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The Unlimited Sweets Experiment: Final observations on free candy access in a healthy household
By Annie 
September 21, 2009
September 21, 2009
Candy Dandy by mediaplus_sy, shared via Flickr.
The official timeline for my Unlimited Sweets Experiment has come to an end. But the drawer has not been closed - I decided to keep the experiment and drawer open indefinitely! My husband and I both think the experiment was mostly a success. And my hypothesis - If I give my two-year-old unlimited access to sweets, she will be less interested in them - was confirmed. But please read my observations below to determine if you think it was a success, and please share your feedback with me!
We established our home's unlimited sweets drawer about one month ago, filling an accessible drawer with jelly beans, chocolate peanut butter maltballs, generic M&Ms, plain chocolate chips, lollipops and gum drops and letting our toddler daughter Jo have unlimited access to it throughout the day, and even at mealtimes, on the suspicion that she might end up integrating sweets into her life better when they were unrestricted. I let the experiment run a bit longer than initially anticipated, mostly because I wanted to confirm that my observations were accurate. A full month allowed me to do that.
Here are our observations of this experiment, with a few tips to follow.
The novelty of the drawer wore off very quickly. I wrote about week one progress in detail here. During this first week, she frequented the drawer several times per day and especially during mealtimes. But during weeks two through four, things really slowed down. On several occasions, she has forgotten about the drawer for several days. And when Jo does remember, she grabs a couple chocolate chips and walks away for the day.
Our daughter is asking for real food more often. This might be a product of her language development and memory, but she has regularly been asking for soup, fish sticks, grilled cheese, peanut butter and crackers, etc. Prior to the experiment, she had only really been asking for snacks, sweets or drinks.
She has continued to devour the vegetables in the garden. Maybe the way vegetable gardens may improve your child’s diet is a topic for another day, but Jo couldn't get enough raw dill, basil, broccoli and peas from our garden, although she knew chocolate was easily accessible. If we served the same vegetables inside the house, she treated these green foods with the same strong appetite.
Her milk and water consumption stayed the same. I was concerned about her overall calcium intake as we started this experiment, but her milk consumption was steady.
Since she could have sweets at any time, she often added them to her dinner plate, but ate both sweets and dinner food. She would nibble on a cookie, then nibble on black beans and back to the cookies. She consistently follows this pattern. I am hopeful that she is beginning to appreciate the different flavors of a wide variety of foods!
We have one last observation to share, too.
Halfway through the experiment, my husband and I realized that we were less interested in the peanut butter maltballs. In the past, these tasty treats have been a serious indulgence for us (or more accurately, overindulgence for us). Prior to the experiment, neither one of us seemed to have self-control with it. However, we stocked Jo's drawer with it every day for almost five weeks. She cares less about the maltballs now. And so do we!
For all of these reasons, we're sticking with an unlimited sweets drawer.
If you decide to duplicate this experiment in your own home, I wanted to offer a few general tips:
My daughter is only two and a half years old, so it would be near impossible for me to predict the outcome of a similar experiment for a five-year-old, eight-year-old, eleven-year-old, or even an adult. But I do believe the concept is the same: People generally want what they can't have. And kids are no different!
So what do you think? Was my experiment a success in your eyes? Anyone out there ready to try it at home? If so, tell us your children's ages - and make sure to report back on your results!
We established our home's unlimited sweets drawer about one month ago, filling an accessible drawer with jelly beans, chocolate peanut butter maltballs, generic M&Ms, plain chocolate chips, lollipops and gum drops and letting our toddler daughter Jo have unlimited access to it throughout the day, and even at mealtimes, on the suspicion that she might end up integrating sweets into her life better when they were unrestricted. I let the experiment run a bit longer than initially anticipated, mostly because I wanted to confirm that my observations were accurate. A full month allowed me to do that.
How our daughter responded to limitless sweets
Here are our observations of this experiment, with a few tips to follow.
The novelty of the drawer wore off very quickly. I wrote about week one progress in detail here. During this first week, she frequented the drawer several times per day and especially during mealtimes. But during weeks two through four, things really slowed down. On several occasions, she has forgotten about the drawer for several days. And when Jo does remember, she grabs a couple chocolate chips and walks away for the day.
Our daughter is asking for real food more often. This might be a product of her language development and memory, but she has regularly been asking for soup, fish sticks, grilled cheese, peanut butter and crackers, etc. Prior to the experiment, she had only really been asking for snacks, sweets or drinks.
