The Sweetening of America

These days, it seems like sweeteners have made their sneaky way into almost everything. From soup to nuts, it's apparent that there can be no enlightened trip to the grocery store---or even the health food store---without the very careful reading of ingredient labels. Manufacturers are simply practicing the wholesale sweetening of America, and whether we like it or not, our food supply is increasingly infiltrated with useless calories and unnecessary sweeteners.

What's most maddening to me personally is my utter disappointment when shopping at the health food stores where I am dedicated to spending my money. The manufacturers of so-called "health food"---including companies that have always been at the forefront of the healthy eating movement---have jumped on the sweetener bandwagon in recent years, and everything from crackers to canned soups seem to be tainted with evaporated cane juice, and those extra calories are just adding to the American waistline, whether the cane is organic or not. The presence of these sweeteners is often lost on many consumers, who pull items from the shelves without a great deal of thoughtfulness. However, even a savvy health food consumer like myself can erroneously bring home an item that perhaps was previously sugar-free but is now chock full of sugar, much to my dismay and annoyance.

Like salt, one becomes accustomed to sweetened foods over time, and going back, for example, to unsweetened ketchup can be a huge leap after years of consuming ketchup loaded with sugar. It's a matter of taste, of course, but oftentimes the unsweetened versions are just as tasty as their sugary counterparts (with, admittedly, many exceptions---like soy milk, in my humble opinion).

Most recently, I have been trying to avoid dairy in my diet, so I've been looking for an unsweetened non-dairy creamer to use in my green tea, decaf coffee, or hot grain beverage. Sadly, every creamer on the market seems to be sweetened with evaporated cane juice or some other form of sugar, and I simply cannot fulfill this desire no matter how hard I try. (Do I detect a new market niche and business opportunity for an enterprising soul?)

With a personal goal of losing a few pounds this spring and a general desire to keep my diet as clean as possible, fishing for unsweetened forms of many common foods is a continuous exercise in patience and conscious shopping. Luckily, there are many products that I can count on to remain unsweetened, healthy and as unprocessed as possible. Sadly however, I am consistently dumbfounded as heretofore reliable companies decide to dump truckloads of organic evaporated cane juice into their manufacturing processes. Cane producers (both organic and conventional) must be rubbing their hands together with glee as their factories pump out more tons of their products each year. Want a good stock option? Try sugar futures---it's the future of America.

Sugar Coated

This afternoon, my wife and I were shopping at Whole Foods in downtown Albuquerque to stock up on supplies for the next leg of our travels. What struck me today was that added sugar has now crept into every aspect of the health food industry, and I am aghast at the ways in which extra sugar is now a ubiquitous ingredient no matter where one may look.

Back in the day, it seemed that the only form of added sugar that we needed to watch out for was high fructose corn syrup, that most processed of sugars that seemed to be added to everything under the sun. Now, with increasingly savvy consumers more aware of such sweeteners, companies have apparently decided that "evaporated cane juice" and other more "natural" sugars are the way to go.

Based on my readings, it seems that the "evaporated cane juice" now apparently used to sweeten the majority of products on health food store shelves (including ketchup, mustard, cereals, crackers, soy milk, etc) are just as guilty of contributing to obesity and other health problems as those containing good old-fashioned sugar, although some may debate me on this notion.

While health food stores try to dress up their processed foods as being "whole foods" by using organic milled cane sugar or evaporated cane juice as sweeteners, they are still simply adding millions of empty (and nutritionally useless) calories into the bloodstreams of ignorant (and not-so-ignorant) consumers, contributing to the overall rise in obesity, diabetes and related conditions. According to some nutritionists, sugar cane does indeed have some nutritional value, but mostly if you just went out into the field and chewed on it, benefiting from the fiber and other nutrients therein.

Searching through the health food store aisles, I am often hard-pressed to find products that are sweetened with fruit juice, barley malt, brown rice syrup or other natural sweeteners that have a lower glycemic index and some intrinsic nutritional value. Increasingly, I read labels ad nauseum, rejecting product after product when I see "evaporated cane juice" or some other unnecessary sweetener in the list of ingredients. Sigh.

I am frustrated with how the health food industry has sweetened the pot, as it were, adding natural-sounding sweeteners to a plethora of products, making shopping more difficult and maintaining a low-sugar diet a challenge. Sugar in some form or another finds its way into most everything these days, and when one looks more closely, it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid it, no matter how hard one may try.