Saturday Candy

For different reasons, it seems like our eating habits have to be guided (for most, read regulated) or else it’s easy for us to eat too much and especially of the wrong stuff. Therefore, just like in the days when undernourishment was a problem, raising awareness and working consciously to change habits and behavior is important. When I was a kid, there were campaigns promoting the idea that “fruit is candy” (it works better in Swedish since the word for candy and the word for yummy is the same), which no-one ever really bought but still made us more eager to eat fruit. And then the best campaign, that continues to live on, was the concept of Lördagsgodis, or Saturday Candy. I think it was more out of concern for our teeth than our weight, since the latter wasn’t really a problem in Sweden in the 70s and 80s, but it was successful and most of us only ate candy on Saturdays. If you had any left on Sunday, or at least Monday, you’d save them for next weekend. This also worked as an excellent argument for parents to kids nagging about candy in the stores: “Please, please, please!!” “No, it isn’t Saturday!” So for Christmas this year, Mia-Lotta gave me this little bowl with Saturday Candy painted on it in Swedish. It’s also a perfect size, about a cup, which is really more than enough to have out (we also tend to finish what is on the plate so smaller portions means less eating). And when I cut this amazing pineapple that I got at Whole Foods the other day, it occurred to me that maybe they’d been right when I was a kid in that fruit might in fact be candy! Campaigns to relaunch in a time of rapidly increasing overweight and obesity among children?

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