Sugar: An Overdose Introduction

I'm here to discuss sugar.

Sugar.

What do you feel and think when you hear the word, sugar?

 Does it entice images of your childhood? Having your favourite sugary cereal or having that piece of cake on your birthday? Does images of polar bears cracking open a nice cold, Coke flash before you? I bet you can taste that Coke right about now.

There are a few words I can associate sugar with such as sugar rush, hyperglycaemia, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, epidemic...

Sugar is all around us. It's added into your coffee, in soft drinks, so called healthy foods, bread, meats, processed food. It's in items you wouldn't think sugar would be in or even a lot of it.

We have this love affair with sugar, which is turning quickly into an addiction. An addiction we are passing down to children even before they are born. We are influencing children's taste buds just like how our taste buds have been changed and we barely even notice they have been changed.

I say epidemic because in such a short time we have become bigger in size, in appetite, and in our sugar consumption. Sugar has become part of our lives. It has become a hidden food group. Sugar has been underwhelmed by food companies and people for quite a while. A problem that is growing into a devastating lifestyle where children are said to not outlast their parents due to the rising number in obesity and diabetes. 

This is a problem. Companies have been deceiving us for too long about how "safe" their products are. They market to children with a package of colour characters and flashy imagery, pushing their sugar drug into their lives and exploiting parents to make sure that their child is happy. 

It's time we become more aware of this growing sugar culture. How it is impacting our lives, society, and our future. Change can happen but it starts with us as individuals to become more knowledgeable of these concerns and to a smarter consumer. Let us rise from this sugar pit the companies placed us into and take control of our food, our future.

"Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family." - Kofi Annan