When you’re a new parent, you think of all the things that can harm your child, and most seem to hit you in the first 48 hours after the birth of your first one. If you are a parent you can probably relate, but if you’re not, you might imagine. The world is filled with stuff that hurts us, messes us up, kills us. You and your partner just spent nearly a year of your life trying to bring this little life into the world, and when they finally arrive, it’s like the dangers of the world hit you at hyper speed. Ironically, until that child arrives, we spend most of our lives since we were like them, crawling slowly out from under our parents’ protective shadows, ignoring if not tempting those things to undo us from time to time. Then in a rush, we suddenly understand and in many cases appreciate our parents all the more. At the very least, we probably empathize more.
When we had Taavi, we were aware that sugar is in everything, even lots of baby foods. Sugar is really the first drug we encounter as modern humans, and wow, are we inundated with it. I mean, baby food…
Now don’t get me wrong. In an era that has probably more food-derived phobias an neuroses, it’s not actually THAT simple. Sugar is essential to functioning as a biological human. As an endurance coach, I weigh constantly how I perceive the training I’m giving my athletes is tapping their glycogen stores in their muscles and I build cycles to balance that process. I feel this is essential to healthy human performance. So, calling sugar a “drug” is maybe over the top because we don’t need cocaine or amphetamines to move or simply exist. But refined sugar in the context of modern eating habits certainly is affecting our collective health. I don't think that's debatable.
When Mimmu and I had Taavi, I think we felt, like many parents do right away, that we were going to be exceptional in sheltering our kids from basically everything. We were going to steer our children to be super children. We’ve clearly not succeeded at that lofty goal, but we have consciously tried to direct our kids to good food as a foundation of life well lived.
One of the earliest implements of our super parenting was a common Finnish practice for parents to their kids-- Karkki Päivä—candy day. Lazy blogger non-stat of the week: We have no idea how many Finnish families actually practice Karkki Päivä , but we have a pretty strong hunch it is per capita a lot more common than for families in the US. So for blog's sake, we'll say it's Finnish influence on us.
What baffles me most about this concept is, Finnish candy is by and large, freaking awesome. I’m not a candy guy myself. I’m more of a savory/salty/fats lover. You know, French fries over ice cream, Doritos over chocolate. Blah blah blah. But in Finland, it all changes for me because the candy is so dern good.
If almost every candy you had access to was pretty much awesome, you’d think candy would be a social health concern. Not really it seems in Finland. Like so many things, Finland seems to have had at least a relatively long-running practical approach to modern food strategies, limiting sweeteners and additives that get away from "being food" in other developed countries. At least it has until recently.
We have been watching more and more American food influence in prevalence of fast food and cheap, processed foods, since my first trip here with Mimmu in 2007. That’s a bummer.
The most obvious one this year is that cheap and chemical sweeteners has hit here for real and broadly, almost like the 1970s in the US. With all that is messed up in the US right now, Finland could REALLY use their noggin’ on this one and reverse course on this copy-cat trend immediately.
I’m devastated in one particular case especially. Finnish Fanta orange pop has been my favorite soda pop since I first tried it. It was very orangy in a non-phony-orange-flavor sort of way—nothing like American Fanta or any orange pop for that matter in the states. It has always been lighter orange—closer to orange juice than a tint of some sort of orange radiator fluid. My first one this trip almost made me cry. I took one swig and tasted aspartame instantly. I. Hate. Aspartame.
There was a green tag on the bottle in Finnish announcing “30% less sugar!” While high fructose corn syrup doesn’t seem to have infiltrated Finnish processed foods yet, this is our first notice of widespread aspartame in Finland, and it feels like since just last summer, it’s already spread everywhere. Worse, nobody seems alarmed. I haven’t found a Fanta yet without the green blob on it advertising its own suckiness. And it’s not just there. We’re seeing “sokeriton” (sugar free) everywhere, and on the ingredients label of those shouting their lack of sugar, is aspartame. This is the country that championed xylitol from birch trees to the delight of dentists, successfully halting aspartame’s assault on Finland’s chewing gum. Now this. It feels like defeat.
