The articles in theVancouver Sun this week about the problems with the way we eat sugar are giving me the warm and fuzzies.
“Canada’s Food Guide does not include sugar in any of the recognized food groups, although it does advise Canadians to limit sugar intake.
While the government sets an upper limit for the amount of salt and fat a person should consume each day, there are no such limits on added sugar, as distinct from naturally occurring sugars such as those in fruit.
Yet sugar has replaced fat as our society’s food pariah.
Implied in all the dietary hand-wringing is that sugar consumption is high and rising. The truth may surprise you.
Sugar consumption in Canada has been dropping since the 1960s, from about 33 kilos a year per person to about 24 kilos. But that toplevel data obscures two important trends.
First, we have changed the way we eat sugar. Nearly 90 per cent of the sugar we eat comes to us in packaged, processed foods rather than in home cooking, as was the norm 40 or 50 years ago, according to Sandra Marsden, president of the Canadian Sugar Institute and a registered dietitian. Sugar is the most common food additive, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
Second, Statistics Canada’s sugar data does not includes high fructose corn syrup, which we consume in vast quantities in soft drinks.”
Sounds like they are really on to something here… Way to keep up, slowpoke. The problem I run into when talking to people is that they don’t realize that most things they eat are sweetened, and not only that, the things that are refined carbs may as well be sugar due to the way they are processed in the body. Add it all up and the average person is getting up to 50% or more of their calories from sugars or refined carbs and that spells one thing and one thing only: Obesity.
By the way, obscuring data like the falling sugar consumption referenced above is exactly how we got into this mess in the first place thanks to people like Ancel Keys and the China Study cronies.