Better to just say - "Made only with real sucrose." Since the proposed statement would be inaccurate.

Looks like a perfect recipe to try for T'giving.

Yes. It's very easy to overpay when you are spending someone else's money. Whether that is the gov't or a daughter with daddy's credit card. Tends to have a different effect when they have to pay off the credit cards themselves.

Having observed life for half a century (having a vested interest and all), the one thing I've learned parents need to instill in their children is SELF discipline.

it's a bit anti-Objectivist, but self-denial and self-sacrifice for the greater good is mandatory if you're going to be a success.

Now, as LS and others rush to downcheck me, let me expound:

self-discipline is the ability to deny oneself immediate gratification for long term well-being. This is NOT a natural, inbred ability, but a learned behavior. Perhaps one of the many things which separate us from the non-sapient animals.

Every successful person I've ever known of has had varying degrees of self-discipline, in an almost 1:1 relationship to the degree of their success.

It is not a coincidence that the long-time poor in this country are also failures and lack self-discpline. The ones with drug habits and ninety-leven children. Also the ones who've never done drugs and have nobody and nothing.

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
Calvin Coolidge

As much as I like and admire Coolidge... he's full of shit. Persistence and determination without self-discipline is just obsession. At the end of the fight you're left with nothing but exhaustion and confusion; and, if you care about winning to begin with, grief.

Self-discipline makes you acquire the skills you're going to need to win. Self-discipline makes you do the work you have to do to win, rather than make excuses to do what interests you at the moment, or to wallow in self-pity because you just can't seem to get anything done... waaaah.

And I speak as an absolute authority on the subject. I had wonderful parents, the best anyone could want; and I loathe people who blame their failure on their parents. I was their last-born, and was always little, and when I was a baby I got an ear infection that nearly killed me.
This led them to become overprotective, I've concluded. I was unintentionally, psychologically discouraged from trying new things and taking chances, even amidst verbal mixed-messages telling me I can do anything I want.

I became more aware of it after my father died; at one point I realized how often my mother said, "oh, if it's too hard, don't bother." or in a more worried voice, "Don't overdo it! Don't hurt yourself".

This, combined with my father's knee-jerk opposition to authority, which led to no bed-times, no hygienic routines (tooth-brushing, bed-making, etc), no religious or after school commitments, no homework oversight, no vegetable eating before Reese's peanut butter cups, no mandatory attendance (in college I stopped going to a Chemistry lecture because one time I was late and was embarrassed to have 200 people stare at me as I walked in... a disciplined person would have rolled his ass out of bed earlier, instead). Instead I would go to a video game parlor named "Dark Star" and play Dragon's Lair at a dollar a pop until the lecture was over. And this is the first time I've ever even mentioned that to anyone....

Once they're grown and have not developed the habits of self-discipline, it's too late. I know it seems like you should just be able to decide, "I'm going to be self-disciplined! This time for sure! I want this too badly to not try with everything I've got!"... but then you go and read messages in the Gulch rather than doing the Blender tutorial you're afraid of failing at, or adding the new scene to the story you're afraid to write.

I'm out of answers. For me, I'm afraid it's too late. When this latest attempt to remake myself fails, it will be due to lack of self-discipline, and there won't be anymore tries left in me.

Someone once told me that everyone's here for a purpose, if for no other reason than to serve as an example to others...

So here I sit.

If you love your kids, spank their asses, sit them down and make them work at whatever task is before them.

Don't worry about how failing at the immediate task, or losing the immediate competition may hurt their feelings. Not learning self-discipline will destroy their lives, no matter how hard they cry now.

I refuse to eat Eloi or Soylent Green.