since when did sugar become the enemy?

[FishCanFly]

Ok, what's too much is unhealthy.
But i remember the past - well, think 2-3 decades ago. I remember it was always preserves, jams, jellies, marmalades, compotes - people made them at home, and white sugar went in by bagloads. Yet there much fewer clinically obese people around.

BlueCornishPixie good examples (I don’t know the numbers as well as you). Yes and fruit has sugar too. But the difference between a jam roll and unprocessed fruit, beans etc is fibre.

MoltoAgitato (looove your name!), I shouldn’t think a diet high in fat on its own does much good, but certainly there are a lot of ‘good’ fats. However, to my simple mind, eating 2 handfuls of nuts and 2 avocados a day with 3 tbs of olive oil and lots of oily fish its a lot of fat even if they are considered better than other fats. Fat is still fat in high quantities. Moderation , variety and balance. I think a bit of normal butter and full fat milk and good quality proper cheese is OK. None of that fat free or replacement nonsense. And a bit of fat from a cooked piece of meat is also be OK. I’m not a nutritionist but common sense and inherited wisdom from family plus reading this and that as much as I can shape my thinking. I guess most people think the same.

I don’t think it helps that some people in their 70s who may have had minimal sugar (and indeed food generally on occasion, in large families) when they were a child look upon sweets and chocolate as now being an affordable treat. And they want to treat their grandchildren but with some it’s almost like they’ve become drug pushers pushing smack!

DS1 was 3 months old his first Easter. He wasn’t even on solids yet my in-laws bought him a full sized Easter egg! I ate it instead, but basically ever since then they have offered chocolates, biscuits, sweets,, fizzy drinks every time we go there. I’ve had to work hard to tell them that no, i wil not allow the kids to have a chocolate biscuit half an hour before their Sunday lunch. It’s like the first thing they do the minute we walk through the door, push some sugar on them!

It’s odd because they’re not constantly eating sugary shite themselves and seem to have smaller sized plates of food at main meals than us, so they aren’t overweight but have definitely contributed to the obesity of a couple of their grandkids. They just can’t see it, and see giving them that stuff as kindness or love. I think a lot of grandparents that generation do the same. And then it becomes competitive chocolate-giving with the other in-laws also wanting to give them stuff.

These are my memories of how much sugar people used to eat -
2 teaspoons in every cup of tea
Sugar on cornflakes and wheetabix
Sugar on bread and butter
Sugar on mashed up banana and other fruit
Sugar in homemade cakes and pies
Sugar in processed foods such as baked beans and tomato ketchup.
I remember there was a sugar ration (sometime in the '70s?) and people were trawling from shop to shop to buy it.
Eating sugar is not a new thing.

Yeah @feelingverylazytoday but that's what, maybe 10 in total, if it's even in one day. That's one can of coke.

@Iamnotacerealkiller amino acids are components of protein, not fat.

The other problem is we now have untold amounts of sugars hidden. One white bread sandwich has something like 70grans. Baked beans. Like 6 teaspoons? Even brown bread. Sugar. Semi skimmed milk has MORE sugar than full fat. Less fat. More sugar

Also we went big on protein for a while. Protein will essentially turn into sugar. If you do t use it up running etc.

The manufacturer doesn’t want to take the sugar out. Because people won’t buy it. Self perpetuating cycle.

@Utini you are quite right, i meant essential fatty acids.

There are no essential nutrients in sugars/carbs so no need to eat them in the quantities we do.

There's also four in there, which is a carbohydrate - and the body treats carbs and sugar in the same way, biochemically

There is a difference between the effect of eating 'sugar' - simple carbohydrates and when eating more complex carbohydrates which the body takes time to digest and absorb. The hormone response is different and the effect on the body is very different.

We always had chocolate in the fridge at home as kids, they were the fun sized bars and we definitely didn't have them every day. We never stopped at the shops after school for treats or had fizzy drinks in the house. We brushed our teeth regularly from being babies and were out in the fields and woods playing. We ate home cooked natural meals without any hidden sugars or Unnecessary ingredients. I am bringing my son up exactly the same

I think it's the quantities people are eating, like a PP said if you had a "treat" years ago it was 2 biscuits not mcflurrys or a 5 pack of cookies. Everything is so processed now, back to basics is the way forward I believe and everything in moderation.

Op says 2-3 decades ago. Aka the nineties. People talking about relying on harvest or there not being any cars around clearly weren't paying attention :o

@FishCanFly

Absolutely, and because of this in modern life sugar is very difficult to avoid. Every birthday/christmas party, most adverts, every 'treat' (which according some some on mn seems to be an acceptable daily food stuff) contains it.

i know a lot of people don't see sugar as addictive but it seems similar to me! imagine an alcoholic being faced with daily temptation on tv, at work, in every shop, restaurant etc this is what i and many others face but without the stigma excess drinking would have (other then the secondary one of being fat)

There are no essential nutrients in sugars/carbs so no need to eat them in the quantities we do

Complex carbs do contain nutrients that are beneficial to our health. They are just not carbs - but contain fibre, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. Fibre is very important to our health - look at the new evidence around gut bacteria.

