Interesting read in our local paper today:
Rob McKenzie
Rounding Some Corners
February 20, 2012
Because it tastes so good, you greet the morning with it, you allow it stalk you all day and it's right there at the end of the day.
You can't escape it unless you aggressively go out of your way to eliminate it.
But you should, because sugar is really bad for you and it's in almost everything you eat and drink.
The late cardiologist Robert Atkins, creator of the Atkins low-carbohydrate diet, said the most important thing parents can do is keep their children away from sugar.
He was right on.
Excessive sugar — especially processed sugar with the minerals, proteins and vitamins removed — is poisonous because the body tries to break down these empty carbohydrates by releasing already-stored minerals and vitamins.
The draining of these essentials from our bodies puts stress on the nervous and respiratory systems and vital organs.
Sugar also blunts the taste buds to the savory qualities of natural sugars. If you eat a doughnut and then an orange, the orange tastes sour.
But if you eat the orange first, it's sweet. So when we eat a lot of processed sugar, we don't crave foods with natural sugars that keep us healthy.
The more we eat foods with natural sugars, the better they taste and the more we want them. The more we eat foods with processed sugar, the more we want them instead.
Sugar also makes us hyperactive. Eating or drinking a lot of it makes it hard to sit still or concentrate.
And, of course, sugar gives us a nice layer of flab.
Unfortunately, it's damn near impossible to avoid sugar all day long.
Breakfast time. Want some cereal or a muffin? Take your pick: Either way you're taking in mouthfuls of sugar.
Later your thirst leads you to grab a soda. A 12-ounce can of Coke contains the equivalent of 20 cubes of sugar. And if you drink a can of Coke every day, you're drinking 32 pounds of sugar a year.
Lunch time. How about a sandwich? The bread has sugar, and so do many kinds of chips as well as the ham and coleslaw or potato salad or pickles.
Later in the afternoon you fill in the lull with gum, candies or other sweets.
Sugar city.
Dinner time. Pasta with red sauce? Lots of sugar. A green salad covered with dressing? Basically sugar soup with vegetables.
Ready for dessert? Let's not even talk about it.
Researchers from the University of California at San Francisco want sugar regulated like alcohol and tobacco because the effects are so harmful, yet the consumption of sugar has tripled in the last 50 years.
It sure is a sweet life we have. Too bad it's not the healthy life we need.
But at least at the end of the day we can make the last thing we put in our mouths something without sugar: toothpaste.
What?! Oh no"¦
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And that's the typical day of an adult. Wonder what he'd think of all the crummy food in schools and the cupcake queens who are hellbent on serving their little goodies to our impressionable youth.