the sweet truth

The Sweet Truth

This perfectly legal , abundantly available powdery substance can easily be found in your home, in a nearby grocery store , at your kids daycare. It has been called addictive , dangerous and toxic. This substance of abuse is sugar. All of us , adults and kids likewise have been guilty of a terrible sweet tooth. We cannot live a day without decadent blissful velvety goodness of chocolate, we cannot resist a wintery scrumptious ice cream and salivating at the thought of a fluffy buttery twinkie. Unfortunately, however, as delightful and mouthwatering those sweets are, indulging too much and too often could lead to food addiction and contribute to a number of other devastating psychological and physiological ailments.

Eating sugar and high processed foods in large quantities is been proven to be a # 1 cause of obesity. For example, if you drink half a liter of sweet drinks every day, you may gain 6-7 extra pounds a year. Sugar is a high-calorie product, which does not contain any vitamins or other essential nutrients. 100 grams of sugar contains about 400 calories, and only a part of it our body uses for fuel. Rest under the action of insulin is converted into body fat. On average, we consume 71 pounds of sugar each year(about twenty-two teaspoons a day) (Moss4) . It’s no wonder, then, that one in three adults, and one in five kids, is clinically obese. It’s no wonder that twenty-six million Americans have diabetes, the processed food industry in the U.S. accounts for $1 trillion a year in sales, and the total economic cost of this health crisis is approaching $300 billion a year (Moss4).

Sugar suppresses the immune system. It depletes levels of phagocytes (the white blood cells that are needed for strong im...

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...ival ? "We actually need sugar; it's our body's preferred fuel," says Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center. "But we eat too damn much of it." In the last 200 years, sugar consumption has risen more than 1,500 percent (Katz). We are taking in sugars not only from obvious foods such as candy , soda, cakes and cookies, but from packaged, frozen, and canned foods, including cereals, crackers, yogurt, salad dressings, bagels . Our bodies are rebelling with a multitude of physical ailments, telling us loudly and clearly that they don’t like what they are being fed.

Clearly , numerous studies prove how damaging and harming a high sugar diet can be to our body. Ultimately, it is up to us what we put in our mouth. We need to start making wise decisions in order to live an all-around healthier lifestyle. Health or disease, we choose.