It’s still dessert. You may add less sugar, but it’s still sugar plus fats plus maybe some fruit
Not just childen. My parents are quite overweight, as am I. I was surprised when someone told me that they only had dessert on weekends - for my parents, especially my mother, dessert is for every meal.
I am now having to learn how to interact with food, because my habits are already ingrained. If I want a cookie, I just get a cookie, even if I am not actually hungry. This habit I have to change.
I grew up in a household where candy bars and store-bought cookies were a rarity, but we always had home-baked cookies, cakes, pies, etc. My husband can eat home-baked goods every day and not gain weight - he only eats when he’s hungry.
And now I have to go put the cookies I baked in the freezer - he doesn’t like them, and I should wait until next weekend to eat any more.
This sounds like good advice. My office has apples (free!) in the coffee corner, right next to the vending machines. At home I make sure we have fresh fruit and vegetables. If I don’t want one of those, I’m probably not really hungry.
I’m with @DSeid . I think the op should remove sweet snacks from the home. That includes granola bars, chocolate bars, kind bars, cookies, pastries, etc. If the kid wants to indulge in pure sugar candy once a week, on a special occasion with friends, let her get what she wants. Let her enjoy it. Occasional treats are not unhealthy. What’s unhealthy is eating that stuff regularly.
So don’t stock sweet snacks. Don’t regularly serve dessert. Don’t regularly serve soda and juice, which also train you to expect “sweet” all the time. Keep carrots around for snacking, and serve wholesome meals, with a beverage of water or milk.
I’m concerned that the op is teaching this child that her body is wrong and that she’s fat. That’s unhealthy, too.
OK, I appreciate the discussion and insights in this thread, but as OP, I am getting slightly miffed at some of the assumptions being made about our household (did people actually read my posts?)
So let me please clarify:
First, we very seldom give my daughter sweets. She asks for them often, but we seldom give them.
We keep almost nothing sweet in the house (except fruit). I myself don’t like sweets, and my wife is generally very health conscious.
As I mentioned in my second post, we go to great lengths to avoid saying anything that might lead to body image problems.
My daughter is currently not obese, and the pediatrician and nutritionist actually said they don’t consider her overweight either.
My daughter is already getting a reasonable amount of exercise.
I was open to advice as my daughter’s (statistical) weight is something that is still a mystery to me, but I don’t understand how these assumptions about our lifestyle/eating/childraising practices have come up.
And if you re-read my original post, I was only asking a factual question about the relative (de)merits of different types of sweets. Then someone moved this discussion to IMHO and the generalisations began 
Sorry. There was a lot of advise about stocking the house with alternative sweets, which i think is a really bad idea. I totally missed that you aren’t doing that. My apologies.
On the vaguely factual side, i think my body does react differently to a snack that’s pure sugar as compared to one that has sugar mixed with other stuff. In my case, i feel sick if i eat too much sugar, and it happens faster/at a lower dose when it’s pure sugar candy. So it seems likely that other people also might react differently. But I’m dubious that urging her to pick the mounds bar instead of the gummy bears when all her friends are eating candy is going to make any significant difference.
From the OP it must be pointed out that it seems they are indeed not stocking the crap in the house.
That’s great.
And the kid in general does a wonderful job of eating when she is hungry and stopping when she is not. Plus she loves fruit.
Also great.
She is physically active. Wonderful.
I suspect they are modeling that food choice selection, and a healthy active lifestyle, as well. If so great.
Really there is so much that is fantastic here.
Many wonderful habits. Really much better than, well most.
But yes it is hard imagine that she isn’t getting the message that they are concerned about her being to their eyes, not the doctor’s or the nutritionist’s, pudgy, even if they are careful not to say so out loud. Not great. Trying to control which treat she eats when she is allowed one is not so wonderful.
OP honestly ignore the scale. Her overall habits are great and the guard rails you’ve placed are appropriate. She likes treats when she is allowed them as a special occasion. Really really likes them. And she is learning they are just that, special occasion treats. Controlling which treat will not be useful. You’ve done so much better than most. Be proud of both her and yourselves.
Kids pick up so much negative body image stuff. My perfectly proportioned daughter (her weight exactly fit the “ideal” for her height) told us at age two that she didn’t want to drink whole milk because it would make her fat. I still don’t know where she got that from. It totally freaked me out, and i ended up lecturing her on the importance of growing children getting enough nutrients. Which probably wasn’t great, either. But as i said, it shocked and upset me that my healthy toddler was worried about her weight.
The funny thing is that she was actually extremely lactose intolerant, and when we entirely removed milk from her diet about a year later she stopped getting stomach aches all the time. But the milk fat wasn’t the part that caused problems.
Your daughter said that at age two? Where did she get the idea? Is one of the grandparents saying the wrong things to her?
My guess is it was either the babysitter or something someone said at her “twos program”. She’s 30 now, and the grandparents are all dead, so whatever it was, it’s in the past.
I was very careful never to talk about weight or size in a pejorative way with my daughters. Unfortunately, my own body image issues still came through loud and clear, and even if they hadn’t, you can hardly turn on a TV or walk outside without being bombarded with the message that women’s worth is tied very closely to their appearance.
I remember my mom would buy a six pack of soda each week. I had to make it last for that week. I quickly learned drinking 2 in one day meant nothing on another day.
The same thing can be done with candy bars. Provide 3 a week. Let the child decide when they eat them. They might eat all three in the first two days. But they’ll learn that means 5 days without candy. The child will figure out a schedule. That discipline is important after becoming a adult. Adults have to control what they eat. My office building has vending machines. I have to decide when to have a sweet snack.
A snickers bar has 300 calories. I’ve never seen any problem eating a couple a week. Especially when a dessert wasn’t provided with the main meal.
I’m trying to remember instances when my wife and I would buy our kids sweet snacks (or soda) when we were out somewhere - unless we were specifically going for ice cream or something. I guess eventually our kids knew not to nag us for such things, because they knew we weren’t going to respond favorably. Not to say our house was a sweets desert. Our kids and we called ice cream “the grand elixir of life.”
OP - I don’t quite understand where you are going “that snacks are available”, such that you feel your best option is the decide between candy/chocolate/pastry? Isn’t “No” a good enough answer - followed by, “I said ‘No’ and if you continue to nag me, there will be repercussions when we get home”?
Yeah, I’m not so good at making time. 
But my mother made popsicles from real fruit and juice and only sometimes added sugar (she loved lemon, but lemon without sugar makes a horrible popsicle).