Sugar and spice and everything ... vice?

For two years, I have been ranting against sugar in this blog. Until then, I was merely talking about it.

I know that because I tracked down the post from March 2018, in which I wrote quoted from a report: "Sugar is the driving force behind the diabetes and obesity epidemics."

In a later post, I referred to sugar as the devil in disguise.  

Chemically speaking, sugar is present in many forms naturally.  Banana has sugar, and so does orange or any fruit.  Right?  Obesity isn't from eating one too many bananas.  Instead, it is because of the sugar that we add to every damn thing: "the health risks associated with sugar relate to overeating so-called free sugars, not those naturally present in whole foods like fruits, vegetables and milk."

I buy fruits all the time.  The last time I bought a fruit juice was, ahem, I have no recollection.  I rarely buy them.  Even if the juice has no added sugar, I way prefer to enjoy the fruit--fiber and all.

A couple of days ago, after a long time, I had a favorite ice cream.  The devil that comes packed in a simple and attractive container ;)

Of course we are biologically wired to taste the devil and, boy was the devil delicious to taste!

The food industry knows that they have to rethink their sugary concoctions before they kill their customers.  Nah, they are rushing to rethink because they are worried that governments might come down on sugar, and they want to get ahead of the curve ... by racing to find the best sugar substitute.

This New Yorker report is all about that race to "redesign sugar."  It is not about creating yet another artificial sweetener.  Nope.  "Researchers are now developing new forms of real sugar, to deliver sweetness with fewer calories."

You read that correctly.  Real sugar. But with fewer calories, so that you can eat your cake and the sugar too.

All because there is something special about the manner in which sugar gives us the high when it meets the taste buds:

Sucrose is delivered to the taste receptors on our tongues by saliva, as sugar crystals dissolve in our mouth, but only about a fifth of the sugar in a typical bite of cookie actually connects with a receptor. The rest of it is washed down into our bellies—calories we consume but never taste.

However, you reduce the sugar in the formula and the taste buds immediately know that it ain't sweet enough.

The challenge is, therefore, to provide that sweetness without all that extra "wasted" sugar that is responsible for obesity and diabetes.

It is easier said than done.

Because, our biology is too damn smart. After all, without the intricate and complex biochemistry, we humans would not here, right? You try to fool the biology, and you end up with some "collateral damage."

So, even as scientists are at work, what might be the way out?

[Even] the scientists redesigning sugar admit that the ultimate goal is to gradually lower sugar levels and retrain our palates—and that their innovations represent a sophisticated, but ultimately short-term, fix. Just as the only good substitute for sugar is sugar, the only good way to eat less of it, sadly, is to eat less of it.

Stay. Away. From. The. Devil!

Sweet life

Soon it will be Deepavali.

For a guy who lives a secular life, it seems to be quite a preoccupation with tracking the major religious observances--even of the Jewish kind.  Maybe I need a therapy of sorts to bring out my inner, repressed, religiosity.  And then maybe I, too, will become a "sadhguru" but without having killed anyone.  Nah! ;)

There was one thing about Deepavali that was heavenly for me--the sweets that my mother made.  When we were kids, my brother and I were hell bent on figuring out where mother had hid the Deepavali sweets from our greedy eyes and mouths.  We always succeeded, and enjoyed the sneak-previews of the delights that awaited.

My favorite was the phenomenally awesome sweet that mother made with cashews.  And, those days, it was pretty much home-grown cashews--most of the nuts came from the tree within our compound. I could--and did--eat them all day long.

But then, somewhere in my growing up, I became duller and more boring than I have always been. I became the party-pooper.  The killjoy.  Major Buzzkill.  "No, thanks" became my middle name, and my consumption of sweets dropped! ;)

The more I live and learn, the more I am thankful that such an attitude change happened, and that I became sweet- and food-conscious.  Else, there is a fair chance that I would have become a part of the ever growing reports on obesity and diabetes.

Sugar is a major cause of this pubic health issue.  Not only in the United States but all over the world.  Sugar in the traditional sweets, which one can buy every single day, unlike the rarity of the old days.  And, sugar is seemingly an additive in everything that we eat and drink.  Which is why the evil industry is trying to get more sugar into baby foods too.  Bastards these companies are, yet again demonstrating that market and morals rarely ever intersect!  Like this:

A yogurt-based Happy Baby snack for children contains a teaspoon of sugar per serving, with four servings per pouch. Happy Tot’s organic bananas and carrots fiber and protein bar contains 2 teaspoons of sugar per serving.

In order to truly understand the seriousness of this, go to the kitchen and measure out 2 teaspoons of sugar.  That itself will shock you.  And then put all that sugar in your mouth, and imagine what that might do if a 2-year old were given that much sugar.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that nearly 14 percent of 2- to 5-year-olds are obese (above the 95th percentile for body mass index), a percentage that is higher for African Americans, Hispanics and low-income Americans. A new study says that in the United States, childhood obesity alone is estimated to cost $14 billion annually in direct health expenses.

