Our body doesn't need refined sugar to be healthy, on the contrary: it doesn't tolerate it well. Nevertheless, sugar cane for the production of sugar is now cultivated on 26 million hectares of land worldwide. Sugar is not only a billion-dollar business, sugar consumption gives us one of the greatest health crises of mankind: obesity and the associated diseases, which usually end fatally. More and more people are overweight, fatty livers, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes have not only become a challenge for our healthcare system, they also promise healthy profits for the healthcare industry in the future. How did it come to this? People like sweets. This is genetically arranged because in nature sweets are always edible. In nature, however, sugar always occurs in combination with fiber. These help us to tolerate sugar better. More than two and a half thousand years ago, resourceful people in India found out that pure sucrose, the refined sugar, can be obtained from sugar cane. This pure sugar played no role in the economy or society for a long time. Only after the conquests was it traded dearly and enjoyed by a few wealthy people in coffee or tea or on holidays. It wasn't until industrialization that things really started to move. Not only coffee and tea spread to all stands, but also sugar.
Image: Imago Tschanz Hofmann, sugar cane plantation Jamaica around 1880 In the 19th century, sugar became a large and secure global business for the North, with white gold making a lot of money in the North. At that time, beet sugar had already been invented, but since the European fields were needed for food production, sugar was extracted from sugar cane in the south by slavery and sold to people of all classes in the north as a cheap sweetener and preservative. Sugar and slavery were closely related. Zucker takes off after the Second World War The sugar issue became really bad for our health after the Second World War, because only then did sugar consumption begin to rise to such unhealthy levels. 50 years ago, around 28 kg per capita was consumed annually, today a whopping 42 kg. That is more than 115 g of pure sugar per day. Sugar cane is no longer sufficient as a raw product for the production of sugar. The substance is now also obtained from beets or corn to satisfy the current world hunger for sweets. Even more reasons for the health crisis caused by hyperglycemia because the food industry wanted to produce food as cheaply as possible after World War II, it was flavored with large amounts of sugar and white flour. Dietary fiber has been largely removed from industrially produced foods. This development makes sugar particularly difficult for us to tolerate today, because without dietary fiber the metabolism of sugar in the body becomes more difficult. That's why today in England, for example, 5 million people already suffer from type 2 diabetes. Strong upward trend.
Hidden Sugar Today, sugar is not only found in sweets, it is also found under a wide variety of names in pizza, sausages, salad dressings and ketchup, bread and much more. This makes it particularly difficult to reduce sugar consumption. Fructose as a supposedly healthy sugar alternative For a long time now, it has not only been simple table sugar that has been added to our food; for a number of years, large quantities of fructose and other types of sugar have also been added to many foods. Read the ingredients list of a soup cube, you will be amazed at the types of sugar you will find in it. The crazy thing about sugar is that it triggers hunger pangs about two hours later. So it may be that obesity isn't so much a calorie problem as it is a sugar problem. Light products as a trap Sweet drinks contain a particularly large amount of sugar, which is why they were also offered as an artificially sweetened version about 30 years ago. The only stupid thing is that the blood sugar level shoots up after a Coke Zero like after a Coke with sugar in it and then the feared hunger attack is triggered. We can't help it It has been known for a long time that excess sugar is the biggest problem in our diet. It is interesting, however, that sugar consumption is not stagnating because of this, but is continuing to increase. So has humanity become addicted to sugar? ways out Four years ago, a small device was invented that you have to have injected under your skin and that then communicates directly with your cell phone and shows what is really happening in the body after consuming sugar or starch.
It is interesting to note that sugar is not metabolized in the same way by everyone. So it does seem that there are people who are surviving the current sugar bombardment just fine, but the majority are struggling with obesity and other serious illnesses. French biochemist Jessie Inchauspé has written a fabulous easy-to-read book on how to respond to the sugar craze. The book is so well written and enlightening that even I was won over by it. Ever since I read it, I drink a glass of water with some vinegar in it before every meal. By the way, the Roman legionnaires did that already 2000 years ago. Try it out. You will be amazed! And by the way: Sugar is also available for adults in the form of rum. Tastes great too and should leave your sugar levels alone!