Getting the bad news out of the way on sweetening trends here, candy is still by and large, awesome. Finns seem to have had a long-standing, reasonable relationship to date with sweets, and Karkki Päivä is forensic evidence.
It’s usually a Saturday here, and it has been for our kids all their lives. We give each kid $3/€3 each Saturday to buy sweets. That’s it. Pretty much rest of the week if they ask, we remind them when Karkki Päivä is.
On Saturday, short of something that we think is kind of on the edge of dangerous for kids, like energy drinks, it’s their call almost entirely what they buy. We discouraged Taavi from buying slushies and cheap, plasticky, packaged chocolate mini donuts from Holiday Station on London Road, but he still got them until he came to the realization himself that they weren’t a good way to spend his 3 bucks.
Karkki Päivä started with great anticipation as we arrived here in July. We all couldn’t wait to get our faves that aren’t available in the US. German Haribo of gummi bear fame is probably the greatest crossover with the American candy market. There' smatterings of M&M/Mars products, but predictably don't seem to do well. If you like Haribo (I do), you’ll love Finnish brands. Fazer, whom I’ve applauded in previous blog posts is one of the greatest offenders of wonderful large-quantity produced food products, does candies and chocolate goodies to the nines. Panda has great stuff as well, and far beyond just the licorice that makes its way to the United States. Malaco has some sound choices, though I feel they are generally a little too sweet and less refined in flavor than the more-expensive Fazer candies of similar form. If I could afford to send a care package to our candy-loving golf coach at St. Scholastica, a good 80%+ of what would make it into the box would be Fazer products though.
Even as Karkki Päivä was so heavily anticipated then thoroughly enjoyed once we got here, it has started, both in Duluth and now here, to take on a new dynamic as the novelty wears off with each passing week. As the kids get older and start having more interests, candy day has not only limited our kids sweets, but it has turned into an economy of sorts. At 11 and 9 years old, Taavi and Iita have ways to make money from chores or bonuses for certain things we think deserve rewards. But they suddenly just one day started borrowing against candy day, and the practice grows.
Recently, Taavi wanted a particular item of clothing he thought was so cool. He was short on cash. We weren’t convinced he needed it, but he was. He figured out how short he was, added together how many candy days would bridge the gap, and committed to the "loan." He’s gone over a month and won’t receive candy day until October.
Karkki Päivä has been around for us since our kids were very young, so it’s not new to us, or a huge cultural difference we are experiencing at this moment. It did originate for our family here in Finland as Mimmu experienced it as a kid though. Before I started sharing this post, I tried to pin Mimmu down as to how prevalent Karkki Päivä is here, because I’m at the mercy of her sense on this one. She felt I could share it as a Finnish “thing” but didn’t want to be on the hook for it. So if it’s all BS, I’m the one to blame, but I’ll back that up with Mimmu is a genius too, because it’s been a great thing we’ve used in parenting.
I have loved having this in our back pocket as parents. It is a great negotiating commodity with the kids. I can’t say we’re great at limiting all potentially harmful things to our children, but this has helped, I think. They still eat their fair share of junk food and we allow that within what we think is reasonable, but who really knows that our reasonable is any more reasonable than others? I like how they have learned the economics of their candy allowance across their lives and how they calculate and weigh how badly they want non-candy items less or more than their Saturday sugar fix. They've learned a little bit more the value of things in context to each other.
We’ve been very good at sheltering them from social media to date, despite immense and growing protest for accounts on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and the like. Screen time remains a struggle for us too, especially as we do our work from home and sometimes have to do it while they’re in the apartment with us. In that space it’s way too easy for us to let them slip for too-long stretches into screen world more than we should. I think Covid is challenging all of us in that regard.
Is it too late to late to implement screen day?