I fell into a net loop watching old commercials the other day, reminiscing with videos of escapist Calgon bubble baths, roving dog food chuck wagons and smiling folks settling into bed with "The Clapper."

At one point, I stumbled on an ad more anachronistic than any of its contemporaries: a commercial for Kool-Aid.

Kids playing hard — dribbling basketballs, roller skating and swimming — needed something icy cold to drink. In burst the Kool-Aid Man to save the day, breaking down the walls between thirst and refreshment.

It's a commercial ostensibly for kids, but realistically, the target must have also been moms, who were footing the bill for not just the Kool-Aid packets but the sack of sugar you'd need to make the drink. The ad triggered something in me, hearing again the sound of my childhood TV-watching, a crash followed by a gravelly shout: "Oh, yeah!"

How odd the commercial seems now, when handing your kids a sugary beverage is considered by most parents as being on par with providing them with unrestricted access to Gatling guns and industrial-grade fireworks.

In certain parts of the country — and in certain neighborhoods, particularly — there's no end of shame you'll get from other parents, teachers and even children if you confess to giving your kids sugar.

It often comes cloaked in the language of health, but peel the banana and what you get, ultimately, is a demonization of fat. Underneath it all, despite or maybe even more so because of our societal need for medications like GLP-1s, we still believe that being fat is a sign of ignorance, laziness — or even worse, lately, of poverty.

We can't have that, now, can we? To be thought p-p-p-poor (I could hardly get the word out).

Though you won't hear a peep at schools about the importance of seat belts, trampoline injuries or the horrors of electric scooters, my kids have sat through multiple lessons about the dangers of junk food, even though I've yet to hear of a single confirmed pediatric death due to a Sour Patch Kids overdose.

When my son went to the pediatrician, he gravely admitted upon questioning that he is sometimes allowed on the weekends to partake of full-sugar, caffeinated sodas. He looked down as he told her.

It's tough to fight back against a tidal wave of shame, the collective certainty that the best way to improve someone's health is to categorize some foods as evil and others as angelic.

I try my best, though, by saying things like, "Anything in excess is bad for you. Even too much oxygen can be harmful."

Another fact to remember: You never know what's going on inside another person. We don't know their struggles and their challenges, and we certainly don't know what's best for their bodies. Even though social media has convinced us otherwise, we are not the audience of other people's lives.

OK, but certainly some foods are bad, you might think. What if it's full of artificial colors, sweeteners, flavors — it's ultra-processed and devoid of natural nourishment? Surely then we can put it into the "bad" basket?

On this front, I defer to Nigella Lawson, chef and judge of "The Great British Baking Show":

"I don't approve of talking about food as 'naughty,'" she said during a recent episode. "We need to take our pleasures where we can in life."

Writer and public speaker Fran Lebowitz said something similar in the Netflix documentary "Pretend It's a City," when asked about so-called guilty pleasures. The pleasures we should be feeling guilty about have nothing to do with eating.

"Feel guilty for what? For having two bowls of spaghetti?" she responded.

And news flash, parents. You have your ways of coping with the pressures of modern life. Kids need simple pleasures, too.

They can't come home to a martini after a rough day on the playground. There are no frivolous online purchases to get over their teacher yelling at them. Dispensaries offer no child-friendly edibles for dealing with the stress of another day spent learning how to hide from a school shooter.

These occasional small treats — a candy bar, a soda, a cup of apple juice, for crying out loud — are part of what makes childhood a joy. There is time enough for calorie-counting, worry and shame. Let it please not begin in elementary school.

We forget, sometimes, what it was like to have been a child, how big our worries seemed and how real our fears were. We are all doing what we think is best for our kids, but it's important to remember that by relaxing the defenses on minor matters, we teach them how to show themselves grace in all things.

So, this Halloween, fellow parents, I ask this of you: Let them eat candy, please.

Resist the urge to donate or throw away their largess, up to and unless it sticks around (literally) into the late days of November.

If you want to grab a few pieces for yourself, though, that I can abide.

I promise I won't tell.

Photo credit: Douglas Clark at Unsplash