Blog 3177 – 07.13.2024

Sugar Was Meant To Be A Sweet Treat

For much of human history most if not all of our waking hours were spent hunting and gathering food. Our diet changed with the seasons. In spring and summer we ate mainly fruits, berries, and maybe some suitable vegetables and seeds. In the autumn and winter we ate roots and meat, ideal for storing a little fat reserves for the lean times between finding our next meal.

What sugar we got was mostly from the fruits and berries that were only available in season and the percent of fructose (sugar) was way less than the sugar bomb fruit varieties that are grown and sold today. Refined sugar is a fairly recent addition to our diets and was originally used sparingly because it was expensive and difficult to process. Only the very rich had it in abundance and they were far more likely to be over weight and to suffer from gout and other excess sugar related diseases.

As an anecdote from my own young life, I can recall that when my mom and dad did the weekly grocery shopping on Thursdays evenings when dad got his weekly paycheck, in addition to the food that was planned to last our family a full week, except for milk and bread, they would always buy a sweet treat for my brother and me, a ten cent bar of candy which was a third to half bigger than the nickel version. My brother got a Baby Ruth and I got a Butterfinger. They were our favorites. We devoured them at once.

On the weekends while the five pound Domino Sugar sack was still full, Mom would bake cookies, usually oatmeal, but sometimes sugar cookies or peanut butter cookies. She always had this unrealistic idea of having a big cookie jar filled with cookies to eat throughout the week, but my dad, my brother and I who were Cookies Monsters long before Jim Henson’s Sesame Street character of the same name, gobbled down each batch as she took them out of the oven. We exasperated my Mom so, yet even she had to admit that warm cookies with ice cold milk was a sweet treat indeed. Mom was lucky to even get a couple for herself and at our house the cookie jar was just a decoration always empty of cookies and cash.

Our bodies were never intended to get our fuel from sugar primarily. We were designed to burn fat and to only to store a little for lean times when the food rations were short and uncertain like the deep winter when even game was hard to find.

We would do well to mimic our ancestors eating habits, by eating fruits, vegetables, nuts, and berries in season, and for those carnivores among us, by limiting the portion sizes of the meats we eat. As for sugar, we should try to remember that it was always meant to be a sweet treat not a regular staple in our diets.

Brother Dave, you have quit preaching and gone to meddling. Not really, my friend, just offering an encouraging word or two on how to, in the words of Mr. Spock, “Live Long and Prosper.” CUT THE SWEETS! Sorry for shouting, but you are already sweet enough.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

(Reformed sugar junkie)

David White