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What is the sugar conspiracy? The sugar conspiracy is a theory that I developed while cashiering at a large retail chain during my last two years of college. While mindlessly scanning customers' purchases, I noticed the common tendency of people to easily succumb to the soda and candy displays at the registers. These last-minute impulse purchases were too often done by families, bickering and arguing in the check-out line until they were placated by the sugary treats. This little drama, played out repeatedly before my eyes on a near daily basis, led my fertile collegiate mind to overarching generalizations and disconnected conclusions. Yet I began to realize that our society consumes massive quantities of processed sugar. I'm not damning all sugar consumption. Sugar is a necessary element of our nutritional process - it's a carbohydrate found naturally in fruits and vegetables and thus is one of the body's main sources of energy. If we just ate fruits and vegetables, we'd get all the sugar we need, naturally, in our diets. But we don't. And it seems to me, the introduction of these processed sugars has damaging results. By conumsing large quanitites of candy, soda and other high-sugar "foods", our bodies have to work harder to process this extra sugar. Which results in extra energy flowing thru our bodies, energy that needs an outlet somewhere (think: a classroom of hyper-active 7-year-olds). When we consume large quantities of these refined sugar products, it's almost like our bodies establish an artificial level of sugar dependency, above the body's natural level that has to be maintained. When our sugar stocks dip below that level, we enter a period similar to withdrawl until we can boost our levels back to where they were. (Think about the last time you really needed a candy bar). During that withdrawl period, we become more irritated, quicker to snap at other people, less patient, more intolerable of elements in our surroundings. Multiply one person's irritation by the millions of people in our country who consume processed sugars on a regular basis and you have a society that is more stressed, more impatient, less tolerable of the world around them. Extrapolate this idea further in a smoky, deep night philosophical bull session and you could say that the mass consumption of sugary snacks is a contributing factor to the intolerance and aggression in the world. I told you it took a couple leaps and bounds . . . But where does the conspiracy come in? Okay, maybe it's not technically a conspiracy. But conspiratorial elements are always lurking just below the surface if you are of the mind to look for them None of the major soft drink or candy manufacturers are going to tell you that their product is not good for you. Of course, they won't actually say it is good for you either. Image-based advertising takes care of that so the nutrition factor is never really considered. The corporations also ofen work behind the scenes to obscure factual information before it even gets to the general public. The point is, neither the mass media (who benefits from advertising) nor the government (who benefits from campaign contributions) make efforts to truly investigate what is essentially a hazardous product. Obesity levels are at their highest they've ever been in this country, other diseases and sickenesses are rampant, yet the connection is never made. This mass consumption of sugar products is so ingrained in our society, that we often don't even see it. Think about this: every major holiday in America revolves around the mass consumption of refined or processed sugars. The way to show your love for your girlfriend,boyfriend, husband, or wife on Valentine's Day is to buy them candy. Christmas is inundated with sugar products, (sometimes with strange religious undertones) - cookies, pies, candies, red-and-white striped shephard's staffs, etc. And on Halloween, we dress up our children in costumes and send them door-to-door, begging for candy! It's this pervasiveness of refined sugar in our lives that needs to be examined. The first step, of course, is awareness. Now you know.
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