From the moment we first tasted lactose (a type of sugar) in milk as infants, humans have acquired a taste for sweetness and learned to regard it as a pleasure. Sugar and sugary food makers took advantage of this human taste tendency and turned sugar into the world’s very first mass consumer product. As we grew older, we began to satisfy our sweet liking with this product, sucrose (table sugar), and this becomes habit-forming.
As a result, today the refined white substance (sucrose) we usually call “sugar” is here to stay.
In Malaysia, this sugar has become a necessity — it’s ranked among other food staples, like rice and cooking oil, and is a price-controlled item. A shortage of sugar is considered a national crisis — consumers, eateries, drinks operators and food producers find themselves in a bind without it — and is newspapers’ front-page fodder. Such is our dependence on sugar — and its control of our lives.
But did you know: Sugar is not meant to be a part of our natural diet. It is alien to the human system and is totally unnecessary in our food. Our early ancestors never ate “sugar”. Early writers and historians did not have a word for this white substance we now call “sugar”. And the old holy books of the world’s leading religions do not even mention it.
Sugar was introduced into the human diet only after A.D.500. Since then, every society introduced to refined sugar has been immediately hooked on its delights — and, unfortunately, also on its ill effects.
This very common everyday product that is falsely believed to be harmless is responsible for many health problems we find in our society today, mainly diabetes (now a growing threat worldwide), and even major killers like cancer and heart disease.
Beware the Sugar Trap. Here’s the unpalatable truth about sugar, a poison in sweet disguise, the most dangerous white powder known to man — and modern mankind’s greatest curse.
Unnatural
Sugar is a basic element found in starchy food. But refined sugar, the white stuff we call “sugar’ is not real food. It’s a man-made poison in sweet disguise.
Refined white sugar is an industrially processed chemical not found in nature, and is not fit for human consumption. It is devoid of nutrients and acts more like a drug than a food. It’s been called “the most dangerous white powder known to man”. In fact, it does more damage to human health than any other poison, drug or narcotic.
We call this denatured substance food because we have been trained to like it from birth. We can’t imagine eating food or drinks without it because we’re addicted to its taste. And we continue to love it and eat it with abandon, and give it to our children — all because the sugar pushers, the powerful sugar industry and the giant processed food industry — make us, and keep us, that way.
Big Business has a way to ensure that you eat sugar regularly, even if you don’t add it to your food. Sugar lurks — often in sickeningly high amounts — in many food products, even in those where you would least expect to find it.
Unhealthy
The white granulated sugar we add to our foods and drinks is also known as sucrose. Sucrose is a carbohydrate and is made up of 2 simple sugars — fructose (which is found naturally in plants, including fruits) and glucose (which the body manufactures itself from healthy, whole foods).
Unlike naturally occurring sucrose, however, sucrose in the form of white granulated sugar has gone through a refining process, which leaves it with no nutritional value. Stripped of all its nutritional value, refined white sugar is actually an “empty calorie” food. In other words, table sugar is dead food.
Sugar is the body’s greatest toxic invader. Nothing in the diet promotes disease and ageing more than excess sugar.
Sugar is poisonous to the body. There are over 60 ailments that have been associated with sugar consumption in the medical literature. They include cancer, asthma, allergies, diabetes, heart disease, and many more.
In addition, in order for sugar to be metabolised in the body, it has to draw from your vitamin and mineral reserves and therefore is responsible for depleting mineral and vitamin levels, which in itself, creates numerous health problems.
Unsafe
Sugar is a long-term chemical poison and is devastating to our health. Not only is it toxic, it is also addictive. According to an American report, about 95% of people are addicted to it to some degree or other.
Sugar’s damaging effects begin early, from the day a baby is born and is fed sugar in its milk formula. Even mother’s milk is contaminated with it if the mother eats sugar.
Due to these, and the fact that it is considered a food and is eaten in such massive quantities, it is believed that sugar does more damage to the body than any other poison, drug or narcotic.
Unnecessary
Refined sugar did not exist anywhere in the world until about A.D.500. For hundreds of thousands or millions of years, man did not take sugar — and they lived a healthier life without it.
Our ancestors had zero refined sugar intake 15 centuries ago. Today, the world consumes hundreds of millions of tonnes of it!
As David Ransom points out in New Internationalist (December 2003), humans evolved into roughly our current shape long before sucrose was even invented. If we were now to stop eating it altogether, no one would starve and everyone would be a good deal healthier.
All the sugar we need occurs quite naturally in anything nutritious we care to eat.
Read the following informative articles about sugar in Utusan Konsumer July-August 2008:
And read more about the toxic and addictive effects of sugar in the CAP Guide, How Sugar Destroys Your Health