Why are sweets so popular? A fondness for sweets is inborn, scientists find. Ridding your diet of all sugars goes against most people`s grain. The trick, say nutritionists, is to moderate--and substitute.
Cooking and baking with fruit and other natural sweeteners satisfies our sweet tooth and gives our bodies some vitamins and minerals. Sorghum syrup, molasses (especially blackstrap) and dates, for example, are good sources of iron and calcium. Apricots have beta-carotene.
And sugar isn`t all bad. In contrast to, say, animal fats, which have been directly linked to heart disease and strokes, sugar is remarkable for what it doesn`t do.
Our present level of sugar consumption, according to a new Food and Drug Administration report, doesn`t cause diabetes, mood swings or, in children, hyperactivity.
Or obesity. Though sugars have calories, of course, they have ``no unique role in the etiology of obesity,`` the report says. A gram of sugar has only 4 calories (20 in a teaspoon); a gram of fat, 9 calories.
Sugar isn`t entirely innocent, of course: It does cause tooth decay. In desserts, especially, sugar also keeps bad company: fat. Perhaps you should worry less about the sugar than about the sweet butter scooped into the mix.
And if Pooh was a bear of very little Brain, Sugar is a food of very little Nutrient. Table sugar has no vitamins, no minerals, no fiber, no protein. Just calories. Honey has a few more nutrients, but not in significant amounts.
By crowding out nutritious foods, sweets can harm--indirectly. We now consume nearly 130 pounds of caloric sweeteners per person per year, up 3 pounds from 1978. They account for one-fifth to one-quarter of our calories.
Unless you`re a high-mileage athlete who burns enough energy to eat a nutritious diet and still need extra calories, that`s too much.
If you are an athlete, don`t eat sweets before you sweat. ``If you eat sugar 15 to 30 minutes before exercise, you may stimulate the release of insulin, causing blood sugar to drop,`` explains physiologist Bill Fink of the Human Performance Lab at Ball State Univerisity in Muncie, Ind. Low blood sugar may mean low energy just when you need it.
But don`t worry about a little sugar during an event. ``Once exercise starts, other mechanisms begin to blunt the insulin response,`` Fink says. He recommends athletic-type drinks that contain sugar in the form of glucose polymers. They don`t cause bloating.
Sugar has often been blamed for causing diabetes. Not so, says Dr. Ronald A. Arky, past president of the American Diabetes Association. ``Obesity does. If sugar`s excess calories lead to obesity, the obesity increases the odds of becoming a diabetic.``
One new study, by John Bantle, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota, even suggests that adults who have diabetes can eat a little sugar--with a meal. Bantle gave diabetic and non-diabetic volunteers a breakfast of eggs, bacon and carbohydrates: potatoes, wheat starch or simple sugars such as sucrose and glucose. Results: no statistically significant difference between sugars and other carbohydrates in their effect on blood sugar.
But Arky, who believes more research is needed, emphasizes that ``the study deals with sugar in the context of a meal.`` Pouring sugar into your coffee during an afternoon break is another matter entirely, he says.
Sugar doesn`t cause psychological problems, either. It`s often blamed for making kids hyperactive, but Markus Kruesi, a child psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health, reviewed eight studies and found that large amounts of sugar have little or no effect.
Certain people who suffer from mood swings, however, may crave sugar. Why? Perhaps because it alleviates their symptoms.
TRY FRUITS INSTEAD
Though many of us can benefit from reducing our sugar consumption, there`s no reason to deny ourselves the sweetness entirely. By returning to naturally sweet fruits as a source, we`ll also give our bodies some of the nutrients nature meant to go with a sweet taste.
One idea: Fruits are naturally sweet substitutes for table sugar in many recipes. Take the classic oatmeal cookie on the back of the Quaker Oats box. Along with shortening, oats, flour, an egg and other ingredients such as vanilla, it calls for a cup of brown sugar and half a cup of granulated sugar. You don`t need all that sugar. For a moist, less-sweet cookie, replace that amount with a cup of dates simmered in orange juice. The dates and orange juice have only 602 calories--compared with 1,206 for the brown and white sugars--and add 1 milligram of iron to the batch. Similarly, apricots in a recipe add beta-carotene; raisins supply iron. --