People are sleep walking through their decisions. Habits and traditions help us manage thousands of choices so that we don’t have to think about them constantly.
I heard a story of a young man who married his high school sweetheart. After the wedding and honeymoon they settled in a small apartment. The wife insisted that every second Sunday they must cook Turkey as this was the culture she grew up with, the husband obliged.
Whenever the wife would cook the turkey, she would cut it to fit the small pan for grilling and she would throw away all the extra meat that didn’t fit in the pan. When the husband asked her about it, she said, “This is how my momma used to make it”. The next day the husband drove to his mother-in-law’s house to try to understand the origin of this culture. The bride’s mother told the son-in-law, that, “This is how my momma used to do it”.
The husband finally went to visit the grandmother of his wife, she had lived through World War 2. After relating stories of her upbringing, the grandmother said, “I used to throw away the excess meat because we didn’t have any fridge in my home”
This short story depicts the danger of traditions and sacred cows. One of the sacred cows in the nutritional world is sugar. Why do we consume so much sugar? Is sugar required by our bodies and why is sugar so prevalent in our diets? the article will seek to answer those questions.
The Biology of diets.
Many people are looking for the ideal diet that will satisfy all human physiological needs, however, before we discuss diets we need to understand the biology of our diets.
Firstly, all animals require two materials for growth and survival. One material which can be burned (oxidised) to yield the energy needed for the process of living. The materials for energy production are good carbohydrates, fats and protein.
The second material is a chemical composition of cells organised together that makes up the living animal. The body must be given materials to supply energy, grow and repair cells.
The source of these essential materials is foods and drink such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, mineral elements, and water. Every animal including humans need these components for life and sustenance.
All animals require the similar nutrients which come from food. Different species of animals get these nutrients from different diets, for example some are carnivorous (meat-eating only), some are herbivorous (plant-eating) and others are omnivorous (eating both plants and meat).
Food properties.
Naturally food contains two different properties: palatability and nutritional value. Palatability is the primary determinant of consumer acceptance at the point of consumption. Palatability refers to the foods chosen to make up the total diet, it’s different from species to species. The diet may be different but the nutritional needs that must be satisfied are the same for all species.
Animals may choose diets that are palatable, but the diets need to supply all the required nutrients. In an ideal world, palatability should be a guide to nutritional value, this is not always the case.
Our eating habits are formed in childhood and children like sweet foods. Does this make it right? Is sugar good for them because it’s palatable? Not at all as we will learn. When it comes to humans palatability doesn’t equal nutritional value.
The origin of the human diet.
Our earliest ancestors were squirrel-like primates and their diet was vegetarian. They survived on fruits, nuts, berries and leaves. The rains started to decrease, the earth entered a long drought. Forests shrank, their place was taken by open savannahs.
In order to survive these harsh conditions, the vegetarian diet was forsaken, and humans started hunting.
Our diets transformed towards an omnivorous one in this era. Humans diets were made up of nuts, berries, leaves and meat, it was rich in protein, moderate in fats and usually poor in carbohydrate. These carbohydrates mainly came from fruits and not from the leaves and roots.
Two Food Revolutions.
Humans and animals found their food supply from hunting and scavenging other animals and consumption of wild vegetation. Humans only became food producers in the recent past.
The Agricultural food production era started to grow in three areas. The Fertile Crescent (Israel, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iran) with the cultivation of wheat, barley, lentils, peas and domestication of cattle, sheep and goats. Then China started farming rice, soybeans, yams and pigs. Operations also began in Central America mainly focussed on maize, beans and guinea pigs were raised. The cultivation of cereals started on this era.
Humans stopped being nomadic and settled in socially organised communities. This gave birth to civilisation, the arts, inventions and discoveries.
Agriculture yielded more food; populations grew as people stopped dying from food shortages. It was in this era that human beings drastically changed their diet. The diet was changed to being rich in carbohydrates and poor in protein and good fats. Humans started consuming processed carbohydrates mainly starches.
The second food revolution was scientific: genetics and the breeding of improved varieties of plants and animals for food; engineering on drainage and irrigation, the discovery of synthetic fertilizers, weed killers and pesticides.
Modern methods of food preservation by canning, dehydration and deep freezing came out of this era. The production and preservation of foods led to affluent countries to have a wide choice of foods regardless of season or geography. More options were introduced to please people’s palates however the question remained, did these technologies provide foods which met our nutritional requirements?
A brief history of sugar.
Our ancestors could satisfy their sweetness by eating a fruit, they would be lucky if they found honey produced by wild bees. In the agricultural era humans found out they could produce a crude sort of sugar by extracting and drying the sap of the sugar cane.
In the late 1800s sugar was a luxury and until 200 years ago domestic sugar boxes were provided with locks and key. The development of the sugar plantations in the Caribbean based on the slave trade propelled the global sugar industry. The demand of sugar was so great and the production began to be lucrative.
In the middle of the 18 century, the production of high-yielding sugar cane (later the sugar beet) was discovered. The efficiency of the extraction of sugar and making of raw sugar and finally the process of refining the sugar made the price of sugar fall, demand grew, and consumption rose to exponetial levels. Many legislators in countries have taxed sugar to provide revenue, like tobacco and alcohol, but have failed to stop its consumption. The average American consumes 80 kilograms of sugar per year.
Humans have a natural liking for sweets things, primitive people could satisfy this desire by eating fruit or honey, they obtained necessary nutrients such as Vitamins C. Currently we can satisfy the desire by consuming foods and drinks that have no nutritional value except calories. As an example, you can buy an orange drink that is attractive in colour then the true orange juice. The orange drink will be sweeter in taste, have more flavour and cheaper but contain no Vitamin C.
People prefer palatability in foods and drinks, the sales of sugary stuff increases all the time, the global market for sugar is vlaued at a whopping $97 Billion in 2017.
Many people believe that foods that are palatable must have a high nutritional value, on the other hand, others believe that foods with little flavour (Not palatable) has no nutritional value. This is the major reason why humans consume so much sugar. We are equating palatability with nutritional value.
We need to go back to the old diet which contains all the nutrients; fruits, veggies, protein, and low carbs. When food tastes good and sweet its doesn’t mean that it contains all the nutritional needs of the human body.
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