sugar
HABIT
By Naomi Martinez Health Educator
S
ugar is something each of us is born with an instinctive taste for - in fact, newborns are born with a natural affinity for sugars, usually found in mothers’ breast milk. But what has this innate fondness turned into for most of us? A three p.m. craving for cookies, candy, soda, and other sweets. This kind of sugar, or “added sugar”, is a whole new sweet passion that most of us don’t think twice about. Much of my experience with sugar is similar to yours, but was forever changed when I spent a year living in Central America right next to a sugar plantation. Besides the social issues created by these tall fields of sugar cane, I saw the direct health effects it had on a sugar-dependent community. Today, however, we’ll focus on the individual and how sugar can be an obvious, silent, or not-so-secret love affair that we each experience. Sugar History Sugar, like the white or brown crystals seen next to your bowl of oatmeal at a restaurant or by the coffee station at work, has been around for centuries. It became a commonly used item in the 16th century when the processing of sugar cane or sugar
HEALTH MAGAZINE | WINTER 2022
