For over five years now, I have been a reluctant soldier in a constant war. I am an unlikely combatant. I’m not a doctor, dentist, or nutritionist. I’m not a vegetarian or health food fanatic. I’m just a mom who sees her children under daily attack by an array of surprising and diverse adversaries: Madison Avenue, my hair salon, the post office, the grocery store, even my parents and in-laws.

Many of my opponents have only the purest intentions: they want to see my kids smile. So they offer them a sucker, a Tootsie Roll, a cupcake, an ice cream cone, a soda pop. These people are the hardest to deal with because they really have my children’s best interest at heart, and I know they are offering these things out of kindness. And if they were the only people I had to worry about, I wouldn’t be worrying at all.

The problem is that my parents, in-laws, friends and family are not the only folks offering my children sweets. They get it from everyone, everywhere, all the time. Every event is an excuse to splurge on sugar: holidays, birthdays, Saturdays, a trip to Disney World, a trip to Grandma’s, a trip to the post office.

Today, for example, I took my 15-month-old daughter and 5-year-old son for a checkup at our family doctor’s office. After the appointment, my son got a sucker. Then he went to kindergarten. Because he had been a good boy all week, he got another sucker which he sneakily popped into his mouth after I had strapped him into his car seat. After picking him up from school, I headed to the bank. The teller offered him yet another sucker, but I stepped in and politely declined because, as she could plainly see, he still had the one from school in his mouth. Safely back home, I told him we would not be having any more sweets today. After dinner, though, we had to go to the grocery store.  And sure enough, our grocery store offers suckers. While I was busy glancing over my shopping list, my little charmer very sweetly asked the elderly greeter if he could have one, and of course, she was delighted to oblige such a cute boy. Before I realized it, he had his third sucker of the day in hand. I did manage to stop him from opening it, though, and tucked it into my purse to add to his ridiculous stash of candy back home. After all, Halloween was just a week ago, and he brought home POUNDS of sweets from his trick-or-treating venture.

So now we’re at the grocery, and I’m astonished by how effective Madison Avenue is. It’s quite a tribute to American marketing that my kid recognizes the Trix Rabbit even though we have never purchased Trix. As a matter of fact, I avoid the cereal aisle whenever he’s with me because he goes stark mad, running around and pointing to all the boxes he recognizes from the commercials on Nickelodeon. The cookie/cracker aisle is also tough, especially because the food companies do all these promotions with kids’ movies such as “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Cars,” and “Happy Feet,” and my son gets so excited about the cookies that have “Captain Jack” or “Lightning McQueen on them. I feel like the meanest mother in the world whenever I have to say no. Fortunately, my son is pretty good about taking no for an answer, but we’ve seen lots of kids who are not. My heart goes out to all the mothers whose kids throw screaming fits because Mommy won’t buy the Oreos with the green “Shreck” filling.

Then there’s the soda. My mother, my sister and my husband’s best friend live on Coca-Cola, so they think I’m an utter food freak because we rarely buy soda of any kind. I see soda as a treat. It has no nutritional value, and even the diet kind is bad for your teeth. Even without having it at home, my kids get plenty of it. Whenever we go out to eat, they get diet soda. They get it at my parent’s house and at friends’ houses.

Truth is, I’d love to be able to offer my kids a soda or other sweet treat now and then, but I never get a chance because the rest of the world is constantly pelting them with sugar. So I’m the bad guy, refusing to buy junk food, declining the offers of candy from various businesses we frequent, monitoring the consumption of their holiday treats. Is it worth it? I suppose time will tell, but so far, it seems to be. My daughter’s yet to visit the doctor for an illness (knock on wood!); my son has been just twice, and they are both at very healthy weights. For two children with a family history of obesity, diabetes, and bad teeth, they’re doing really well.

My mom had my son over to her house to play on Saturday. When she brought him home, she told me that he had asked her a snack at one point. She’d offered him a cookie, and he asked if she had anything “without sugar.” She was impressed. I was pleasantly surprised. I might be losing battles here and there, but I might actually be winning this war. And if any war is worth fighting, it is a war in which my children’s health is at sake.