If your defense at this point is that parents should know better, and that we should not blame the industry, it means that you are a big part of the problem.

Caption at the source:
A milk-based "toddler drink" contains 3 1/2 teaspoons of sugar per serving. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Oh well ... General Malaise will do what he can--continue to blog and rant!

A devil in disguise

As a kid, I had one heck of a sweet tooth.  All day long, I could eat nothing but sweets and I was happy.  Even into my undergraduate years.  Like the one occasion when I had 22 gulab jamuns in one sitting.  And this was after having a heavy lunch!  I can't ever figure out how I was so skinny despite all that sugar and ghee ;)

And then I became an adult. 

My sugar intake gradually decreased. 

People who knew me in the old country are shocked when I say "no, thanks" to sweets.  Especially when the sweets are from a store, saying no is easy for me.  My grandmother drilled it into my head that restaurants and sweet-shops often make things tasty in unhealthy ways, unlike the stuff made at home by women like her.

I have also come to understand what a dangerously sweet thing sugar is.  As I quoted in this post, "Sugar is the driving force behind the diabetes and obesity epidemics. ... The problem is all of the processed sugar that has snuck into the modern diet. It’s so prevalent that you need a strategy for avoiding it.

Sugar is a devil in disguise!

In fact, recent reports have found that regular consumption of sugary drinks heightens the risk not only of tooth decay, obesity, fatty liver disease and Type 2 diabetes, but also of heart disease and premature death, even in people free of other risk factors.

Whatever happened to people drinking water?  Rare is a meal--lunch or dinner--where people have water.  Instead, they have sugary sodas, or sugary fruit juices, or sugary ...

If only people truly understood this:

the health risks associated with sugar relate to overeating so-called free sugars, not those naturally present in whole foods like fruits, vegetables and milk.

I rarely ever buy fruit juices.  But, I buy fruits all the time.  Lots of fruits, actually.   One of my favorites is to peel a regular orange and a blood orange; slice them up; then artfully scoop them into glass cups; sprinkle Demerara sugar on top; plastic wrap and refrigerate.  A couple of hours later, it is heaven on earth!

Sugar is not merely delivered in the liquid products that we over-consume:

Sugar-containing processed foods are ubiquitous and can add up quickly for unsuspecting consumers. In the documentary “That Sugar Film,” the filmmaker quickly developed health problems after eating “healthy” foods like cereal and juice containing 40 teaspoons of sugar a day, the average Australian’s intake. (Americans average 42.5 teaspoons of sugar a day.) The film noted that if all sugar-containing food items were removed from supermarket shelves, only about 20 percent of products would remain.

Think about what a lean-mean supermarket that would be.  Guess what?  Isn't that how grocery stores were before the explosion of processed food?

If you are like M, then you always want some kind of a constructive takeaway. Tell me what to do, right?

[The] advice to consumers is to cut their sugar intake by two-thirds: Reduce the current 15 percent average daily calories from added sugars to 5 percent, as recommended by the American Heart Association, easiest if done gradually. Learn to routinely peruse packaged food labels for the kinds and amounts of sugars they contain. 

But then the writer notes this: "a half-cup of Talenti gelato can contain 22 grams of sugar."  To which I have only one response: I'll give you my Talenti when you pry it from my cold, dead hands ;)

Source

Food is not about calories

For years, I have told anyone who would listen to me to eat fruits and not merely drink fruit juice.  For multiple reasons: Juices typically have added sugar; fruits supply fibers too; and eating fruits make the jaw and teeth work.

Of course, rare is a person who listens to me.

Food (and ill health) is not merely about calories.  It is about a whole lot more.  It is about sugars. It is about timeliness.  It is about fiber intake.  It is about, ... well, you get the point.

However, people seem to want some kind of an easy bottom-line, and "calories" meet that want.  I have  even reminded students, a lot, that all calories are not created equal.  The calories from a soda are not the same as calories from an apple.  Yet, the focus is increasingly on calories.

It is well past the time to kill the idea of food calories! Consider, for instance, how the calorie calculation messes things up:

Calorie counts are based on how much heat a foodstuff gives off when it burns in an oven. But the human body is far more complex than an oven. When food is burned in a laboratory it surrenders its calories within seconds. By contrast, the real-life journey from dinner plate to toilet bowl takes on average about a day, but can range from eight to 80 hours depending on the person. A calorie of carbohydrate and a calorie of protein both have the same amount of stored energy, so they perform identically in an oven. But put those calories into real bodies and they behave quite differently. And we are still learning new insights: American researchers discovered last year that, for more than a century, we’ve been exaggerating by about 20% the number of calories we absorb from almonds.

If people listened to me, then they would systematically think about what they eat, and also think about the cultural culinary traditions that sustained people.  Like the green jackfruit, for instance.

