's MOTD Tue 6/20/2006 Sugar

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's Daily MessageTuesdayJune 20, 2006

SUGAR, SUGAR"Honey, honey, you are my candy, girl, and I can't stop loving you!"

Oh, sugar, how I love thee. Let me count the ways. White sugar, brown sugar, and ultra sweet liquid sugar, AKA corn syrup. I love everything about sugar! One of my all time favorite commercials was the one where the children are running around sugar cane fields in Hawaii, snapping off and sucking on the sugar cane while singing a sugary song. Well, you don`t see a lot of those kinds of commercials on TV anymore, do you?

We have a love/hate relationship with sugar. Years ago, a book was published called "Sugar Blues." This book was all about telling the world how awful sugar is. The author also listed thousands of food products that had sugar in them. If you stopped eating all these foods, well, there wouldn`t be a lot left to eat!

Sugary products have always been sort of our reward since childhood, and there have never, ever been so many products on the market containing the sweetest of all, corn syrup. Our kids and teens are so overweight and are living on sugary soft drinks, fruit juices, sports drinks, and packaged cookies and other baked goods. Oh, and a lot of adults in this country are eating just like the kids and teens.

I want you to cut back your sugar intake. Buy only 100 percent juice instead of fruit drinks, punches, and cocktails. Stop drinking sodas for a while. Twenty ounces of Pepsi contains 17 teaspoons of sugar, and a 20-ounce bottle of Hawaiian Punch has 18 teaspoons of sugar in it!

The new Federal Dietary Guideline for sugar is out and recommends that you limit added sugar to about 8 teaspoons, 32 grams a day for an average 2000 calorie program. This really isn`t very much! It only buys a half a can of coke, and the best way to reduce your consumption is to drink more water and less of the corn syrupy beverages that cause a weight gain if abused. And you know being overweight or obese may lead to type II diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, and early death. Ooh! We don`t want that!

Get in your 8-ounce glasses of pure water today! It`s the beverage your body craves the most.

Love,