By Penelope A. Domogo, MD
My mom had this pocket cookbook that contained perhaps a thousand recipes from soups to pastries, from entrees to desserts. It was our only cookbook then and the recipes fascinated me so I tried almost all the bread and pastry recipes. I love breads and pastries and I would bake almost every weekend that I was home. The cookbook is still there, the leaves smeared with dough and oil and egg and syrup, torn at the edges and falling apart but still usable. In that cookbook, a basic cake recipe called for 1 and ½ cup flour or 2 cups flour and 1 cup sugar. There are other ingredients but let us focus on the sugar part and let us practice our math. This basic cake recipe yielded 1 pan round cake measuring 9″x9″ which we usually sliced into 8 pieces (that’s Igorot serving). There are 16 tablespoons in one cup. Meaning if I ate 1 slice of cake, I would have eaten also 2 tablespoons of sugar. But when I see this cake I don’t see the sugar, right? Right. I only see the yummy cake and it doesn’t look like sugar crystals. So people generally don’t count this sugar disguised as cake– what they count is the sugar that they spoon in their coffee or tea. So when I tell them to cut down on their sugar intake, they protest “ But I don’t use sugar!” And yet they eat cake.
Here’s more hidden sugar. Soft drinks contain as much as 12 teaspoons sugar per 12 ounces. A piece of chocolate cake contains 15 teaspoons sugar (you see, chocolate cakes are thick unlike my cake above and commercial chocolate itself contains sugar). One cup of frozen yoghurt has 12 teaspoons sugar. Cookies are as sugar-laden as cakes.
How about jams and jellies? Mom also taught us to make those- usual recipe is 1 cup sugar to 2 cups fruit juice but we’d boil it down to half so that it would gel or get syrupy. So 1 tablespoon jelly is 5 teaspoons sugar. And then we love to slather this sugar on Philippine pandesal or loaf which is already sweet.
Let us have more mathematical calculations. Many people, usually women, love the cake and soft drink combination. One chocolate cake has 15 teaspoons sugar while one eight-ounce soft drink has 8 teaspoons. That’s a whooping 23 teaspoons sugar in just one sitting. How fast can you consume 23 teaspoons of sugar? If your cake has icing then add another 5 teaspoons per slice. Wow, 28 teaspoons refined sugar! Then you’ll have another sugary snack in the afternoon. You did not yet count the 3-in-1 coffee or 7-in-1 tea that you drank. Some people think these are just coffee or tea. We’ll, dear friends, read again the ingredients.
One person can easily down 50 teaspoons of refined sugar in a day. To think that we don’t need even 1 teaspoon of refined sugar. We really should not be surprised why our people are getting overweight, diabetic, hypertensive and affected by many other sugar diseases. By the way, cakes, breads, cookies, jams, jellies and soft drinks are also considered processed foods.
Almost all other processed foods contain refined sugar – junk food, ready-to-eat cereals, canned food, most peanut butter, even hotdogs. So parents and grandparents, be careful what you buy for your child or apo – the label may say “whole grain” but is coated with sugar. Will you still buy it?
Manufacturers know that many people now are aware of the bad effects of too much sugar so they rename it under different aliases in the labeling. So when you see the list of ingredients, you may not see the word “sugar” but you will see “sucrose, dextrose, lactose, fructose, high fructose syrup, maltose, corn syrup”. A word ending with “-ose” means it is sugar. Then there is “sorbitol”, “aspartame” and other artificial sugars. It’s hard to memorize all these technical terms so it is easier to just limit eating processed food because chances are it has a lot of sugar hiding in it.
Again, what’s wrong with sugar? Smart nutritionists label it as “empty calories” or even “anti-nutrient”. Why? Refined or simple sugar means it has been stripped of its fiber, protein, vitamins and minerals and what is left is pure sugar. In this case “pure” isn’t good. Okay, this time let us have chemistry and physics lessons. Once you drink soft drinks or eat white bread or cake or other foods with sugar in it, it causes a “sugar reaction”- it paralyzes the stomach temporarily. It is a strong alkaloid so the stomach produces much acid to balance it. The blood becomes overly acidic so the body again has to balance this acidity by using minerals from your daily food. So if you eat sugar everyday, this supply of mineral from your food is not enough so your body will leech minerals from your teeth and bones causing tooth decay and osteoporosis. So watch out because dental caries is one of the first signs of excess sugar in the body. This is the reason why sugar is called an anti-nutrient – because it upsets the existing balance in the body.
Furthermore, excess sugar in your body is converted into fat – and deposited in your waistline, hips and worse, in your heart or kidneys or blood vessels. It can also cause diabetes. And because it is sugar, it will also make your blood syrupy- meaning “thick”- just like your favorite guava jelly. Now, a syrupy blood is harder to pump than normal blood so your blood pressure increases meaning you get hypertension. Thus many diabetics also have high blood.
Sugar also paralyzes your immunity soldiers which are present in your blood. Of course, sleepy soldiers can’t do their job – so germs easily attack you giving you frequent cough and colds, “gaddil”, dengue and other diseases. It is dengue season now so please be careful with sugar.
Worst, sugar is addicting. If you can’t go through the day without something sugared, then you are addicted to sugar. Lesson? Don’t even start giving sugar, hidden or not, to your children. It’s wise not to have snacks. But if you have to provide snacks, especially if for your kids, then have just boiled camote, squash, corn. No added sugar. Then we will have a healthier future generation. After all, they are the hope of our motherland. **