Food researchers are trumpeting the potential for jackfruit to become a staple crop on a warming planet. “The thing about jackfruit is that it’s huge – one of the biggest tree fruits in the world,” said Danielle Nierenberg, president of the Food Tank, a Washington DC-based food study institute. “It’s large enough that families can eat one fruit for a long time. It takes relatively little care, doesn’t need a lot of irrigation and is resilient to pests and disease. So if we’re thinking of foods for the future, jackfruit is what we should be thinking about.”

In the global existence of ours, imagine incorporating into our lives the food traditions that have sustained cultures throughout the world.  We could easily have healthy foods that are also tasty, and we could at the same time have a remarkable variety of foods.  Instead of adopting such good things from around the world, we seem to be hell bent on getting hooked on to the bad habits that the modern food industry brainwashes us about. What is the point of being "educated" when we cannot seem to take care of our own selves?

Are you stressed?

As one who has always loved puns, when a younger person recently talked about being stressed, I couldn't help sharing with her a neat word play with "stressed."

It all depended on how one looked at "stressed."  From the last letter to the first, it is nothing but "desserts."

Apparently there is a more serious connection between stressed and desserts--there is a "desire for chocolate and other carbs during tough times."  But why so?

It is all because of one organ. 

No, not that organ; you and your dirty mind!  I am referring to the brain, of course:

Although our brain accounts for just 2 percent of our body weight, the organ consumes half of our daily carbohydrate requirements—and glucose is its most important fuel. Under acute stress the brain requires some 12 percent more energy, leading many to reach for sugary snacks.

But, what if one is chronically stressed, which then makes them eat all the time?

Often the only way out of such eating habits is to leave a permanently stressful environment. So although many tend to be hard on themselves for eating too many sweets or carbs, the reasons behind such craving aren’t always due to a lack of self-control and might require a deeper look into lifestyle and stressful situations—past and present. Once the root cause of stress addressed, eating habits could ultimately resolve themselves.

Eating is not always just about the eating.  And not eating can also cause problems:

If a person craves chocolate in the afternoon, I advise him or her to eat chocolate to stay fit and keep his or her spirits up. That’s because at work people are often stressed and the brain has an increased need for energy. If one doesn’t eat anything, it’s possible the brain will use glucose from the body, intended for fat and muscle cell use, and in turn secrete more stress hormones. Not only does this make one miserable, it can also increase the risk of heart attacks, stroke or depression in the long run. Alternatively, the brain can save on other functions, but that reduces concentration and performance.

Yup, have a dessert if that's what can straighten you up every once in a while.  But, if you are leaning on desserts every time, maybe you need to look at what the stress agents are, and change them for the better.

Sugar, Sugar

In a recent class discussion, when a student beat up on "corporations," I responded with a statement that perhaps was not exactly what she and the class expected from me.

"It is easy to beat up on corporations.  But, keep in mind that without us people consuming what the corporations are selling, they can't make their profits.  Right?  Which means it is really we the people who are largely to be blamed if we think something is wrong.  As an example, imagine what would happen if we decided that drinking carbonated sugary drinks is unhealthy and, therefore, stopped buying them.  But we don't, and Coca Cola makes its profits. Yes?"

Coca Cola makes awesome ads, yes. It tempts the kids, true.



I remember being a kid and practically salivating after the likes of Limca.  That's what we kids do.  But, as adults, we have the power to resist, right?

It is also a selfish act to say no to those products.  It is our health, dammit.  We can and should say "fuck off" to all those companies that try their best to sell us crap that is unhealthy.

However, it is tough to beat back that biological response to those unhealthy products that are all sugar and salt.  Did you notice that those corporations never attempt to make gazillions from selling other tastes like sour and bitter?  As biological creatures we respond to sugar and salt.  It reflects even in the language we use. We sugarcoat things. We share salty gossip.

But, first, we do need to acknowledge the reality:

an overabundance of simple carbohydrates, and sugar in particular, is the No. 1 problem in modern diets. Sugar is the driving force behind the diabetes and obesity epidemics.

Keep in mind that sugar is a carbohydrate. And one that quickly rushes through the system.  Our affluence has created this problem!

And, for most of us, the problem begins right at the very beginning of the day:

Many breakfast foods that sound as if they’re healthy are in fact laden with sugar. ... In the United States, as the science writer Gary Taubes says, breakfasts have become “lower-fat versions of dessert.”

Yep, this is all the more an American problem!

In much of the world, including large parts of Asia, breakfast is a savory meal, not a sweet one, just as lunch and dinner are.

When I visit India, I am often reminded of the awesome range of savory breakfast. But, even there, I am regimented.  I end up having either idlis and vadai, or puri/potato and vadai.  Note that I have vadai in either combo--it is packed with protein, which is the best way to start the day.  If only I could do that here in the US! ;)

It’s normal to have some sugar in your diet. The problem is all of the processed sugar that has snuck into the modern diet. It’s so prevalent that you need a strategy for avoiding it. Once you come up with a strategy, eating a healthy amount of sugar isn’t nearly as hard as it sometimes seems.

Not hard at all. You can have your cake and eat it too ;)