If you thought That Sugar Song was brilliant then you really need to watch That Sugar Film (2014). (Available via Netflix, Google Play or Prime, you can still find it here at Watch Documentaries.)
Here are a few places you can go to learn more about the wonders of sugar:
- NZ Heart Foundation
- Diabetes NZ News
- NZ Dental Association
- FIZZ (Fighting Sugar in soft drinks)
- Connection to Rheumatic Heart Disease
- Public Health Association NZ
- Flouride Free NZ
- The sugar industry influence (just one example)
There is so much more information out there that shows that sugar added to our meals and snacks over and above the sugars that occur naturally within our foods, is bad. Real bad.
Benefits of Sugar
There is not a lot out there promoting the benefits of sugar. I visited NZ's largest sugar refinery's website assuming their "social and community" page must be loaded full of links to "positives". Nada. (Edit: not entirely true... they donate sugar syrup for birds to feed on at Tiritiri Matangi, which is nice and has no negative impact on the bird's teeth. Yup.)
Visiting the US Sugar Association website it seems the main benefits of sugar are that the industry provides 142,000 jobs. When addressing the fact that 30 million Americans have diabetes, they suggest "moderation", which is helpful.
Don't get me wrong, we don't all have to go zero sugar, but we do all need to be aware of what it does so that we can make decisions on our health and well-being that fit our health profile and that of our children. At the very least it would be nice if we could just slow and halt the alarming rise in Type-2 Diabetes, or childhood obesity in Aotearoa and beyond.
Spreading the Good Word
As new owners of a sugar free business we feel it is our mission is to play a part in promoting alternatives to sugar, and to debunk some of the noise that is made around "sugar free" that I assume largely comes from the sugar industry and the "synthetics".
Searching official New Zealand organisations and associations for sugar alternatives doesn't bring up a whole lot. Consumer NZ has a fairly limited article from 2021 that focuses on synthetic sweeteners like Aspartame (E951), Saccharine (E954) and Sucralose (E955), among others.
The Consumer article pays a cursory mention of sugar alcohols like Erythritol, Xylitol and no mention of Allulose, which we field requests for every other day. (PS: For anyone looking for granulated like-for-like alternatives to sugar, it is probably one of these three.)
The point is that there is a dearth of information out there and we hope to change that.
Fight the good fight!! Start with That Sugar Film!!