She has continued to devour the vegetables in the garden. Maybe the way vegetable gardens may improve your child’s diet is a topic for another day, but Jo couldn't get enough raw dill, basil, broccoli and peas from our garden, although she knew chocolate was easily accessible. If we served the same vegetables inside the house, she treated these green foods with the same strong appetite.
Her milk and water consumption stayed the same. I was concerned about her overall calcium intake as we started this experiment, but her milk consumption was steady.
Since she could have sweets at any time, she often added them to her dinner plate, but ate both sweets and dinner food. She would nibble on a cookie, then nibble on black beans and back to the cookies. She consistently follows this pattern. I am hopeful that she is beginning to appreciate the different flavors of a wide variety of foods!
We have one last observation to share, too.
Halfway through the experiment, my husband and I realized that we were less interested in the peanut butter maltballs. In the past, these tasty treats have been a serious indulgence for us (or more accurately, overindulgence for us). Prior to the experiment, neither one of us seemed to have self-control with it. However, we stocked Jo's drawer with it every day for almost five weeks. She cares less about the maltballs now. And so do we!
For all of these reasons, we're sticking with an unlimited sweets drawer.
Five tips for trying unlimited sweets at home
If you decide to duplicate this experiment in your own home, I wanted to offer a few general tips:
- Continue to have ongoing discussions regarding the importance of nutrition, eating in moderation, physical activity, and the role of vitamins in our bodies. If you don't, start.
- Be a good role model. This is by far, the BEST thing you can do for your kids when it comes to nutrition and exercise. Children imitate our actions on a daily basis, and eating and activity levels are no different. If you can set a healthy example for your kids, they will follow in your footsteps. They will value the importance of eating right and exercise for a lifetime.
- Brush teeth, often. Dentists say the gummy foods are most likely to cause cavities, so if you include jelly beans or gummy bears in your drawer, stock up on toothpaste!
- Make up your mind ahead of time about bedtime and the drawer. If you are not going to allow sweets around to bedtime, create a good reason (i.e. sugar leads to cavities, candy keeps you up, etc.). But be prepared. We call Jo the master distractor at bedtime - she thinks of every reason to stay awake past bedtime, so we had to officially close the drawer at 7 p.m.
- Consider a vitamin. We really like Nordic Naturals Gummies, but choose any children's multivitamin. The vitamin serves as a safety net if your child eats poorly on some days, and it will give you peace of mind.
My daughter is only two and a half years old, so it would be near impossible for me to predict the outcome of a similar experiment for a five-year-old, eight-year-old, eleven-year-old, or even an adult. But I do believe the concept is the same: People generally want what they can't have. And kids are no different!
So what do you think? Was my experiment a success in your eyes? Anyone out there ready to try it at home? If so, tell us your children's ages - and make sure to report back on your results!
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I’ve been anxiously awaiting these results! We have a 3 year old that constantly asks for fruit snacks and any other sweet treat that is currently in the house. I’ve always wondered what would happen if she had free access to these treats. I might be convinced to try it now! Thank you for sharing.
Thanks so much for the update! I agree that it might be hard to tell what the outcome of this experiment might be for an older child, but I think this is very telling, nonetheless!
Looks like you learned what unschoolers of the world have known and been practicing for a long time! We radical unschoolers live our lives this way - we let our children decide what they will eat (and watch & learn). And we’ve found the results to be the same: kids make great choices that are right for them, all on their own. I challenge you to try it with other things, like learning & TV.
Awesome experiment and write-up. As a pediatric dietitian I have often reminded families that sweets & desserts are not “bad” foods and even our obese kids need to be allowed something sweet on a regular basis (if they can’t have it, forbidden foods becomes so desireable it leads to sneaking amongst kids as well as adults). Just love seeing your results in black & white. I hope other parents try your same experiment and post their results as well.
You know what? It sounds like the opposite happened. She cherished the good foods because she didn’t have unlimited access to them, so they became the treats.
Interesting. I may attempt this for my kids. On a unrelated subject, I am noticing that my kids come home from school starving (they have 10 minutes to eat it seems). I started serving them dinner foods for an afternoon snack. Today they just had macaroni and cheese. Seems to be better than the usual pretzels…
I have been anxiously awaiting these results myself! I still don’t know if I am brave enough to try. My kids both love sweet stuff and I would love for them to have a healthy relationship with their food. Thanks, Annie! I’ll discuss this with the hubby tonight.
Great experiment...I love it!
