Do you ever stop to think about why we all seem to crave sweets - candies, cookies, sodas and as an additive to a whole host of processed food and drink? We must ask ourselves the compelling question of why we consume sugar, and especially, why we give sugar to children.
God designed the human body with taste buds that react positively to sweet foods. Why did God do that? Because the essential foods that God wanted man to eat are raw fruits and vegetables (Genesis 1:29) which, to varying degrees, all have a sweet taste. Processed food manufacturers have capitalized on this fact of nature, and are increasingly adding more and more sugar to everything that they sell. The merchants marketing sugar products have targeted children as their most lucrative customer base.
The food industry adds sugar to its products in order to increase consumption. Sugar is a very addictive substance; the low blood sugar state which you get from eating it makes you crave more. As biochemist and former corporate food scientist Paul Stitt writes in his book Beating The Food Giants, "the food industry has noticed that increasing the sugar in a product also increases the amount that people will eat -- and that means increased sales". Sugar is an addictive drug, not a food!
Refined sugar is in reality a poison and not a food. That is, of course, assuming your definition of food requires it to provide some form of nutrition. Refined sugar (sucrose or C12H22O11) is refined from plant material (beets or sugar cane) so that 100 percent of all nutritional value is removed. Not only does it have zero nutrients (only "empty calories"), but when sugar is consumed, it actually robs nutrients from the body, particularly from the teeth and bones. Sugar also is harmful to the stomach lining and can interfere with digestion of nutrients from other food.
The November-December, 1998 issue of Gerson Healing Newsletter contained the following article:
"Sugar is a basic element in starchy food, however, processed sugar is a completely different matter. The sugar we purchase in the supermarket for personal consumption is processed sugar. This kind of sugar is heated up in chalk-milk, so that calcium and protein are extracted. (After this process) it becomes alkaloid, destroying all vitamin content. In the second phase the sugar is mixed with acid chalk, carbonic gas, sulphur dioxide and finally with natrium bicarbonate. The mixture is cooked and cooled off several times and thereafter crystallized and centrifuged.
This dead mass is then treated with strontium hydroxide. Subsequently
it arrives at the refinery where it is passed over chalk carbon acid to clean
it. Dark coloring is removed by adding sulphuric acid and it is then filtered
with bone charcoal. Finally, it is colored with Indathrenblue, or the
highly
toxic Ultramarine.
This product's chemical composition is C12H22O11, which you can buy in shops as "pure cane" sugar, sugar cubes, sweets, etc. This product called SUGAR has an atomic density of 98.4% to 99.5%. Such density falls under the category of POISON."
Sugar is addictive like a drug, can cause drastic mood swings like a drug (from hyperactivity to depression) and has withdrawal symptoms like a drug. And the common combination of sugar and starch leads to a fermentation in the digestive process that breaks down to alcohol (also a drug) and other toxins. Considering all its adverse effects on human health, and the fact that refined sugar has zero nutrients, it becomes difficult to defend the common perception of sugar as a food rather than a poison.
Because sugar is added to the vast majority of all processed foods, this becomes a health problem for people of all ages, but children are the one group with the reputation for being addicted and affected by it most severely. Dental decay, obesity, hyperactivity and diminished immune systems that lead to frequent colds, flu symptoms, earaches and infections, sore throats and worse, are the modern-day plagues of children who eat lots of sugary processed foods.
The average American consumes a third of a pound of sugar per day, according to Frances Moore Lappé in Diet for a Small Planet. The main reason American sugar consumption continues to increase over the decades is that we are eating more processed foods with sugar added. Many breakfast cereals are about half sugar. A twelve ounce can of soda contains up to 11 teaspoons of sugar and about 25 percent of America's total sugar consumption comes in the form of colas. Three cans of cola or other soda is enough to disable the immune system for the entire day!
Lappé writes: "Since the early 1900s the per capita consumption of sugar in processed fruits and vegetables has tripled. So much sugar is added to processed fruits and vegetables that Americans eat almost as much sugar in these foods as they do in cake and candy. Since the early 1900s, the per capita use of sugar in beverages, mainly soft drinks, has increased almost seven-fold." She notes by 1976 the average American was consuming the equivalent of 382 12-ounce cans of cola per year, and Lappé warns, "The next time you reach for a Coke, remember that you're about to drink the sugar equivalent of a piece of chocolate cake, including the icing"
Paul Stitt writes, "The truth is that most of the garbage sold in supermarkets isn't really food at all. Some of it is really candy, most of it is really poison. But it's not food... These products should be revealed for what they are, so that people can decide for themselves. For instance, Kellogg's Sugar Smacks, a product that's more than 50% sugar, should not be called a cereal. The word 'cereal' denotes a food made from grain, but Sugar Smacks isn't a food and what little grain is left in it has been robbed of its nourishment. Sugar Smacks is a candy and that's what it should be called. When mothers across the nation find out they've been giving their kids candy for breakfast, Kellogg's -- and all the other presweetened breakfast producers -- will soon be out of business."
