Sugar and Salt

Kaiden Croissette

A pile of sugar is poured into a bowl

A common complaint with the standard American diet is that it is unhealthy, unsustainable, and outright deadly in some cases, and I completely agree. Not only are our foods saturated in trans fats, and low in a vast majority of essential vitamins, they also are usually infected with this one simple compound that completely destroys your body from the inside out: sugar. Sugar is added, in vast amounts, to a rainbow of foods that absolutely do not need the added sweetness or calories.

Of course, sugar is not itself a bad thing. You need sugars to survive, and most complex starches break down into sugar at the end of the day anyways, so what’s the big deal with having a little extra? Quite a lot, actually. Excessive sugar consumption has been proven time and time again to be directly linked to excessive weight gain, chronic inflammation, and all sorts of problems with blood sugar (https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-bitter-truth-about-added-sugar).

If you have ever taken the “sugar challenge,” like I have, then you understand how absolutely omnipresent sugar additives are, regardless of what you choose to eat. The sugar challenge is designed to highlight the prevalence of sugar in modern diets, particularly in the U.S.. Natural sugars from fruits and vegetables are allowed, as their fiber content slows digestion (https://sciencesnap.org/fruits-fructose-candy-sugar-health), but anything with “added sugars” on the nutrition label is off-limits. Did you know that sugars are added in white bread? How about most bagged chips? yogurt? Canned soup? Cereal? You can’t escape sugar additives. Ever since I took on that challenge (and subsequently failed before the week's end), I have been made hyper aware of the obnoxious excess of sugars in processed and pre-made foods. 

When staying at other people’s houses, I am always surprised when they keep whole bottles of soda laying around, or multiple boxes of tasty cakes in the cupboard. I enjoy an occasional sugary snack the same as any other sinner of the earth and flesh, but at a certain point, you really have to wonder how people can eat this much sugar with no regard to their health. Sugar is dangerous, not because it’s inherently toxic, but because the body doesn’t signal when enough is enough. You can drink a whole liter of soda in one sitting, and all it’ll do is make you feel thirsty (a common side effect of immense sugar consumption). But internally, your liver will be rejecting the copious amounts of sweetener you’ve just poured into your body, and your pancreas will step into overdrive as it tries to pump as much insulin into your veins as possible.

America’s obesity crisis is largely due to insulin resistance brought on by excessive sugar consumption (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6959843/). Manufacturers often add sugars to products to improve taste, with little regard as to how adversely it can affect consumers' health. Of course, there is still a good deal of blame to be placed upon the consumer for deciding to indulge in sugary products, but the funny thing about most american grocery stores is that the vast majority of snacks and products have added sugars somewhere within, hidden away somewhere in the “nutrition facts” label on the back.

A saltshaker is superimposed onto a man who is dancing crazy style.

But sugar isn't the only thing we have a problem with. Sodium is another substance that is excessively added to foods nation-wide, to the detriment of everyone. Excessive sodium intake leads to heart failure, swelling, increases in blood pressure, and a lot of issues with your kidneys. (https://health.clevelandclinic.org/is-salt-bad-for-you) I’ve tried to do something similar to the sugar challenge with salts, limiting my sodium intake intake for a week, and recording some foods I was surprised to find had sodium in them. For one, just assume anything canned has salt in it. Salt is an incredible preservative, and it is used pretty much across the board in canned goods, even in some fruits and vegetables. Furthermore, it is in all cured meats, many candies, a vast array of cheeses, sauces, condiments, and most pre-made or frozen foods. There is a good reason why the number one cause of death in America is heart failure, and this is almost assuredly it.

The average American diet never ceases to amaze, it seems, as people continue to shovel harmful quantities of minerals and nutrients into their mouth with little regard for the nutritional impact of it on their health. It’s funny too, since there seems to be such a large population of people willing to throw money at these “magic pills” that remove fat, or whatever the next snake oil salesmen is trying to sell, but nobody is willing to try using just a bit more self control. Diets aren’t about restricting what you eat to a few foods, it’s about taking out the few foods that you consume excessively. Diet culture as a whole spits in the face of actual healthy eating habits, and it’s such a shame that the passion behind such large movements is essentially wanted on miracle drugs and magic surgeries, while the real answer really is just that simple.

I can’t fault anybody for falling for these falsehoods, however, not when the media as a whole is so intent on making a buck, no matter how morally bankrupt they have to be to do so. At the end of the day, the way I see it, just think about what you’re eating, don’t listen to the media, and you’ll be happy and healthy enough.