at Sun, 15 May 2005 16:37:05 GMT in <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] (Goomba38) wrote :
Quoted message said:I recently went to a continuing education seminar on Metabolic Syndrome.
Some of the "stats" mentioned were that:
-In America, 90% of food dollars are spent on processed foods.
-In 1900, sugar consumption was 12 pounds/year, but in 2000 that had
reached 150 pounds/year.
People often don't realise how much sugar seems to be added gratuitiously
to almost all processed foods. Things that don't need sugar (pizza, bread,
spaghetti sauce) are often loaded with it. Even canned stews typically
contain sugar. Meanwhile, the amount of sugar in things that usually do
have some is disproportionately high. Thus muffins are more like cupcakes,
and as for cupcakes, they're more like cotton candy. I've seen many
bakeries where cakes have more frosting than they do cake.
And people instinctively seem to reach for the sugary foods. It always
amazes me the percentage of people who go for danishes, donuts, turnovers,
and other such pastries for breakfast. I've been numb-struck, when, going
into a bakery here that produces outstanding bread - world-class stuff (and
with no sugar) that nonetheless virtually all breakfast customers buy their
pastries rather than the breads, in spite of the fact that the pastries,
while good, aren't world-class by any means.
At the height of the summer strawberry season I made strawberry shortcakes.
I used no sugar for the strawberries - they needed none. Literally these
strawberries tasted like candy by themselves. Well, to a one, other than
myself, as soon as I passed them out *everybody* else reached for the sugar
bowl and heaped tablespoons of sugar on the shortcakes. It was somewhat
gruesome to watch.
It's mostly accustomisation, too. I've served plenty of things with much
less sugar than what is typically found in commercial products. If you do
so in a situation where people don't have the opportunity to add sugar
reflexively like they did in the situation above, I've noticed that
initially people are taken aback, but then most of them have a widening-eye
look (and often comments) of "Wow! That's really good." In other words,
once they get over the shock, they quickly realise how much better the not-
oversweet versions of things they've been used to having loaded with sugar
really are.
Quoted message said:So much of that can certainly explain why
we're seeing young kids developing Type 2 diabetes (something unheard of
in years past) and obesity is soaring.
-Each ounce of regular soda contains 1 teaspoon of sugar. Kinda makes
that 32 ounce BigGulp more unappealing, huh?
An amusing demonstration is to take a can of Coke, or any other pop, and
boil it down in front of people. When you get down to the fully-reduced
sugar syrup, you get some pretty appalled looks from people who had no idea
they were essentially drinking liquefied sugar.
Quoted message said:-The average time spent preparing dinner for a family of 4 was 15 minutes.
This is a symptom of a basic social problem: most companies don't pay a
living wage. Few households can get by on a single income and thus there's
nobody who can dedicate themselves to the domestic chores. Furthermore,
traditional patriarchal expectations mean that the woman of the house is
expected to tackle the domestic chores *over and above* the work she does
now out of house. In a large percentage of families, the man's contribution
to domestic chores is at most a token effort in spite of the fact that the
woman is now working out of home, too. And domestic tasks don't simply go
away - they still have to be done. So working mothers pull double-duty. Is
it any wonder that they rely on prepared meals? By the time they get to the
end of their day they're ready to drop.
Making the problem worse, even in order to make ends meet, many families
not only have to have a 2-income household but both earners have to work
overtime. This further cuts into their time at home, time that often times
for the woman must thus be spent entirely in doing whatever are the most
critical domestic chores - and make no mistake, it's only the most critical
chores that they have the time to do at all. Again, even if the man is more
broad-minded and contributes 50% of the domestic workload - or all of it -
often there's too little time for too many chores to be done. People are
forced to compromise where they can.
The biggest thing, therefore, that could be done to solve the problem is to
force companies to pay employees a living wage on reasonable hours of work.
We've reverted to the situation at the turn of the century. Eventually
frustrations will come to a head and force legislation - much as they did
then, and now as then it will probably be the women who lead the charge
because they are the ones upon whose backs the disproportionate burden
tends to be falling.
--
Alex Rast
[email hidden]
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