|
“Do you know that the hospital put sugar in my mother’s intravenous solution? How can they do this? Sugar is so bad for you.”
These questions were put to a physician friend of mine by the young adult child of his patient who was in the hospital for a surgical procedure. The young woman was responding to the mountain of articles and books about sugar leading to disease and obesity. And she was serious; she was terribly concerned that her mother would suffer dire consequences once the glucose in the intravenous (IV) drip came in contact with her bloodstream.
My physician friend said he had to explain that all carbohydrate, regardless of whether it was a starch like potato starch or sucrose, table sugar, ends up as glucose in the body. “I told her that the digestive system is set up to break all carbohydrates down to one basic sugar, glucose, in order to be able to use it for energy and many other functions. It doesn’t matter if we started with pasta or honey; we ended up with glucose entering our blood. But since her mother cannot eat before, during and after the operation and she needs energy, we were putting this simple sugar into her blood stream directly, through the IV.”
As we talked further, it was apparent that this misconception about glucose is widely shared. Foods with dextrose, another name for glucose, or other simple sugars like fructose or sucrose, are regarded as toxic and to be avoided at all costs. Certainly diabetics must carefully monitor the amount of simple sugars they consume since these sugars can raise blood sugar levels faster than starchy foods because they pass through the digestive system so fast. Simple sugars also are more likely to be found in foods with low or no nutritional value like cookies, candy and soda, so avoiding sugar means avoiding many junk foods. But foods which taste sweet because they contain sucrose or dextrose have their utility.
Sweet taste is one of the basic tastes with which we are born (the others being salty, sour and bitter). According to scientists who have done taste tests with young infants, breast milk tastes sweet. Our enjoyment of a sweet taste has probably protected human kinds against being poisoned since a bitter or sour flavor taste is associated with food toxins or spoiled food. Foods with a high salt content are not good for either blood pressure or kidneys. Many fruits will go from tasting terribly bitter to sweet and as they do so, they lose their toxic quality and become safe to ingest.
Sugar is digested very easily. After a few days of not eating because of bad flu or intestinal virus, a warm beverage with sugar will be an easily digested source of much needed energy. The body, weakened by an infectious disease, does not have to work very hard at getting this carbohydrate through the digestive system and into the blood. Very few people, in the early stages of recovery from a bad stomach virus, can tolerate more complex foods such as brown rice or tuna fish.
Young children or elderly adults who reject other foods will often eat foods with a sweet taste, an observation reported by Mary Poppins who claimed that a little sugar will make the medicine go down. Indeed, the director of an Alzheimer’s facility once told me that the only foods many of the patients would eat would be sweet snacks. They would eat nothing at meals but line up to consume cookies and ice cream when the snack cart came around. We discussed the utility of adding a sweet taste to nutrient-rich beverages and other protein-vitamin packed foods in order to get the patients to eat them. This is not to suggest that the entire food supply should suddenly adopt a sweet taste. But if the choice is between having a sick child or elderly person not eat at all or eat because the food tastes sweet, I think the answer is clear.
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Janet Podleski is one half of the sister act that wrote the bestselling cookbooks, Looneyspoons, Crazy Plates and their latest, Eat, Shrink & Be Merry! Janet and her sister, Greta, are also monthly columnists for Canada's number-one magazine, Reader's Digest, and were voted into Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2000. The sisters and their inspirational, self-publishing success story have been featured on dozens of national TV programs such as The Today Show, CNN, Canada A.M. and QVC, as well as on hundreds of radio shows, and in magazines and newspapers across North America. In addition to a B.A. in Psychology, she has also earned a degree as a Registered Holistic Nutritionist. 
Brenda J. Ponichtera is a registered dietitian and author of several award-winning cookbooks, all designed to prove that "healthful eating doesn't have to take a lot of time in the kitchen."
Calorie Bargain: Oikos Organic Greek Yogurt
Calorie Bargain: Green Mountain Gringo Mild Salsa
