told harmless little lies like that as a child myself. You eventually learn otherwise, but not before embarrassing yourself in front of your peers and feeling betrayed.

Different children will react differently, of course.

Possibly slightly different, but my dad used to amuse himself by trying to convince me of whatever nonsense poped into his head at that moment. My older siblings, who had had the same treatment earlier, joined in and would verify anything he would say. Overall I found it quite harmless, and it did instil a healthy skepticism of whatever people said.

Somewhere in you is an awesome blog or entertaining memoir

I did this too. Not only did it teach my kid the scientific method (and keep me on my toes) but apparently he considers it a positive experience.

It helped that I had read The Wasp Factory before becoming a parent.

I'm not quite parsing the logic of doing this.

If she is getting fooled that carbonated water is 'juice', then I'm assuming she doesn't know what juice actually is and therefore has no association of juice = sugar drink. So why the need to trick your daughter?

Couldn't you have just called it 'fizzy water', or if water is associated with 'boring', call it 'fizzy drink'. She'd still get it from the bar and have the excitement of that.

Probably the kid just learned through cultural osmosis that juice is a good treat for kids and so naturally the kid wants it.

Fair enough. That makes sense. Thanks.

The word juice shows up and is spoken all over the place.

> I'm not quite parsing the logic of doing this.

Sounds like you parsed it just fine. It was just an error in the actual logic.

My parents did this for me for quite a long time: dried papaya was sweets, and it was a special event if little bits of dried papaya appeared in muesli.

Lots of parents think dried fruit are a healthy sweet treat, and in the UK there's a big market for raisins or dried fruit bars or dried fruit sheet (Fruit rollups) aimed at children.

All of these are terrible for teeth because they're high in sugar and they're sticky, and there's guidance to avoid these things.

Is dental health really a big issue for kids? I mean, they have replacement teeth incoming...

Old habits die hard. With new teeth inbound are you going to convince your child to stop eating foods high in sugar?

Also, dental health isn't the only reason to minimise sugar intake.

Decayed teeth are painful and need treatment; that treatment carries some risk.

Tooth extraction is the leading cause of child hospitalisation in the UK.

A few of those children will have problems such as hypomineralisation, but many extractions are entirely preventable with better diet (milk or water to drink, not fruit juice or sugar sweetened tea or soda, and especially not in a bottle or sippy cup) and better oral hygiene.

And it's important to start these habits early.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/27/england-hosp...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/13/teeth-proble...

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/dentalhealth/Pages/Careofkidsteet...

In the states, even the majority of plain, "adult-marketed" dried fruits have oil and sugar added, which is terrible IMO. I've always assumed oil is added to allow for higher temps without burning, and therefore quicker dry times -- just a theory. A dehydrator has been on my want-list for a little while now because of the ubiquity of added sugar and oil.

My wife has been making cinnamon apple slices with our dehydrator, and our 2-year-old son loves them (on the occasions where I don't eat an entire bag before he gets to them). They're a much better way than juice to get a snack in, and while they still contain the same sugars, they also have all the fibre as well.

We soak them in lemon juice to keep them from turning brown while dehydrating, but since he loves lemon juice (and will drink it out of the bottle if we leave the fridge unlocked), this is a pretty huge selling point for him.

What we do is mix juices with equal amounts of water... the 50/50 mix still taste great (better in my opinion) and it isn't as bad for you. As a small bonus, it makes it slightly cheaper..

I mix juice with sparkling water, so I still quell my craving for "soda" but it's "healthier." Quotes because it still isn't healthy.

How did your daughter get interested in (the concept of) juice? Our two-year-old has never really expressed an interest, but then we don't keep juice at home and he doesn't get it elsewhere either. He's curious about things we drink that he doesn't get (I drank a bottle of root beer in front of him the other day, he was very confused and curious), but if we put milk in front of him he's got the thing he wants most of all and ignores our drinks entirely.

There is a deeper problem here. Your child is satisfied with less when the perceived (or socially established) value is larger. It may be better to teach your child to estimate the value of things on their own, rather than rely on others.

Further down the road, you presumably don't want to have a kid that needs to wear expensive clothes to school to feel accepted. And when they are that age, you can't convince them that less expensive clothing is expensive too.

Be mindful that a lot of carbonated water can damage the enamel of her teeth.

Doesn't matter, milk teeth.

And there's no milk pancreas to the best of my knowledge :) well not yet anyways.

Dental decay is painful. Tooth extraction is a leading cause of hospitalisation of children (it's the leading cause in the UK), and this surgery carries a risk of death.

It's cruel to expose children to pain and harm, especially when it's normally completely avoidable.

You are doing her a massive favour for the rest of her life, its easy to underestimate the damage sugar does and after all we want our kids to be happy and sugary treats seem to make them happy

This is really messed up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com