Banning Sugar

The food police here in the U.S. are now after sugar ! This is a problem for a sugar junkie like me, and I think unfair to rage a politically correct assault to demonize one food as the cause of the growing fatness of America. Surely, Americans are too fat. But is sugar the culpret.....or perhaps is the real villain is both eating too much sugar and eating too much of everything else? I wonder also if governments should have the right regulate what we eat when the content is harmless. Sugar is an empty calorie, not harmful in itself unless, like all other foods we eat, it is eaten in overly large quantities. Maybe the blame for the obesity should be that we simply eat too much and exercise too little, not that sugar makes us fat.

Government is now in full sugar demonization mode as some states and cites have implemented "sugar taxes" to discourage eating it, Disney has announced it will no longer advertise food with sugar on it's TV networks radio station and its web sites, New York has pans to ban the sale of over sized soft drinks and on and on. Ironically, while the known dangerous cancer causing cigarette is allowed to exist freely in the market place, a harmless substance like sugar is declared as to be evil. And what about the devastating health effects of alcohol? I hear nothing about banning that. How crazy! Sugar has been consumed in large quantities for thousand years, and is low in calories (15 calories per tablespoon).

Evidence of the folly of banning sugar laden foods can be seen in the fact that overall consumption of sugary soft drinks has decreased dramatically in the past two decades. So saying we are fat because we drink too much coke is absurd. Though eating too much sugar causes many health problems, so does eating too much of anything else. Consumers do not need governments to regulate what they eat as long as the food they consume is not a toxic product (as is tobacco). Instead, advising and educating the consumer of the hazards of eating too many sweets is a more reasonable approach to curbing the sugar excess. Adding a bit of sugar to food can make our food taste better. It is a natural product and not a "bad" substance. What Americans need to control obesity is self control, limiting the amount of all foods they eat. But then, that takes will power and wisdom. Banning sugar does not.

This is an age of plenty. We eat too much, we play with technology too much, spend too much on "junk" at malls and stores we don't need or use etc. It's the quantity of sugar people eat that is harmful not the sugar itself. Demonizing a single harmless food will only make the public less attentive to real food issues. Obesity is a problem to be addressed, but to single out one component of one's diet as a way to cure the problem is idiotic. Better to forget that stupidity and enjoy a sugary cinnamon roll today!