It is hard to ignore the fact that we now live in a sugar-coated world. Our continent’s addiction to sugar has become epidemic. We can see the evidence in our expanding waistlines and in our health by way of diet-related diseases such as diabetes. Contrary to past thinking, we now know that sugar is not simply a harmless treat to be enjoyed without much cause for concern. Rather, it is an extremely damaging substance that hooks us like a drug and then slowly starts to undermine our health with each sweet mouthful we take in.
Trying to raise a healthy child today necessitates controlling their diet. Left to their own devices, most children will naturally gravitate towards sugar-filled foods as humans are genetically wired to appreciate the sweetness that certain foods impart. This fact coupled with the power of advertising for candy bars, pop, cereals, and other sugar filled products on children has succeeded in producing a generation of eaters that love their sugar. Yet, with current consumption levels where they are (according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data from 1999, sugar consumption is 158 pounds per person per year) it is becoming near impossible to raise a new generation of healthy, happy and balanced children.
