Sugar Is Now Considered A Drug (So Just How Much Are You Dosing Yourself Or Your Kids)

Amy Ziff’s take on sugar… Is sugar really a drug? Can we actually be addicted to it? Are you? And how about your kids? Those are frightening thoughts. There are a lot of people in the health world who have been attacking sugars lately.  I have to admit my first thought was, “Sugar? A drug? Aren’t there better things to go after?” But the truth is that it’s being consumed in quantities 39% greater than what was consumed in the 1950s. Here’s what that looks like: The average American eats about 3 pounds of sugar per week. That’s over 150 pounds per year. (Actually, it’s figured at 165lbs of sugar per person, per year to be precise.) Recently, the World Health Organization lowered their recommendation for allowable amounts of sugars in the diet suggesting people consume less than 5% of their total daily calories as sugar.  (To provide some context a can of soda contains about 10 teaspoons of sugar.) Sugar and any of its sweet cousins, sucrose, fructose, agave etc – whether derived from fruit or plant sources – is in everything premade and/or processed. Added sugars are found in so-called “fruit” snacks , cereals, breakfast bars, chips, breads, crackers, frozen pizza, tomato sauce, nut butters, yogurt, ketchup, mayo and pretty much every processed item in the grocery store. Recent research suggests that being choosy about what kinds of sugars we serve (and don’t serve), feed (and don’t feed) our children matters as there are some bas...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - Category: Child Development Authors: Tags: Perspectives Eating & Nutrition Healthy Family Eating Sugar Source Type: blogs