In Sugar Blues, the classic documentary on sugar, Dufty explains how our emotional state is affected by sugar intake: "The brain is probably the most sensitive organ in the body. The difference between feeling up or down, sane or insane, calm or freaked out, inspired or depressed, depends in large measure upon what we put into our mouth. For maximum efficiency of the whole body -- of which the brain is merely a part -- the amount of glucose in the blood must balance with the amount of blood oxygen." He then quotes Dr. E.M. Abrahamson and A.W. Pezet from Body, Mind and Sugar as further explaining, "… When we take in refined sugar (sucrose), it is the next thing to being glucose in our bodies. The sucrose passes directly to the intestines, where it becomes 'predigested' glucose. This in turn is absorbed into the blood where the glucose level has already been established in precise balance with oxygen. The glucose level in the blood is thus drastically increased. Balance is destroyed. The body is in crisis."
Sugar consumption causes a series of emergency reactions by the body in an attempt to maintain this balance. First, Dufty explains, the brain registers an imbalance and sends a message for the adrenal glands to secrete hormones to keep the blood glucose level up, then insulin from the pancreas begins working against the adrenal hormones to keep the glucose level down. Dufty adds, "All this is reflected in how we feel. While the glucose is being absorbed into the blood, we feel 'up.' A quick pick-up. However, this surge of mortgaged energy is succeeded by the downs, when the bottom drops out of the blood glucose level. We are listless, tired; it requires effort to move or even think until the blood glucose level is brought up again. Our poor brain is vulnerable to suspicion, hallucinations. We can be irritable, all nerves, jumpy. The severity of the crisis on top of crisis depends on the glucose overload. If we continue taking sugar, a new double crisis is always beginning before the old one ends. The accumulative crisis at the end of the day can be a lulu."
Dufty adds that for someone who has gone very long without eating sugar, the physical signs become very apparent when you have eaten a restaurant meal containing sugar: "… taste is not always infallible. However, if you get sleepy after such a meal, you can be sure something had sugar or honey in it."
He also explains the difference between refined sugar (sucrose) and glucose. Glucose, found in fruits and vegetables, is always present in our bloodstream and plays a vital role in the metabolism of all plants and animals. Many foods are converted into glucose in our bodies. There is a major difference in the way our bodies react to glucose versus sucrose, and there is a difference in the way our bodies react to starches and proteins when they are combined with sugar. Dufty explains: "When starches and complex sugars (like those in honey and fruits) are digested, they are broken down into simple sugars called monosaccharides, which are usable substances -- nutrients. When starches and sugars are taken together and undergo fermentation, they are broken down into carbon dioxide, acetic acid, alcohol, and water. With the exception of the water, all these are unusable substances -- poisons. When proteins are digested they are broken down into amino acids, which are usable substances -- nutrients. When proteins are taken with sugar, they putrefy, they are broken down into a variety of ptomaines and leucomaines, which are nonusable substances -- poisons."
Dufty also cites the work of Dr. William Coda Martin in the 1950s, which was intended to make the distinction between what is food and what is poison. Coda's working medical definition of poison was very simple: "Any substance applied to the body, ingested, or developed within the body, which causes or may cause disease." The dictionary definition of poison is "To exert a harmful influence on, or to pervert." Dufty adds, "Dr. Martin classified refined sugar as a poison because it has been depleted of its life forces, vitamins, and minerals."
So, when a substance is classified as a poison, has no nutritional value, is
known to rot teeth, cause numerous physical and emotional problems, and is
addictive, indeed it becomes compelling to ask how it came to be that we feed
this harmful, toxic substance to children.
By the late 1600s, large numbers of people throughout Europe began exhibiting
major emotional disturbances, especially in the large cities where sugar intake
was highest, and mental hospitals were constructed to institutionalize these
people. One historian referred to this period as "The great confinement of
the insane."
"Today, pioneers of orthomolecular psychiatry... have confirmed that
mental illness is a myth and that emotional disturbances can be merely the first
symptom of the obvious inability of the human system to handle the stress of
sugar dependency," Dufty writes. In addition to unprecedented numbers of
mental patients, other medical problems began to appear in increasing numbers as
sugar consumption began to rise. In countries where accurate records were kept
on national sugar consumption and death from specific diseases, Dufty notes
"the point is inescapable: As sugar consumption escalates wildly, fatal
diseases increase remorselessly."
Today's commercial food processing and marketing giants still find it more
profitable to stock and promote sugary and starchy foods with a long shelf life
rather than perishable fresh foods that provide the nutrition we need. This can
leave a child who is strongly influenced by TV food commercials with a diet
that, despite the addition of modern synthetic vitamins, has many of the same
deficiencies as the disease-causing food eaten by sailors several centuries ago.
Updated 06/01/2002