What is your relationship to sugar? What do you think about the proposal of banning the underage purchase of sugary products? How about taxing purchases more highly or an anti-sugar educational campaign? Do you admire the researchers who came out with the report for going against powerful companies like Coca-Cola?
I agree with the author of the article in almost everything. My mother has a tendency to search advices from various sources of which one is her friend who studied Ayurveda, the old Indian medicine. The essence of this philosophy is that almost all health problems are derived from a problem in digestion or the diet itself. Quite early I was explained that the processed sugar is more difficult to digest than any natural sugar like glucose or fructose, thus I believe it burdens our digestive system more than it gives any benefits, apart from being tasty.
ReplyDeleteIt is clear that sugar is the fastest source of energy and this certainly applies to the less complicated forms of it, but I think that a regular modern human doesn’t need so much energy as the sugar is eventually consumed in tons. We must admit that sugar is over-consumed in our society. Beginning from small children being given sweets as a reward for good behaviour through teenagers consuming high amounts of goodies and energy drinks ending in adults addicted to coffee and other unnecessary energy suppliers. It was just this morning that I had a kid snack (a fruit sauce) and found out there is sugar added to it. I was astonished at how the production profit from giving unnecessary sugar to four-month old babies! Honestly, it was too sweet indeed. People didn’t learn to live healthily and the most fundamental problem is that we don’t exercise enough. It is not about going to an expensive fitness but about not being lazy and use the stairs and walk on foot more. Once I read an article about the health effects of fast walk, it was stated that even half an hour of walk a day reduces the chance of cardio-vascular problems, cancer and many other modern diseases by similar amount as a 10-minute exercise.
But back to the topic. I fully agree that higher taxes should be imposed on sugary goods but am not so sure about the age limit. Since the article doesn’t state that any research showed that processed sugar has negative effects on the child’s development and I don’t know about any such fact either, I would assume that they have the same right to buy this kind of goods as adults have. My suggestion would be lowering the amount of sugar in confectionery and making high-sugar goods and energy drinks available only for adults. Last but not least, I am concern about the artificial saccharine in all sugar-free goods. My mother found out that one kind, namely aspartame, which is often used in soft drinks was proven carcinogenic.
But the most crucial role as always stays on the parents. If kids are given sweets as a reward and are told only about that sugar cause caries, they would remain prone to indulge themselves as well as their kids with this furtive, slow killer.
I love sweets. Always have and probably always will, no reports on health are ever going to change that. But the thing is that I know how to control my urge to eat such, as the writer of this article termed them, arch enemies of health and villains of obesity. I know when I have had enough and when I shouldn’t eat any more, and so far this intuition of mine must be accurate, as I have developed no health problems and certainly do not consider myself to be obese.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the issue with temptations like sugar-overloaded products lies not in the fact that they are available to the public, but that most people have not learned to control their desires and resist eating something they shouldn’t. If less people demanded such goods, there would be no need to ‘fight ferocious campaigns’ against them, wasting time and money in the process. It all stems down to the way and environment in which individuals were brought up. I once had a neighbor that implemented the most remarkable and rewarding aspects into her children’s upbringing. One of such wonders was that as treats she would give them ‘ice veggies’ (I don’t quite remember the name they had for it). I actually witnessed on multiple occasions two three and five year olds jumping up and down with joy, yelling for peas, baby carrots and other bite-size vegetables from the freezer. I don’t remember ever seeing them eat any sweets, and they didn’t mind at all.
Similarly to Kika, I assume that imposing higher taxes on extremely-sugar-laden foods would be rewarding, as then kids would think twice about wasting their limited allowance on such products at the school buffet or local supermarket. However, then I would also think it proper for such a health-concerned government to lower the prices on groceries that are crucial for a healthy body, like fruits and vegetables, because they are definitely over-priced.
On the other hand, the idea of placing an age limit of seventeen years on products with higher levels of sugar just shocks me. Would it actually be considered illegal for me to eat a chocolate bar? What’s next? A legal age for consuming baked potatoes because they are thought to contribute to Type 2 diabetes? If every product in our society has been found to contribute to some disease or ailment should be banned or provided in restricted amounts to the public, there would be nothing left to consume. Maybe water. Actually, not even water is safe; drinking large amounts could lead to water intoxication.
Ultimately, I believe that people that want to live a healthy lifestyle can do so by being self-disciplined and informed about the importance of a healthy diet, sleep and exercise. Parents should make responsible decisions for kids that are yet unable to do so, but from a certain age each individual should be capable of being responsible for themselves. The government should not intervene into private lives by making restrictions, but by improving and providing further beneficial opportunities, which are not over-priced, for the people.
