Fitness News #59 - Why our food is laced with sugar

Came upon an article about how some yoghurt was laced with sugar.  I eat a lot of yoghurt, so I went and checked the sugar contents.  The ones I ate had between 5% and 8% sugar content.  But it didn't take me long to find one that had 30% sugar content. The marketing on the outside gave you the appearance you were eating something really healthy,  after all, it was yoghurt with strawberries.  Looking further it appears that the average Aussie consumes 42kg of sugar per year.  That's 160,860 calories, which could potentiality convert to a hell of a lot of extra midriff.

So why do manufactures put so much sugar in the products that fill our supermarkets?

Well the primary objective of most companies is to drive maximum profit and the food industry is no different

The Sugar situation

Why its there

1. It's incredibly cheap, a quick look on the web shows a price of 50c a kilo [source].  Big companies can drive even lower prices.  Overseas they even go to the extent of using corn sirup to cut the price further.
2. Can I emphasis the price again, adding sugar can lower the overall price, as it can reduce the quantities of more expensive ingredients and/or allow the use of lower quality products as it masks the taste.
3. Sugar is addictive, yes addictive.  Wanna read over the studies on this till your eyes glaze over, then check Wikipedia.  The web is full of articles such as Beat your sugar addiction. And this crucial fact leads to their deal closure;
4. To make you buy their products, they need them to be highly desirable and what not a better way but to reward your sugar addiction.  Don't you feel good after a sugar hit.

What you should do

1.  Figure out how much sugar and of what type you are currently consuming.
2. Determine how much and what type of sugar should be in your diet.  What's the difference between sucrose and fructose?  Good knowledge = good decisions
3. Determine how you can migrate from where you are to where you want to be.  For some this is a simple switch, but for most, we will need to phase out the bad things over a period of time.

What if I did nothing

 The major food manufacturers will love you, your contributing to their profits.  Isn't that what they want you to do.

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