In the Commonwealth blood sugar isn’t a mere footnote in a biology text, but is instead one of the top (if not the top) public health concerns. I am in minor awe of anyone who can engage in any form of dietary discipline, since I have grunted through life as a feral omnivore. Just for the heck of it, I decided to tally the amount of sugar in a snack I had. The results were surprising. I knew junk food has sugar, but I didn’t know how much it can hold.
As for the snack, it was admittedly a pretty piggy one: One and a half candy bars and a 12-ounce can of Coke. It was one of those days when I simply didn’t have a way to eat anything normal, so I had to feast off the meager offerings of a small gift shop or not eat at all. It took less than two minutes for me to oink down the chow.
Anyway, the analysis of my two-minute snack runs like so: Each Milky Way Midnight Dark candy bar had 30 grams of sugar listed. A 12-ounce can of Coke carries a 39 gram payload of sugar. So, a candy bar and a half, plus a Coke, comes to a tidy 84 grams of sugar.
You might observe, quite correctly, that more than one candy bar is pretty extreme, and I’d agree, but, on the other hand, a mere 12-ounce soda is nothing compared to the super-sized ones out there, or the 1-liter bottles.
Anyway, for this case, 84 grams it is. That all seems very scientific I guess, but I have no idea what a gram is. I’ve never seen a gram. I’ve never talked to a gram. I don’t know if a gram is big and fat and jolly, or maybe short and wimpy and dour. I draw a blank.
But I can relate to a teaspoon. I read on the Internet that one teaspoon equates to 4.2 grams of sugar. It must be true, because it’s on the Internet.
So we’re talking 20 teaspoons of sugar for an 84-gram dose.
If you lined up 20 teaspoons of sugar, and offered me a hundred bucks to consume it all, I’d refuse the bet. And I ain’t no health guru. But even I know that some things just aren’t real smart to do.
I don’t think adults eat candy bars very often; I think that’s more for kids. But sodas are ubiquitous. Go to a picnic or a fiesta, and anyone who isn’t drinking beers and who has a sweet tooth and who is a bit gluttonous might easily down three cans of pop. That’s going to amount to about 28 teaspoons of sugar.
If you’re waiting for me to deftly transition to some Big, Social Agenda here, which leads to the requisite call for a Crusade to Save Us from Ourselves (as if there’s any shortage of such crusades), well, don’t hold your breath. My only point is that it’s easy for average guys like me to scarf a lot of sugar if they steer for the junk food. Given the nature of the modern Western diet (which Saipan, hemispherical placement notwithstanding, has embraced), I can see what a daily struggle it would be for those so tasked to maintain any semblance of discipline in the sugar department.
If you’re going to eat your way to an early grave, I think that traveling for a living can do it. Restaurants are one thing, and ad hoc snacks gleaned from airport newsstands merely compound the problem. One of the first things I learned as a pilot was to carry a couple of rolls of quarters in my flight bag so I could feed the vending machines.
Despite my taste for soda, I’m a piker compared to some other guys. I used to work with a guy who drank six Dr. Peppers a day, and I mean every single day, starting with one for breakfast. He told me he had followed this regimen for over 22 years and never had so much as a cavity. I asked him how he could get away with this. His theory was that his consistent intake (always six per day: never five, never seven) provided a stable equilibrium condition for his body.
Whether you agree with that logic or not, you can’t dispute that life darned sure isn’t fair. Genetics deals the cards. We mortals are left being dragged back and forth over a razor’s edge that separates fate from will; unfortunately, in the great candy bar wrapper of life, they never seem to disclose this fact.
Ed is a pilot, economist, and writer. He holds a degree in economics from UCLA and is a former U.S. naval officer. His column runs every Friday. Visit Ed at TropicalEd.com and SaipanBlog.com.
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