HERSHEY, Penn., June 17, 2007
Is America Too Sweet On Sugar?
Sugar Has Been In The American Diet Since Columbus, But It Might Be Time To Cut Down
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Hershey's candy bars are beloved American originals. But some experts say we need to lose these from our diets. (AP)
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Quiz Are You Food Savvy? Have you consumed myths about diet and nutrition? Take these quizzes to find out.
"Sugar cane was brought to the New World by Columbus on his second voyage," he said.
Cultivation of sugar cane dates back some 12,000 years to New Guinea. By the time of the Greeks, it had spread to Europe.
"There's a description going back to Alexander the Great," Mintz said. "One of his generals writes about finding it in India. He talks about this reed which has this sweet juice in it."
Until the 17th century, sugar was a luxury, only for the rich, who considered it a spice, and sometimes a cure-all.
"In fact, it was mainly used as a medicine at that time," Mintz said. "It was a major ingredient in medicines for the black plague and it was also used by a surgeon who combined the powdered sugar with powdered gold which you'd blow into the eye for eye health."
Soon people began putting more into their mouths than their eyes. Demand grew, and that, says Dr. Mintz, indirectly led to the rise of slavery because sugar cultivation required intensive labor.
"Very difficult and demanding labor; free people wouldn't do it," Mintz said. "I would go so far as to say that the most important reason that slavery was introduced into the New World on a large scale is sugarcane."
By the 19th century, sugar was providing quick, cheap calories to the new factory workers. Commoners were lapping it up and we're still lapping it up, 200 years later.
Connie Bennett thinks it's time to put on the brakes.
"I tell people, 'Don't believe me, just don't believe me,'" she said. "'Then test it out for yourself. Go a week without sugar and refined carbs, or maybe even two weeks and then just watch yourself like a lab rat.'"
Its a tough sell, but the anti-sugar crowd insists that life without sugar's fleeting pleasures or its empty calories really is twice as sweet.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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19th JUNE 2007 UK.
ASDA-WALMART & MARKS&SPENCER, major UK food retailers have today announced they will no longer sell products containing ASPARTAME, they have BANNED IT !!! It follows a report from the UK Food Standards Agency and ADD in Children. No doubt the Italian research which states that this junk causes brain tumours had something to do with it. So Come On FDA, your corrupt decision to approve it as been shot to pieces, time to put your hands up and go to jail.
I recently bought some Mexico-bottled Coke at the Costco. It uses real sugar and you really can tell the difference. HFCS is either intensely sweet or hollow with a vaguely addictive feeling. Everyone who can't quit smoking because of the calm they get from another hit knows what I am talking about.
The sad fact is that HFCS is a product of our own corn subsidies. It is hypocritical that our government preaches free markets most of the time but then hands out subsidies to many industries who don't need it.
Ironically, the insanity of fuel Ethanol may fix this problem for us. Food prices in the US, Mexico, and China are all ratcheting upwards because of Ethanol production taking farmland away from other staple foods.
Americans are about to be crushed in a vice of rising prices and stagnating wages, that has been slowly building for a long time. Rampant deficit spending and easy credit is finally coming home to roost in the form of price inflation, and Bush's appointments of corrupt government officials ensures that corporations won't be punished for putting profits over the public interest.
Fast foods are not fast and they are not cheep. They are just easy. People are lazy and if you look around you can tell by all the fat babies, children teens, adults and older people.
Unregulated capitalism is to blame? Get real. You still control what you put in your mouth. Nobody decides that for you. There's good food out there if you choose to purchase and, yes, actually get off your a$$ and PREPARE it. I have found I can eat very cheaply if I'm willing to prepare my own food. Last time I checked, water is much cheaper than soda, and better for you. Oh, and if you invest in a small water filtration system, you'll make your $$ back in no time over buying bottled water (just one example).
I thought I had been trying to be good to myself by not drinking soda, and sticking to teas, but the Splenda I use is still bad for us!
It seems that not only is it a struggle to pay rent with rising energy costs, soaring gas prices and insurance rates make it difficult to keep our cars legal, health insurance is a by-gone luxury in my home, where my significant other is a NURSE, for crying out loud. Then I attempt to be frugal and make home-cooked meals, yet I still can barely afford to feed us without resorting to cheap frozen pizzas, hot-dogs, mac&cheese, or other such high-carb, high-fat, low fiber things.
How on earth can one afford to eat as we are supposed to, while keeping a roof over our heads?
Posted by tmonta1 at 05:24 PM : Jun 17, 2007
I have to agree with you, when I moved from Europe to the US I had a really hard time adapting to the way food tastes here, mostly because everything is so sweet, including stuff that isn't supposed to be. Like bread for example: when I tasted sliced bread, I thought I had bought some kind of dessert bread by mistake, that's how sweet it tasted. When the Atkins hype started, I would by their low-carb bread only because it container less sugar. I am sure there are several causes to obesity, but wolfing down all that sugar every day surely doesn't help.
Posted by tmonta1 at 04:54 AM
200 years ago they did not have grocery stores right down the road, they did not have (junk) fast food resturants on every street corner. They did not have televisions, entertainment was much different. And for that matter no one had cars to drive around. The bottom line is eat right and excersise
Fewer than 200 years ago, people worked farmland to survive, rising before dawn, putting in a long day's worth of physical labor, and eating basically what they grew or hunted. The winters were brutal. No washing machines for laundry and meat ad to be cured and stored.
People died earlier from disease and perhaps fatigue, but they weren't walking around with morbid obesity and rampant diabetes.
The main factor here is not stressful lifestyle, but poor response to it partly due to convenient but just plain CRAPPY processed foods and fast-food restaurants. They're fast, they taste good, and are sometimes cheaper to prepare than a 'fresh' meal. Americans are addicted, and they're paying the price in both health and weight issues.
Yes, we can look at how other societies are not obese, and say it is because it is how they eat, but you also need to look at their lifestyle. Do they have to commute to work over an hour? Do they work 10-16 hour days?
Are they living pay check to pay check, or do they have to have million dollar homes, requiring them to work their life away?
I am so sick and tired of people blaming everyone else for his/her problems. It is time to accountability for your own actions. Stop blaming "Sugar" for societies obesity problem. Look into what the real problem is in your own life. Learn to say NO!
All of these problems can be classed as the unhealthy side effects of unregulated capitalism, making most people work their whole lives just one paycheck above poverty creates stress, which leads to unhealthy eating habits, no recreation, a search for "magic" pills and substitutes, in order to try to dodge the consequences of our lifestyles, and reliance on TV as the only affordable entertainment available, in which advertising reinforces all of the above, by encouraging wasteful consumption.
When do we start to pay more attention to the root cause of disease, rather than just the symptoms?
But one thing I can say is that now, every time I go back home, everything tastes sweet to me: bread, mayonnaise (the regular kind, not Miracle Whip)sauces...and the normal 'sweet' stuff is sickeningly sweet to me. I used to love Hershey bars, now all I taste is sugar, not chocolate.
We have been made sugar addicts due to all the processed foods that have dumped sugar in everything. Tell me, why does SANDWICH BREAD need to be SWEET??
Additionally to the extra sugar were eating are the larger portions in the restaurants. I remember when a bunch of us 60's teenage fast-food workers, introduced to the prototype, didn't believe a quarter pound hamburger would sell much - who would be gluttonous enough to consistently buy it? Now even the small fries are bigger than the large fries then.
Now pass me a Hershey bar and shut up!
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