Sweets are the one thing that I can never give up on eating. I don’t remember a day I have not eaten something sweet. Similarly to Jana, I eat sugar products my whole life, and I have not developed any disease yet. However, I think that the possibility of developing diabetes or heart disease will significantly increase after a decade. Other that the significant amount of sugar and calories in sweats, I have never realized how harmful eating sugar can be.
ReplyDeleteEating sugar-based food products and beverages has definitely become popular in our society. I think that people don’t realize how much the consumption of sugar is harmful to our body. Despite the numerous warnings by health authorities of the ill effects of sugar, the majority of the population is still consuming sugar on a daily basis in some form or other. I think that people ignore the warnings because the urge of eating something sweet and delicious can be very strong. Sugars elevate mood, relieve stress or ease depression and makes us feel happy. Controlling sugar cravings is definitely the best solution to the issue. The best way to control your body is by drinking water, eating fruits and vegetables instead of sugar. If people really cant control their urge, diet specialist say that eating glucose powder is another solution. It does not contain any artificial or manufactured carbohydrates, just the natural one, glucose, which is not as harmful to our body.
Like Jana, I don’t agree with placing an age limit of seventeen years on products rich on sugar. Our society has become so used to eating sugar on an everyday bases, that I cant even imagine a world without it. The idea of categorizing sweets with alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs seems unnecessary. After all, sugar is not as harmful as cigarettes or doesn’t have effects like alcohol. However, imposing higher taxes on to products high on sugar seems to be quite fair. This will make people to buy a fewer of these products.
In my opinion advertising against products rich on sugar is a great idea. As I already mentioned, I think that people are not sufficiently informed about the harm that sugar can cause. Advertisements would definitely help. There already has been a campaign done by the NYC government including posters and videos that convince people into drinking less soft drink and more water or milk. Each video is informing people about soft drinks (that contain 16 packs of sugar)contribute to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Advertising campaigns like this one should definitely become more common.
Actually, I don’t think banning products high on sugar up to a certain age limit would be a bad idea after all. Note that this goes for items that contain high levels of sugar only. I’m not saying that sweets in general should be banned – just the most dangerous ones. But then again, how would one enforce such a restriction? How do we monitor the consumption of such goods? Shall we forbid selling candies to minors? Even if we do so, parents, whose views remain unaffected by the ban, will still be able to supply their children with the sweet treats, in which case we are back at square one.
DeleteI don’t think taxation would serve as a useful solution to the problem either. Sure, it might convince a bunch of people to forego sweets, but in the end, I believe the results would be the same as the ones regarding alcohol and tobacco. People will still buy them, regardless of their price. Nevertheless, it is not a bad solution in terms of government profit, however, as far as dealing with health issues is concerned, I doubt such a change would be of any use.
Last but not least, I can claim with utmost certainty that advertising against confectionery will result in a failure. Advertising against the company giants mentioned in the article can prove to be a treacherous enterprise. The thin line between what’s healthy and what’s not blurs more and more as we continue to speak of this “sugary affliction”, and I seriously doubt that the giants will succumb to the pressure of ambiguous scientific claims as was the case with the tobacco industry.
In conclusion, it is the people that should decide for themselves whether eating products high on sugar is good for them, for there are not many forces in this world that can convince them otherwise.
Since I was a little child, sugar was something rare in our family. We never had chocolate bars, chips and sodas in our household. My mother didn’t buy it, because she knew it’s bad for us. Until now, I eat sweets rarely, and when I do, I eat them unprocessed, as in fruits. On the other side of the world, in the USA many families don’t know that sugar is bad. The reason why, is that they are used to them, since they were toddlers.
ReplyDeleteThe main reason why so many people in the USA are obese is that the unhealthy food, which contains processed sugar, is very cheap. The craziest thing is that for example, a McDonald’s menu is much cheaper than to prepare a meal from healthy food you buy in a supermarket. Many people may not realize that for example, nuggets consists of cow skin, little bones, eyes and other waste, which is left off a cow, after all the good meat is cut off. However, that’s not even the unhealthy part of a nugget. The ingredients, which make a chicken nugget unhealthy, are chemicals which at first neutralize the taste of the mixture of the waste and then they add other chemicals which add a taste of meat to the nuggets. I personally think it’s fascinating, how the government can allow the firms to produce this mixture which makes people obese and kills millions of people every year.
At the end, I think that banning the underage purchase of sugary products is not right because even underage kids have the right to eat processed sugar but in a smaller amount. What I would do is purchase taxing more highly, to make healthy food cheaper and create and anti-sugar educational campaign and ban the production of food that is as unhealthy, as nuggets.