Big Sugar

At the recent meeting of the American Medical association, Dr. Haven Emerson said the average American was eating far too much sugar and other sweet foods, and also far too much bread and cereals and other starchy foods. He proved it by several arguments in which he used figures from the country and abroad and relating to other times as well as the present. He showed that the average consumption of meat per person in the United States had fallen off. While he did not argue for a greater use of meat, he did indicate that eating more meat might be the lesser of evils. 

Probably he thinks we eat too much of everything and should not increase our daily allowance of any food. However, if either our daily bread and sugar allowance, is to remain as it is, he would choose the meat allowance to stay and he would have us cut down on sugar and bread. The arguments he used were these.

Statistics show our consumption of sugar to be increasinng at an enormous rate. Going hand in hand with this increase are increases in diabetes and in obesity. Just in the years when we are. 

Sam Apple's Tweet: 15/ Less than a year before, Bundesen had warned in print that sugar should be consumed in moderation. Now, he was suggesting —among other outrageous claims—that a lack of sugar could be harmful to teeth.  Had something changed Bundesen's mind about sugar? …

Bundesen -> AntiSugar

Your Health - Herman N. Bundesen M.D.

Your belt-line is your life-line. As it increases, the life span shortens and there is greater hazard from diabetes, kidney disease and heart trouble.

The man or woman who sits down most of the day and rides to work in an automobile or street car should be careful not to overeat and should take exercise regularly. Sugar and starchy foods should be taken sparingly and fats and oils should be avoided. Meat may be taken in moderation once a day. Fresh vegetables and most fruits are excellent non-fattening foods. 

Dr. Bundesen will answer any health questions submitted by readers who inclose stamped self-addressed envelopes for personal replies. 

Bundesen -> ProSugar

The laws in regard to the manufacture of foods, of which candy is a valuable article, are very stringent and protect you from any adulteration or undesirable substances. So, with a mind at ease, you may match your table decorations for your party with mints to follow the dessert, and you may give your children colored stick candies or bonbons.

Excitable Children

For children, whose active littel bodies make more movements in an hour than many grown-up ones do in a day, and who thus expend large quantities of energy daily, candy repairs the loss in a simple, quick, and acceptable way. The little ones need a much larger proportionate sugar ration than adults. 

The Matter of Teeth 

Candy of one sort has another valuable use. Teeth, like other parts of the body, need exercise. Provided the body is supplied with the teeth-building elements, the teeth will be healthy, if used. Hard candies, such as molasses candy, and stick candy, give this exercise to the teeth and gums, and leave no residue. The chewing of hard candies, and other hard foods, helps the teeth. 

The Canada Lancet, a monthly journal of medical and surgical science, the oldest medical journal in the Dominion of Canada, says:

"There is a rather widespread notion that eating candy injures the teeth. There is not the least scientific foundation for this notion. The lack of sugar is much more likely to injure the teeth, through impaired nutrition, than even its excessive use is likely to do by any digestive troubles which might result from over-use."

Hard candies, such as molasses and stick candy, give exercise to teeth and gums and leave no residue, Bundesen adds.

CANDY IS A FOOD! that's the first thing to know about it. Candy supplies definite needs of the body, just like milk, fruit, vegetables, cereals. Candy, in fact, furnishes several vital elements of the diet, without which you couldn't keep well! So this is the word of modern dietary science -eat candy sensibly, eat it as a food-if you do this you will get the greatest possible enjoyment and beneft from it. 

How candy fills important bodily needs 

Candy is sometimes considered as an energy food only, because it is so remarkable in that respect. But candy is much more than that. In the candy shown on this page, for example, you will find: Proteins, carbohydrates, fats, mineral sales, and vitamins--all vital to health. 

You doubtless recall having read that Gertrude Ederle are candy for "body fuel" when she swam the channel, that soldiers, athletes and explorers use it for the same purpose. Considered as a source of quick energy for the body-an extremely necessary food-function -candy is a near perfect food. Considered as a complex food, the source of regulative and building elements (proteins, vitamins and mineral salts) candy also has a place in the properly balanced diet. 