I don’t have children yet, but I hope to share this same kind of philosophy when I do.
Great post!!
I think the experiment is interesting and amazing. I guess I figured sweets are always at the top of any child’s list of foods to eat. At our house we have eliminated sweets almost altogether but we’ve found the kids (and us) now eat more carbs - breads, crackers, pasta, etc. so that’s actually taken the place of the sweets. I am up for trying the experiment. We have a 3, 5, and 8 year old. I would love to have the same outcome. Thank you for sharing your experiment.
It was interesting for me to see this experiment, because I’ve done something similar with my kids, who are now 13 1/2 & 12, since they were very young. I was never allowed to have sweets as a kid, but craved them with what I recognize now as the intensity of an addiction. Other than limiting it to what I felt were appropriate times, such as not right before meals, there hasn’t been much restriction, and we go crazy with sweets and candy on holidays such as Christmas, Easter, and Halloween. What I’ve discovered is that they don’t crave it, and almost always choose healthier snacks over sweets. My sugar craving has also curbed to almost nothing. Incidentally, their holiday candy stash ends up lasting for months, and sometimes we just throw out what’s left because it gets old. Out of curiosity, I also did the same thing with TV. If I was busy and they were bored or under my feet, I’d tell them to go watch TV (not for extended periods of time of course). It turned out that after a while, they would complain about having to sit down and watch TV and ask if we could go do something together, or to go outside to play instead. They’re still not big TV watchers to this day. Although I have to say that the video game experiment with my son is not working the way I’d like. He can play them all day every day if I let him and never get tired of them! lol :)
Very interesting, and something I’ll probably implement with my daughter when she gets old enough. One thing that I’m thinking about the video games - I had pretty much unlimited access to computer and video games as a child, and they dominated my life. My theory about this is the interactive nature of these games, combined with a lack of physical feedback. For sweets, you physically can’t just sit there and eat them constantly - at some point you’ll get full and have adverse reactions. With a computer game, you get so immersed that the rest of the world just disappears.
I remember “waking” from many multi-hour game sessions only because I was extremely hungry or having to go to the bathroom, and if I just went and dealt with it and immediately returned to the game then I’d just go right back in. People would talk to me and I’d not even realize I was responding to them.
As a result, I’m definitely planning on limiting my childrens’ access to video and computer games, but food is something that they are very capable of dealing with on their own.
Thanks for the fascinating article. I have a 2 1/2 year old also and I’d love to try this, as he is ALWAYS negotiating for a popsicle or some chocolate. On a separate note, I wonder if this idea of giving them freedom and independence works with sleep? I feel like I transform from understanding mother to absolute witch when he’s telling me he’s not sleepy at 9:30pm… Bed routines should be peaceful, and I fear that I’m teaching him to dread sleep even more…
Renee- you have about the same ages as mine- PLEASE post the results of your experiment with older kids!
I find this experiment very interesting and appealing. But, I wonder if you had any thoughts on this article, “Eating Candy in Childhood Linked to Adult Crime,” which suggests that perhaps “children who are given sweets too frequently never learn how to delay gratification - that is, they never develop enough patience to wait for things they want, leading to impulsivity in adulthood.”
Maybe your experiment shows that free sweets lessen the desire, and thus they eat less, so these children are not the ones who will commit crimes later? B/c they aren’t eating as much sweets now?
I like what I read and I’m considering the experiment but I have a question: what happens when you’re not at home? Does your daughter still ask for it? My son is constantly asking for “sweet” things, is not such a healthy eater - refuses vegetables even though we’re vegetarian - and I’m just sick of dealing with it. And he’s only 3. Help!
Thanks so much for all of your really great feedback and questions about the unlimited sweets experiment! I am taking all of these questions and will be putting them into another post with questions & answers. And I will be adding some interesting observations that have transpired in our house over the last few weeks, too. Stay tuned and thanks for your patience!
We’ve always let our son (23 months) eat whatever he wants. I almost lost my faith in this method when he discovered sweets at around 18 months (before then he wasn’t really interested in them). We try to set a really good example, and we let him have sweets when he asks for them, which really isn’t very often. I’ve been planning to make him a snack drawer so he can help himself to snacks...I wonder if I should put some chocolate in there as well. Thanks for sharing the results of your experiment!
I just discovered this post and I tried the same thing a few months ago with our (then) 3-year-old daughter. You can read about it at the link above if you like. I enjoyed reading your post and our experiment worked for us too.