Sugar, Sugar: Part One
Sugar in the morning,
Sugar in the evening,
Sugar at suppertime.
Some of us are old enough to remember the McGuire Sisters’ song; though it may have several layers of meaning, the chemical aspect alone suggests real danger in our diets. Sugar, this mouth-watering, luscious, ambrosial substance comes in shades from deep brown to white and occurs in many different plants, mostly sugar cane and sugar beets, and can be fine or coarse. The average Canadian eats eighty-eight pounds of it each year.
We love anything sweet. Why? "Sugar is a deep, deep ancient craving," said Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University. We evolved on a diet containing extremely little sugar and no refined carbohydrates. Our early ancestors would have eaten grass-fed, lean animals, eggs, and plants. Apart from honey, most of the foods early people ate were no sweeter than a carrot. Loving the taste of sweetness, like the occasional honeycomb, helped our survival as a species, since sugars are a perfect source of quick energy. When we eat sweet foods, the "feel-good" chemical Dopamine is released and reinforces our desire for more sugar. This euphoric response makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, since anything that made people more likely to eat sugar would help them survive and pass along their genes. But sugar provides more than just energy; it also helps us store fat. At times when food was scarce, hanging onto fat was an advantage, not a health risk.
Today, the average sugar intake in Canada is twenty-six teaspoons per person per day, but the World Health Organization suggests that only five to 10 teaspoons, from all sources, per day, is a better target. A little isn’t enough, though. We crave sweets. The problem is that we have too much of the sweet stuff available to us now. The invention of farming around 12,000 years ago made starchy foods more abundant, but it wasn’t until the 1500s that technology made pure sugar so plentiful. We eat too much sugar which leads to many health effects, including energy swings, diabetes, and high blood pressure. That deep craving is part of what sometimes makes sugar such a sinister part of our lives, from the history of plantations to hidden ingredients in our foods. It’s a huge topic! More on this next month. Clearly, it is nearly impossible to avoid all sugar. Eating less processed food is one way around this. Another way to monitor our sugar intake is by reading labels.
We’d love to see you at TOPS. Do you need a ride? Call MI Assisted Living Society at 250-213-6191. Our non-judgmental, encouraging members meet every Wednesday morning at the Community Centre, from 9:00 to 10:00. We’re a low-cost, international self-help program that welcomes everyone. Check out our website at www.tops.org. (Our first visit is free.) If you want to join us, please call.
Submitted by Amber Harvey
References:
(173) Jamie Oliver’s Sugar Rush - YouTube
or
One tiny url for all references: