Is It Worth It?

By Dean L. Jones

For more than eight years you have read here in PACE News about how eating too much processed sugar raises the risk for gaining weight and a myriad of other health problems caused from ingesting it.  Some of the diseases formed consist of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and cancers.   Processed sugar ingredients exceed 50 different names on product labels, including HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), dextrose, treacle, caramel, panocha, glucose, mannitol, sorbitol, maltodextrin, maltose, fruit juice, sucrose, aspartame, and barley malt.

Even with all of the information freely flowing about the dangers associated with processed sugar consumption, as soon as you can blink an eye, someone is pushing their take on something so tasty that you have got to try it, in spite of its potentially harmful ingredients.  The old adages that you only live once, or live it up and have some fun, are commonly expressed in order for one to not feel guilty or lack enthusiasm from the experience.

Take for instance this week when Dominique Ansel, the pastry chef conjured up a new temptation by freely publishing the recipe on making his larger-than-life sweet treat called Cronut.  The best thing about his recipe is that no one is going to jump right into cooking it to soon, mainly due in part that it takes three days and a lot of preparation techniques to completely make it.

For the record, cronut is a hybrid eatable, crossing a flaky croissant and a donut containing a custard interior within a sugar-dipped fried pastry.  Out of curiosity, I looked up the recipe online solely for seeing how much processed sugar goes into making one cronut.  To make eight cronuts one has a lot of ingredients and along with pastry dough, egg, flour, Kosher salt, yeast, loads of unsalted butter, and heavy cream as it requires 15+ teaspoons of prosessed sugar for a batch of eight.

It hardly seems worth it to risk altering your perfectly healthy body by dumping a large amount of processed sugar that is inflammatory to the arteries and organs.  Type 2 diabetes ailments rise directly along with processed sugar consumption, and likewise adding just one sugar-sweetened beverage to your daily diet nearly doubles the risk of contracting diabetes, by this means making it a valueless beverage.

Generally, an overload of carbohydrates, especially sugar-laden products, significantly raises the risk of developing of what is called a lipid profile that in turn increases the risk for cardiovascular disease.  The higher our processed sugar consumption, the higher the risk for developing poor triglyceride and bad cholesterol levels.  In evidently, someone or some company is going to want us to try their respective tasty foodstuff, just for the pure enjoyment.  Make sure you are able to stay SugarAlert! and pose the question, is it worth it?

www.SugarAlert.com
Dean Jones, Ethics Advocate, Southland Partnership Corporation (a public benefit organization), contributes his view on health attributes derived from processed foodstuff items.