Niki Bezzant, the editor of the Healthy Food Guide, makes an excellent point in her opinion piece in the NZ Herald that the fight against the pervasive invasion of sugar in our diets doesn't mean we turn into the sugar police.
Certainly, the negative publicity about sugar has never been so high, and it is particularly vicious when it's combined with the publicity on obesity. According to TV3's Newshub, more than half the world's population, for the first time ever, is overweight. There is already a guilt factor in consuming sweets and treats. Perhaps for the first time ever, people's secret wish to be cruel to obese people now gets the green light from scientists. Deep down, it is ingrained in us that we shouldn't eat too much sugar. Now a man in a lab coat says it's okay to scorn overweight people because they're probably sugar addicts. It's a bit like Donald Trump saying it's okay to be mean to Mexicans. It's a hunt for scapegoats, when this involves all of us.
Bezzant points out that sugar as a treat is an age-old concept, of giving ourselves a momentary pleasure. Most of us of a certain generation will recall that sweets, purchased with your pocket money, were probably a once-a-week thing. You buy sweets or chocolate in the knowledge you are buying sugar, and that's fine.
The thing is, if the sugar you consumed was only based on treats, then we'd all be fine. But if we're into tomato sauce, canned soups, children's cereals, fruit juice and, of course, the number one source of sugar in adolescents, soft drinks, we're being infused with far more sugar than any indulgence at a sweet shop. Our consumer goods are poisoning us.
Sugar, Bezzant says, needs to become rare and unusual, which is what is natural for humans.
