- By Henry Stark
- Around Town
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Are you suffering from unexplained mood swings? Do you have high blood pressure or high triglyceride levels? Maybe you suffer from Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis or cavities in your teeth? As you’re reading this are you wondering: Why is he writing about all these infirmities in the same paragraph - they’re obviously not connected? To which I reply, they certainly can be and the common cause can be an excessive intake of sugar.Which leads us naturally to the next question: What, exactly, is an excessive intake of added sugar? The answer might surprise you.
According to the American Heart Association, if you’re a woman, it’s six teaspoons a day and if you’re a man, it’s nine. However in the United States, the average consumption is much higher than these maximum recommended levels. Ready for the correct figure? OK then: Americans consume an average of about 22 teaspoons of added sugar each and every day. Shocking isn’t it!
Sugar is often used as a flavor enhancer on prepared and packaged foods. Have you ever checked out the label on your favorite flavored yogurt? What about cereal with 'honey' or 'crunch' in the title? Even 'unsweetened' cereals have added sugar. And watch out for frozen waffles and some canned goods.
In the interest of science I just checked the label of a can of Campbell’s Pork & Beans I have on my shelf. The number one ingredient is water (that doesn’t make me want to spend a lot of money on this product, by the way) and the third ingredient is high fructose corn syrup. I continued to check out my pantry and learned that sugar is the fifth ingredient listed in my Fire Roasted Vegetable Sauce. Just for the heck of it I put on my store bought magnifying glasses and looked at my loaf of Freihofer’s Stone Ground 100% Whole Wheat Bread which I purchased because I thought it was healthy. I have to tell you that I’m very disheartened by what I just discovered: water is the second most prominent ingredient and high fructose corn syrup is the third.
I’m sure you’re aware that high fructose corn syrup signals sugar but do you also know that dextrose, glucose, sucrose, malt syrup, maltose, beet sugar, evaporated cane juice, molasses, and fruit juice concentrate all serve to bring us added sugar? It’s kind of scary how many ways we can ingest sugar and it’s no wonder that, on average, we consume 22 teaspoons worth of sugar each day.
Incidentally, a friend of mine who wanted to lose weight reports she lost five pounds in a month by substituting water for apple juice. I don’t know if she initiated this substitution because she lives in New York City where Mayor Bloomberg has called attention to large sugary drinks by promoting a ban on them, but his advocacy probably heightened her awareness.
There is, however, a bit of good news for most Lansing Star readers. About a quarter of New Yorkers are obese, a rate that’s one of the lowest in the nation. Projections, though, are that more than half of us will be obese in 2030. If you’re interested, Colorado has the lowest rate of obesity in the country and Mississippi has the highest.
Now that your attention has been drawn to sugar, let me warn you about some of the foods that often contain high sugar contents: cereals, flavored yogurt, juices, alcoholic beverages, sports drinks, those jazzed up coffees people are willing to line up for, prepared salad dressings, ketchup, barbeque sauces, and jams and jellies. I’m sure you’re aware of the copious amounts of sugar in most ice creams, pies, cakes, and cookies.
I’m hoping you stay just as sweet as you are – but you can do it without excessive amounts of added sugar in your diet.
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