Who’s the ‘Hungry Monkey’?
On NPR’s “Morning Edition” this Memorial Day, a story with a shocking headline, “Let Them Eat Sugar: A New Guide for Feeding Kids.”
The book, Hungry Monkey, by Matthew Amster-Burton, is described as a “memoir-style cookbook.” It suggests that parents needn’t worry about “scary” books that “warn against giving kids certain foods because of the risk of creating allergies, choking hazards and an unbalanced diet.”
Regarding sugar, the author says, “If you’re brave enough to let it be, it’s kind of self-regulating. Efforts to restrict sugar in kids tend to backfire and tend to make kids look for sugar anytime the parents aren’t looking.”
Is this just the information that parents want? Evidently, since the book made a precipitous leap from #5,417 to #61 on Amazon today. One large library system (admittedly an anomaly) shows 101 reserves on 13 copies. Many libraries have not ordered it.
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