Sugar is the Problem

Today’s New York Times has yet another article on the problems of sugar in the modern diet.

Since 1985 the incidence of Type 2 Diabetes has quintupled, which is just the most obvious effect of the similar increase in sugars in virtually every kind of food that is prepared by the industry food giants. They intended to make people addicted to their food, and succeeded wildly.

This past week I was out at meetings most of the day and on the way home passed a Kentucky Fried Chicken store, and thought about the fact that I had not eaten any KFC in years, and decided to take home some of the chicken and coleslaw, thinking we could take off the breading and it would be within my carb margin of error. The first bite was a shock, for the chicken didn’t at all taste like I remembered it, and was in fact quite cloyingly sweet; even though I peeled away almost all the outside breading, but you could still taste the sweet–and excess salt. The coleslaw was also very sweet, and I threw out the bulk of the meal.  It was not just that the food was sweeter, but it was a different sort of sweet which I take to by corn syrup. I know my palate is now used to very little sweet of any kind, but that alone does not account for the bad taste, not just sweetness.

I also paid the price later in the day with gut issues, so I doubt I will ever be entering a KFC again.

I always think about how rare it was to see anyone grossly obese in the 1950-70s, and how very common it is now. Things have most certainly changed, and the main change is sugar-starch-artifical sweets in all packaged and prepared foods.

Yours in discovery,

Nan aka Sugarbaby