oh sugar - you little devil
sugar mania
“I’m delicious, highly addictive, in most of your meals and I don’t care if you get sick off me…” Hmm, that’s quite the confident little sugar cube you are about to place into your cup of coffee.
Almost sounds evil, if I say so. After all, the devil sweetens poison with honey.
Well folks, sugar isn’t too far from that. In fact, back in the 1920s sugar had a much more fitting name: “White Death.” Whoa! In the late 90s, sugar was even blended into the term for diabetes, previously being “Sugar Diabetes” which is why it is now known in the medical world as “Diabetes Mellitus.”
Fun fact: the word mellitus comes from Latin, meaning “sweetened with honey.” Gross fact: In 1695, “mellitus” was first added in conjunction with “diabetes” when an English doctor named Thomas Willis noticed that urine of a diabetic had a sweet taste to it.
Based on this etymology lesson, sugar sounds dangerous and scary, right? No one in their right mind would want to buy a product with these kinds of associations, right?
While marketers and surprisingly powerful lobby groups — namely the American Sugar Association — worked to divorce the name from these connotations, sugar sales on the global commodity index reached an all time low in the 1960s, influenced as well by the rise of sugar alternatives.
Sugar sales reached an all time high in the 1970s, when sugar finally broke free of suggestions that sugar might not be all that great for you. Hey, marketing is everything!
Investing heavily into research that suggested popular sugar alternatives, like saccharine, were worse for you than refined sugar didn’t hurt either.
i’d be running, too - check this out
A Closer Look at Sugar
To start, sugar is harvested from a sugarcane tree, where the stalks are chopped, squished, boiled and then scooped out from the solidifying, boiling molasses mixture where it’s left to harden. It’s then centrifuged to separate the molasses from the sugar crystals.
What is left in the final mixture is quite a yummy fleck, though admittedly, a devoid-of-nutrients type of substance. There is no protein, no digestive enzymes, no healthy fats…basically no benefit to healthy living!
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) since 1948, sugar has the following effects on the functioning of the human body…here we go: the potential for serious heart problems; fat gain (adipose tissue) in the belly, butt and thighs; cancer induction; shortened life span; accelerated aging; development of serious sleep issues; insulin spikes; leptin resistance and liver damage similar to that of being a heavy alcoholic. Wow. Great stuff!
You can also take a look at what they say for benefits. I did write a section for it but you can’t see it…because it’s that small. Note: THE SARCASM.
While you may be aware of these negative effects and are not one to scoop sugar into your meals, you may not even notice the amounts of sugar that come in most of your pre-packaged meals and super sweet-treat coffee drinks. Just take a quick look at that nutritional label, because it’s definitely something I would be wary of.
For instance, if you have a thing for Tim Horton’s, a large double-double and donut provides you with around 60g of sugar, according to their website. According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, that already puts you past the prescribed 48g you’re supposed to consume in a day, and you haven’t even woken up yet.
Now folks, when you consciously reduce the sugar in your diet to a relatively low level, you may notice some things immediately, such as less belly bloat, cleared up skin, more rejuvenating deep sleep, and even a feeling of finally being satiated.
Because even consumed at low levels, sugar has the effect of making one feel empty and hungry because of the ethanol content, according to the WHO. P.S – Ethanol is the same as Ethyl Alcohol…the same thing that you find in beer, wine and other alcoholic beverages. In fact, sugar has the same addictive properties, with addicts undergoing similar withdrawal symptoms including headaches, mood swings and “the shakes.”
It really is a precious substance to people who want to make a bit of extra cash, because it is highly addictive and therefore highly lucrative. The people that back the production and sales of sugar can get rich quite quickly. It is something that, like smoking, is still widely available despite the proven side effects.
So, I hope I did you a service here, evoked some emotions to make you really think about what you are putting into your mouth: that is my mission with these articles. Wishing you a thriving, exciting, healthy and non-artificially-sweetened month of May!