By Dean L. Jones, CPM
Today, while at the checkout stand of a Smart & Final store, the person in front of me was buying four 5-pound sized bags of granulated table sugar. Even though all of this sugar could easily be thrown in as the definitive reason for his very immense weight, I prefer to rationalize that he cooks for people and needs to add lots of sugar to a variety of dishes. Nonetheless, we have got to be careful with this crystal toxin if we expect to live a physically comfortable life, because piling on the bad stuff will not help matters whatsoever.
In paying homage to black history this month, please allow me to share a rarely talked about fact concerning people freed from physical enslavement. There were a projected four million people freed from slavery who either died or suffered from serious illness between 1862 and 1870, mainly due to the lack of access to decent nutrition. America’s unionist north and the confederate south participants treated the tragedy befalling the newly freed people the same when it came to gaining access to civilized nutrition. There were many politicians, abolitionist, journalist and religious statesmen in the late 1800 who even wondered if black people would all die out altogether from the cholera disease and/or malnutrition.
Consequently, coming out of bondage with nothing to making a way for oneself has impelled blacks toward a dependency upon a diet mentality of whatever taste good is okay. The problem sets in when food manufacturers exploit human taste patterns by adding ingredients unbecoming digestibility. Accordingly, many more people should consider becoming an advocate against the over consumption of highly processed food and its purposeful addictive ingredients. About 72 million people nationwide have high blood pressure, or hypertension, or more easily understood as about 1 in 3 adults. It is a somewhat invisible poor health condition because it has no symptoms, but left untreated it can damage the heart, blood vessels, kidneys and other parts of the body. Likewise, drinking alcohol, sodas, smoking tobacco, taking over- (and under) the-counter drugs and gorging on fried foods is making running the risk of developing high blood pressure an everyday occurrence in the black community.
Adjusting one’s lifestyle is the more politically correct term to use when describing the plight of the black American’s dilemma with hypertension. Hypertension is poorly controlled and is the lead cause for early deaths and disability due to strokes, heart attacks, heart failure and kidney failure. Eating processed sugar and high fructose corn syrup plays a critical role in the epidemic of cardiorenal disease and uric acid build up. Again, visualize the aforementioned man in the store buying large bags of processed sugar as a small example of just how much added sugar is going into an American diet. Stay Sugar Alert!
www.SugarAlert.com
Dean Jones, Ethics Advocate, Southland Partnership Corporation (a public benefit organization), contributes his view on health attributes of packaged foods & beverages.
