Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Sugar

 At my request, a friend brought me the August issue of National Geographic. I was particularly interested in the article on sugar.  You may have seen it on the newsstand. It's the one with the cupcake with pink frosting.  It made me want to rush out for a cupcake.   My interest quite often lies in the numbers.  Numbers such as the average American eats 77 pounds of added sugar annually or more than 22 teaspoons of sugar daily. We always think of candy when we think of sugar and rightly so.  Americans spent 32 billion dollars on candy in 2011.  What better good could we have done with 32 billion dollars? The fact is our sweet tooth is getting a lot of us in trouble with health issues. Richard Johnson, nephrologist at University of Colorado in Denver, says  "It seems like every time I study an illness and trace a path to the first cause, I find my way back to sugar".  He believes that as more and more Americans are obese, one of the major problems is sugar.  Think of sugar as a treat and by definition a treat is " a source of special delight or pleasure". Find the National Geographic at the library or a used book store. There is a lot more to learn and if you have a sweet tooth, it just might be the fix you need.

National Geographic August 2013