The Sweet Life!

Most folks eat more sugar than they realize—150 pounds per year average. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight, many of them children. And the pandemic is not helping! Doctors predict that this obesity epidemic will be followed by an epidemic of diabetes.

You can lose the sugar bowl and still consume your share of sugar in cakes, cookies, and pies.

So you give up desserts entirely. And your sugar intake still remains high, because sugar is added to salad dressings, meats, condiments like mayonnaise, steak sauce, and ketchup, breakfast cereals, canned fruits and vegetables, soups, gravies, cough drops and syrups, and such “health foods” as granola bars, yogurt, and whole wheat bread.

And the beverages—sodas, fruit juices, sport drinks, smoothies, even vitamin drinks, all add sugar to your intake.

Read labels, and learn sugar’s many aliases: brown sugar, raw sugar, corn syrup, molasses, sorghum, dextrose, glucose, and fructose. Like a rose, by any other name these are just as sweet—and just as harmful to your health.

Sugar intake—in its many forms—has been linked to heart disease, high levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, diabetes and tooth decay. Coupled with low mineral levels, it’s suspected of contributing to cancer and aging.

How to fight it? Forewarned is forearmed. Paying attention and making choices that support your health, and ultimately feeling better, make a huge difference.