Slightly Off KIlter

In searching the web yesterday for stats on how much added sugar the average American consumes, I came across a page from the Sugar Council entitled
The Real Scoop on Sugar Consumption

How much sugar do Americans really eat? Not as much as reported.
Using information from a 2001 report1 as illustration, a general
statement like “Americans consume more than 150 pounds of sugar
in a year” is not only thoroughly misleading, it is completely wrong.
Such false assertions perpetuate the myth that “Americans eat too
much sugar.” As you will see later, the average American consumes
no more than 1.6 ounces of sugar per day.

Well, they would try to play down the fact that the average American consumes too much sugar. After all, they are “The Sugar Council”. Sugar is their business — and it’s a big, healthy, profitable business).

But even the Sugar Council isn’t saying Americans don’t eat a lot of sugar; they’re just arguing over the amount. Read that last sentence from the Sugar Council (above) again.

As you will see later, the average American consumes
no more than 1.6 ounces of sugar per day.

That’s still a pound every ten days (every week and a half).
That’s still 36.5 pounds in a year. That’s still an awful lot of sugar.
It hardly makes the statement that “Americans eat too much sugar.” a myth. In my view, it supports that statement quite well. Of course, it’s actually in the interests of the Sugar Council for Americans to eat as much sugar as possible; they’re caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

And, it’s my guess is that the “Sugar Council” is being very careful to only count as “sugar” consumption
the consumption of table sugar, i.e. sucrose. Whereas, I would bet a sugar-free cookie that the US Dept. of
Agriculture is including such things as High Fructose Corn Syrup (a popular culprit) in their statistics.

Ah yes, if you read just a little further in the Sugar Council’s rebuttal you’ll see:

Besides misrepresenting economic supply numbers as human intake, there is a second factual error in this news release. This error is using the word sugar to represent all sweeteners.

Uh huh. Well, there’s a reason for using the word sugar in this way. It’s technically correct 🙂

“Sugar” is both a colloquial term used to refer to sucrose and a scientific biochemical term with a somewhat broader definition

sugar —
Common name for any sweet, crystalline, simple carbohydrate which is an aldehyde or ketone derivative of a polyhydric alcohol. Sugars are mainly disaccharides like sucrose and monosaccharides like fructose; all are soluble in dilute alcohol or water and are white in their pure form.

Let’s see how far the Sugar Council will take their argument…

Sugar is only one component of the total sweetener supply. When tabulated by ERS, total caloric sweeteners include all the corn syrups + honey products + miscellaneous edible syrups, like sorghum, as well as sugar. Total caloric sweeteners is cumbersome to say or write repeatedly, thus the term sugars was adopted for convenience [note the s on sugars]. Although the term sugars was coined to represent all caloric sweeteners, some continue to write and talk about sugar [pure sucrose from sugar cane and sugar beets] instead of sugars. This is more than semantics. Continued misrepresentation of total caloric sweeteners [sugars] as sugar [no s] is not only flawed but damages America’s hardworking farmers and the stability they bring to their local economies.

OK. I believe them. But I’m not convinced. Americans consume 36.5 pounds of sucrose per year and vast quantities of additional sweeteners (biochemically known as “sugars”) including the ever more ubiquitous “high fructose corn syrup”.

The Sugar Council may quibble over semantics (contrary to their belief, it is a matter of semantics). The fact remains — Americans consume too much “sugars”. 😉

In related news, did you know that 45.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot?

Have a sweet day … without added sugar.