Sugar: the thing we hate to love.
By now we’ve gotten the message that sugar isn’t a health food, that most of us eat too much of it, and that many of us should not eat it at all.
But, there’s a reason for eating sugar besides that it tastes good. Our ancient ancestors used sweetness as a test for safety—foods that were poisonous were mostly bitter. If the plant they were testing was sweet, it was probably safe to eat. That Stone Age diet included tiny walnut-sized apples. The sweet juicy colorful fruit we know today were nonexistent in our distant past.
Luckily, or not, I became obsessed with learning about sugar while in grade school, because my grandparents had diabetes. In many parts of the Eastern U.S. diabetes mellitus was called “sugar.” In many other parts of the country, it was referred to as “sugar diabetes.” The name “sugar” itself tells you a lot about how I made the connection between a substance and a disease.
Many times during my childhood, I watched my grandmother inject both my grandfather and herself with insulin with huge scary-looking needles. When I was in junior high, my grandmother lost both of her legs, one at a time, due to complications from diabetes. Because my grandfather did not eat healthfully, he was grossly overweight.
I became convinced that in order not to suffer my grandparents’ misery, I had to figure out how to live without sugar. Of course, that had to wait until I was an adult, since I certainly wasn’t going to give up sugar as a kid.
Our love affair with sugar starts in childhood, and for some in babyhood. Baby food manufactures, like Gerber, used to put sugar into their products. They wanted their products to taste good to the people who were buying it—to Mom’s, not babies who have no purchasing power. In addition to commercial products, one of the first solid foods given to babies is bananas, because baby can’t choke on a mashed banana. Bananas are one of the sweetest fruits. Learning early to love the taste of sugar is a set up for disaster.
Though sugar was available in past millennia, it wasn’t until the 20th century that such a high percentage of daily calories came from something with no nutritional value. Per capita consumption has increased at an alarming rate. In 1913, the average annual sugar consumption was 40 pounds per person. Today it has risen to 142 pounds. It’s easy to see that unnecessary extra weight on bodies all around us.
During the 1980s, many people believed that fat was responsible for people getting fatter. This led to companies cutting back on the fat in their products. Consequently, they loaded manufactured food with sugar because removing fat left cookies, or whatever, tasteless. Today boxes of dead sugar-laden foods pollute supermarket shelves.
Here are recommendations. Keep in mind that if you are healthy a fairly safe allowable intake of sugar is based on your total daily calorie consumption:
- 1600 calories per day—6 teaspoons sugar, or 22 grams
- 2200 calories per day—12 teaspoons sugar, or 44 grams
- 2800 calories per day—18 teaspoons sugar, or 66 grams
To put this in perspective:
A 12-ounce Coca Cola contains 39 grams of sugar as High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS);
a 20-ounce Coke contains 65 grams.
Don’t forget that drinking your sugar in fruit juices counts as sugar too—fruit juices don’t do well in the sugar debate. Twelve-ounce containers of juices range from 15 teaspoons of sugar for grape juices to 8 teaspoons of sugar for orange juice. A 12-ounce Coke has 10 teaspoons. The lesson is—don’t drink your sugar.
If you buy food in boxes, always read the label for sugar. Sugar comes in all kinds of disguises. Anything ending is –ose is a sugar as well as honey, maple syrup, agave, HFCS, and others. Ingredients are listed in the order of their percentage. The sugar content is listed on the dietary label as well.
When you consume sugar, appreciate it for the pleasure it gives and limit your intake to sugar you have personally put into the food.
Or eat a piece of fruit where the sugar is combined with healthy fiber and other nutrients.
Here is Web site about all the reasons not to eat sugar: http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/sugar.htm
Here is a really good site on the history of sugar http://www.globalissues.org/article/239/sugar
