Addicted to Sugar

I’ve heard some people lately compare using sugar to substances such as morphine, tobacco, or cocaine. “Come on!” I thought. “Let’s not malign such a sweet product.” So I set out to research what people were saying and studying about sugar. 

The sugar that we use in the United States generally starts out as sugar cane or sugar beets. That gets refined down through a series of industrial processes into molasses, then into brown sugar and finally into pure sucrose. This final product of sucrose is what we know as table sugar, a white crystalline substance that tastes sweet and that we spoon into our coffee or tea and sprinkle on our grapefruit, toast, or cereal. 

Medieval Europe hardly knew about this taste of sweetness known as sugar. A few royal folks had it once in awhile as a delicacy. During the Crusades some Europeans were introduced to sugar used by the Saracens from cane plantations in southern Spain. Even a hundred years ago, in the Little House on The Prairie, the Ingalls family used molasses as a sweetener and had a small amount of white sugar “for company”. That’s a far cry from the estimated 100 pounds per year that each American is said to consume. 

So, why all the fuss about sugar? Sugar can cause the following:
? Increase in tooth decay 

? Increase in anxiety, irritability, and even panic in some people 

? Increases PMS symptoms for some women 

? Is blamed for causing hyperactivity in some susceptible children 

? Can trigger binge eating in people with bulimia 

? Can make it difficult to lose weight because of higher insulin levels that causes the body to store extra carbohydrates as fat

It could be that last symptom attributed to sugar that has made sugar an enemy in health-conscious people lately. Americans are fat, and by all reports, getting fatter. Could it be the increased use of sugar in the typical American diet? After all, once you are accustomed to a certain level of sweetness, then a dessert has to be twice as sweet to stand out to our taste buds.