Hungry? Put down the f***ing Snickers! You'll die!

So the school teaches about healthy nutritional choices, then sticks a Coke machine in the cafeteria, because Coke paid them to. And you expect the average 12-year-old to not walk away from that confused? And it's exactly that kind of nutritional teaching that gets dismissed as more government meddling, especially when it's coming from that uppity first lady.

And yet when we suggest that Coke be banned from putting machines in schools, where they don't belong, the "ban everything" crowd comes along and complains. "Well, they have to make their own choices." No, sometimes the adults need to make the correct choices.

 

I don't think there's much out there yet about sugar as an addictive substance. Not like cocaine maybe, but at least like caffeine and with far more negative health effects.

 

Mark of Mark's Daily Apple has been pointing out for years now that our bodies are simply not designed to digest sugar, which was as rare as a honey bee on the plains of Africa when our bodies came to be.

 

Honest to God, candy, cookies and cake were not invented in the '70s. Neither were soft drinks.

 

We all consume a great deal more sugar now than we did then.

www.science20.com/news_articles/us_sugar_consumption_rise

 

Of course we do. And we do less physically. It ain't no mystery.

The standard Coke or Pepsi bottles used to be seven and 12 ounces. When they came out with 16 ounce bottles, they were marketed as a way to get two servings from one bottle. Now most people down a 20-ounce bottle with no problem.

 

And cigarettes were not invented in the '90s, yet that didn't stop tobacco executives from testifying before Congress that cigarettes were no more addictive than Twinkies. (Maybe they were onto something!)

No, sugar in its limited doses -- handmade treats in almost all cases -- is not new. But high fructose corn syrup (used widely beginning in 1977 and introduced in Coke and Pepsi in 1984), Gatorade (purchased in 1983 by Quaker Oats and thereafter widely distributed in the U.S.), Mountain Dew (re-branded in 1973 to catch the younger generation, much like Joe Camel), and thousands of other sugar-based products are on the market now that were not then. Perhaps you thought the Keebler Elves were a marketing ploy aimed at dwarf fetishists?

Beyond that, there are things like orange juice that are cynically marketed as healthful when, thanks to a change in processing, all the health benefit is thrown in the trash to serve up a glass of sugar bomb. We also have "healthy" foods like granola bars. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, we're at the point where sodas are claiming the natural label, and the health benefits that go with it, because they have real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup!

Also not in existence (or on a very limited scale) were vending machines, particularly those in schools.

There's simply no comparison between eating habits of today and eating habits of 50 years ago. Truthfully we'd probably be better off larding everything up with butter again if it meant we avoided all the processed sugar and trans fats.

 

Actually, some of it is a mystery. A lot of that sugar comes to us hidden in processed foods, as LTL points out.

 

I'll take this to mean you saying nobody's listening, which is true, granted. All the more reason to look at regulating it, then, because what you don't know CAN hurt you.

 

People do lines of Fun Dip off strippers' asses?

 

The problem is that historically, your body had to really work to get sugar out of foods so our bodies were hard wired to crave sugar because that's what our brains run on. Now, sugar can be mainlined but our bodies are still wired to want more and more sugar. There hasn't been time for evolution to catch up.