Sugar is a crystal carbohydrate. It comes from corn, sugar cane, or a sugar beet. It then gets "refined", meaning crystalized and added to our foods, or put in a jar to sprinkle over our plates and into our coffees.
The USDA reports that we americans consume some 305 pounds in sugars each year. 305 pounds! Now you think, "No way!" But yes way. If you are an average american, you eat out several times each week, and fast foods want to be tasty, so they add loads of sugars. What's worse, is they do their best to make a buck, and doing that requires replacing natural sugars with high fructose corn syrup, a foreign substance to the digestive system. So foreign, the the liver can only process through 1/4 of the calories, leaving the remaining 3/4 to be burned as fuel or stored as fat.
As an average american, you drink several sodas per week, with 12 teaspoons of sugar in each. You drink sports drinks, 8 teaspoons on average and fruit juices, because hey, they're healthy! But an average fruit drink has as much sugar as soda.
So back to that bowl of candy still sitting by your front door. Sure its going to be tasty, but rest assured, eat the entire bowl and you will still receive zero, yes zero nutritional value.
So think twice about keeping it around. You can tell yourself that you will make it last and just have an occasional piece, but beware, not only is sugar great tasting, it is also one of those ingestibles that just begs for you to have more.
Well, enjoy that bowl of sugar if you will. Do it slowly if you can, and if you can't, consider a contribution to the landfill as an acceptable option. After all, giving it to someone else will provide them no nutritional value either.
Happy Halloween!
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