Today, we are talking about sugar. We are all familiar with sugar. It sweetens many of our foods and drinks in order to make them comfortable with the tongue, for us to swallow.
However, this thing called sugar has a dark side. In fact, some observers even believe that sugar does more harm than good. Yet, others also believe that sugar has been unfairly demonized; the diseases associated with sugar have been exaggerated over the years. However, if you look carefully into the latter argument, it is clear there is an economic interest. Sugar is used in preparing many soft drinks and foods. This makes the demand of sugar, high. Urging people to cut down on their sugar consumption, or staying off it completely, will mean a loss to corporations who manufacture sugar.
It is against this background that we are showing you a video about sugar. This won’t be the first time you are hearing about the dark side of sugar; this is only a reminder to you to be careful with sugar.
According to the video, sugar causes tooth-decay, overloads the liver causing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, creates insulin resistance/type II diabetes, aids cancer, encourages obesity and several heart diseases.
But even apart from the above, let’s look at the brief history of sugar, the fast-becoming worst invention of the modern world and our diets.
Sugar has a deep and disturbing history, particularly with its mass production. Generally, sugar is the name for sweet, short-chain, soluble carbohydrates, made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. According to researchers, sugar is found in the tissues of most plants, but is present in sufficient concentrations for efficient extraction only in sugarcane and sugar beet.
With the mentioning of sugarcane, it brings us to the disturbing part of the mass production of sugar. Sugarcane refers to any of several species of giant grass in the genus Saccharum, which have been cultivated in tropical climates in South Asia and Southeast Asia since ancient times.
In the 18th century, sugarcane production spread to the West Indies (the region of the Caribbean Basin and North Atlantic Ocean that includes the islands and island nations of the Greater Antilles, Lesser Antilles and Lucayan Archipelago), and the New World (Americas). Large plantations were established in order to cultivate the plant for the extraction of the juice, for the production of sugar. Before this period, sugar was only limited to the Kings, Queens, and other nobility. The ‘common’ people had no access to sugar, and had to rely on honey to sweeten their foods.
After the large plantations were established, sugar production and trade changed the course of human history. It in fact, influenced the formation of colonies, the perpetuation of slavery, the transition to hard human labour, the migration of peoples, wars between sugar-trade–controlling nations in the 19th century, and the ethnic composition and political structure of the New World.
Particularly on slavery, the sugarcane plantations motivated Europeans to ship about 12 million black slaves from Africa to the Western Hemisphere. Nearly 2 million of these slaves died enroute, due to diseases and other factors. About 65% of the slaves were sent to Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica, Saint Domingue (now Haiti), and other sugar colonies. Brazil, then controlled by the Portuguese, alone received about 38% of the slaves. We cannot exhaust what happened thereafter, when the slaves landed in these nations. One single word can be used to describe it, however: brutality.
This is a brief history of the production of sugar for mass consumption. Is it therefore right for some observers to say sugar is one of the worst inventions in this modern era? The answer will probably be ‘Yes.’ Not even necessarily the diet per se, but the role it has played in shaping the modern world towards a certain direction.
The video takes up the details of the story on the harmful health effects of sugar. It focuses more on the cancer aspect. Watch the video with all your attention, and know how to consume sugar in order to stop yourself from becoming its next victim.
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