Fat and processed foods are the enemy as is things like energy drinks, caffeine and alcohol.

I eat high carb low fat, plant-based whole foods and have got the physique of my life!

It's the amount of sugar being consumed that's the issue.

I think we've gradually moved from an eat-mostly-at-mealtimes culture to an eat-all-day-and-evening culture and the in-between meals food we are choosing tends to be sugary processed crap.

When I go to a big supermarket, more often than not, the shop laid out on the conveyer belt for the person in front seems to consist more of snacks and drinks than it does of meals and some shops on the conveyer belt have very few or no raw ingredients at all to make a meal from scratch.

Also the sheer amount of everything eaten today appears to be getting on for double the portions my grandparents ate.

If I eat out I find the portion sizes huge and a bit grim to look at yet I still eat most of it. Then people go home and recreate the portion sizes they get at the local pub.

Takeaways are most often laden with sugar and people might be having one a week.

It's just so different now as we've moved from everyone cooking their meals from basic meat/veg ingredients to most people eating a lot of processed food or catered foods and everything in vast quantities.

Although a good point made by Stealth

I think in this case a complete possible denial of our ages.

To be fair, the late 1990s was only the beginning of the latte culture. It’s very easy to consume an extra 100+ calories a day just by having a latte instead of instant coffee or tea with a splash of milk, and that’s before you get onto a venti mocha frappé extravaganza.

I also think middle age spread is mostly due to changing lifestyles. Kids no longer need walking to school, most people have a bit more money so don’t think twice about a slice of cake with their coffee or bottle of wine with dinner. Household chores - well, there are far less of them and your tame teenager can do them. Also, more likely to live in an area where a car is essential, and have a non active job. Perfectly possible to do less than 2000 steps a day in a sedentary job.

It’s difficult to get an accurate view of nutrition. Just look at how coconut oil was embraced. It’s got more saturated fat than lard. The hate for sugar is a fad; a few years ago it was all about eating meat, now it’s all about veganism, and in a few years it will again be all about meat.

Just seen a television ad for Uber Eats and McDonald’s - nowadays you don’t even need to walk to the chippy, your heart attack on a plate comes to you....no effort required

Ooh this middle aged thing sounds excellent. Cake and teenagers doing the housework, sign me up!

Stealth, I know right?

And whilst I’m on a roll - we do know exactly what a healthy diet looks like ( I rescind my earlier comment about nutrition being difficult). Lots of starchy, complex carbs appropriate for your energy expenditure, moderate amounts of fat and protein, including oily fish, plenty of fruit and vegetables and limit red meat and salt. Not difficult. Except that message doesn’t sell quack diets, books, blog posts, or make people feel holier than thou because whilst they wouldn’t dream of eating a bacon butty, coconut oil is apparently fine, nor are Mondelez, CocaCola or PepsiCo going to do anything that doesn’t help increase sales of their crap.

BIWI that's true, I was thinking of just glucose type sugar but I agree it was a bit basic.

My point wasn't really that a jam roll was healthy snack, more that OP is acting like her eating a jam roll in the 90s means that sugar isnt bad for you.

Its not that high sugar compared to a lot of processed food we eat these days. I suppose I'm saying something which was considered high sugar 40 years ago is now relatively low compared to a lot of the massively sugary foods we consume these days.

Fizzy drinks were something we only had at Christmas. Energy drinks were called Lucozade and were for when you were ill. Now you see teenagers swigging cans of Monster etc like they are going out of fashion, which they hopefully will.

I remember chocolate bars were bigger but contained less calories than they do these days. I knew the calorie content of everything in earlier years and they have definitely changed since then yet are smaller and sweeter, more sickly. Mars bars? I couldn't eat a full one as a child of 10. They were thick and chunky, now they are slimlined and too sickly.

I'm off to eat some toblerone.

“Lots of starchy, complex carbs appropriate for your energy expenditure, moderate amounts of fat and protein, including oily fish, plenty of fruit and vegetables and limit red meat and salt. Not difficult.”

Actually that doesn’t make me feel at my best, or give me optimal health. A small amount of complex carbs, lots of vegetables and a small amount of fruit, plenty of protein and fats, plenty of fluids, and as much of the above as unprocessed as possible make me at my best. Is that ok with you? Am I so unusual? I don’t think I am, I think everyone’s mileage varies. But that doesn’t suit the “everyone who doesn’t eat like this is an imbecile” types

Same here as HerSymphony

Since when did sugar become the enemy?

When research showed

• sugar rots your teeth (this has been known for decades)
• refined sugar causes inflammation in the body
• it's just empty calories that you need to run a marathon a day to burn off
• it's highly addictive

Etc etc

There's no excuse for not knowing sugar is crap and bad for you, but the shops are full of the shit, and people's health is suffering with all those "treats" everywhere you look.

In the 90s we had biscuits in the house and I ate them every day. I had a friend who chocolate bars in our house and we would eat 2/3 every day. We were skinny so no-one cared.