The Candy Habit in Children
DR. HORACE L. HOWE, of Boston, in a paper read before the Panama-Pacific Dental Congress, stated that “the candy habit is an important cause toward undermining the health of the American child. In front of almost every schoolhouse in the country there can be found a small candy store which sells cheap sweets to children. In Boston, no saloons can be operated within a certain number of yards of schools. The same law might be applied to the selling of candy, as candy is as great an evil to the child as liquor is to the adult.” The doctor speaks of “cheap sweets,” and while, because of their adulterations, they are more harmful, yet concentrated sweets, as they are found in candies, are bound to disarrange the work of the digestive organs, and produce many diseases, some of which are practically incurable. The “candy habit” can be formed just as well as the “drug habit” or the “whisky habit”; and all such habits are ruinous to health as well as to moral strength and mental power. Parents need to be careful, when giving their children an occasional sack of candy, that they are not forming in them the candy habit. There are many things that can be given to them that are just as toothsome as candy, and yet at the same time more wholesome. Laying the foundation for the candy habit in a child may result in the drug habit or the whisky habit later on.