Peeps Are Cheap
Easter bunny sugar poisoning
When I was a kid, I got more candy on Easter than all other holidays combined. I didn’t have one basket for Easter, I had two. The child-minded advantage of growing up with divorced parents meant that I got double of everything. The Easter Bunny also frequented my Gram’s house and he loved to give me as much sugar as possible. I remember weighing my sugar booty one year and it weighed several pounds
What’s the message in all this Easter candy I received? On Easter Sunday (especially in the morning before church), eat lots of candy in the form of peeps, marshmallow filled eggs, and chocolate rabbits. Later in adulthood when I was strictly sugar free, I would often feel as though I was missing out on something when I didn’t buy nor eat Easter candy (especially Starburst jellybeans).
One year, when I was still strictly sugar-free, my husband and I decided to buy Easter candy after the Easter service at church. We bought a few nostalgic candy items, went home, and ate. Afterwords, we felt the effects of sugar poisoning at the hands of the Easter bunny. It didn’t take much to remind me that I wasn’t missing out on anything.
Childhood habits put us on a path for the rest of our life. Loading up on peeps and peanut butter eggs every Easter season may bring us back to our childhood memories, but what are we really doing to ourselves? We have to remember that we can’t regularly eat junk and get away with it. It just doesn’t work that way.
We live in one of the sickest cultures in the world, yet we continue to infiltrate our children’s Easter baskets with enough candy to easily max out a child’s yearly allotment of sugar. With the rising rates of childhood obesity, cardiovascular disease, and type II diabetes in the pediatric population, do we not see the connection?
Peeps are cheap—their consequences, steep.
What about you? Have you decided to forego Easter candy this year? Do you miss it?
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Kelsey M.
April 23rd, 2011 at 3:38 pm
I love this! Thanks for writing. I feel the same way. :)
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egerton57
June 3rd, 2011 at 4:54 am
When I was a kid, I got more candy on Easter than all other holidays combined. I didn
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Rose
May 9th, 2012 at 11:26 am
What is sugar poisoning? what are the effects of it? I am Type 2 diabetes and are on metformin for it;and everytime I get my sugar tested it is 100 or below. So I like to plurge on candy especially toasted peeps occasionally!
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Dr. Archer
May 22nd, 2012 at 10:27 pm
Hi Rose – My use of the phrase “sugar poisoning” is a non-literal play on words. Over consumption of sugar on Easter really does poison our bodies with sugar, but there is no such thing as sugar poisoning. It poisons our body with sugar because it stimulates an unhealthy insulin response which predisposes people to Type 2 diabetes.
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Debbie Young
May 21st, 2012 at 10:33 am
On my vacation I shot a batch of peeps out on a dry lake bed with my twenty two pistol. I think they are from the devil. Still kind of afraid to post the video of the event. But I appreciate your fearless, iconoclastic post.
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Dr. Archer
May 22nd, 2012 at 10:29 pm
Thanks for sharing, Debbie! My posts may seem like I am fearless but I often fear that I am offending friends and family!
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