Caroline Hunt*, noted specialist in Home Economics, has therefore recommended that candy be made a part of the "sweets" ration, which consists of about five pounds a week for the family of five. Candy may constitute whatever part of this is desired. 

*Specialist in Home Economic. U. S. Dept of Agriculture.

A hint to women(and men, too) who want to be thinner

Contrary to the old superstition, candy has no unique fat-producing qualities. Such authorites as Gordon and von Stanley**(American Journal of the Medical Sciences--Jan 1928) even suggest the use of candy in a slenderizing diet.

Here is a suggestion: eat candy as a dessert, as often as you find it agreeable. Let it take the place of the heavy, rich desserts, which are difficult to "burn" as fuel, and which tend to be converted into tissue-fat.

 Candy thus supplies the need of a sweet after meals in the most wholesome way. Serve it alone or with fruits and nuts. 

How to use candy as a food 

Treat candy exactly like other foods! The best diet is a varied diet and a balanced diet. Don't try to live on any one or half-dozen foods. Even milk alone, the most nearly perfect of all foods, is not enough in itself to keep you in good health. Don't make a meal of milk, or potatoes, or fruits alone--or candy! See chat all the necessary elements are there in proper proportion. 

Divide your food-budget like this, for example: 

"About one fifth for vegetables and fruit.

"About one fifth for milk and cheese.

About one fifth for meats, fish and eggs

About one fifth for breads and cereals

About one fifth for fats and sugar(candy)"

(Cited by Dr Henry C. Sherman, "Chemistry of Food and Nutrition," MacMillan.)

ABOVE STATEMENTS APPROVED BY DE MERMAN N. BONDESEN

A book for you Dr. Herman N. Bundesen has written a scientific, modern booklet in everyday language for you- called "The New Knowledge of Candy" Beautifully printed and illustrated in colors. Use the coupon below, and send ten cents.

Such are the sugar resources of the United States that they might render the country independent of such production and exportation combinations as recently were entered into by Cuba, Czechoslovakia, German, and other sugar growing countries. This native source of supply, aside from Porto Rican and Louisiana can and Colorado beets, resides in the country's corn fields.

The production of pure crystal corn sugar on a commercial scale is an infant industry. The conversion of the grain is an intricate process. After cleaning, it is subjected to the action of warm water and sulphur dioxide to soften it and prevent fermentation. 

The solubles near the surface are thus washed off and, regained by evaporation of the steep water, are utilized as cattle feed. 

Later the grains are crushed and the germs, floating on the surface, are collected for their oil. The rest of the mixture is ground, washed and screened until the fibrous cellulose material, also used in cattle feed, has been removed. Starch and gluten remain in the water solution, from which the starch settles out on a series of shallow, slightly inclined troughs, while the gluten passes on with the overflow. 

The starch is flushed out of the troughs, pressed, and dried. When it has been highly purified, it is converted into sugar by hydrolysis, the digestive processes that take place within the human body being reproduced. The starch, suspended in the pressence of chemically pure hydrochloric acid until it has been converted into glucose, or dextrose, perhaps some maltose and dextrines. 

By means of evaporation the solid sugar is then crystallized out and cut in large slabs, which are "aged" for crude corn sugar of various grades. 

Corn sugar, being dextrose, is a different substance from what is ordinarily known as sugar, which is sucrose, whether obtained from sugar cane, sugar beets, sorghum, maple or palm. It has proved useful in medicine, especially for infant and invalid feeding. It also serves a purpose in the food industry. Last year almost 700,000,000 pounds of corn sugar were produced. 

WHEN New York was really new, a lump of sugar sparingly nibbled with a cup of tea was the height of luxury. Today the world and his wife, life Hansel and Gretel before the witch's castle, find themselves in a wonderland of sugar.

For every pound [of sugar] consumed a century ago, today there is 20.

In America, taking us all in all--rich man, poor man, beggar man. thlef, and babe In army--we eat of candy alone about eleven pounds apiece. In New York City, which is literally the sweetest spot on earth it is probably nearer fifteen. In a half century our confectioners have realized visions of sugar plums far beyond Victorian dreams. Where candy once meant a few hard balls or sticks in a striped paper bag, today it may mean any sort of comfit in any sort of container, from the business-like sweet chocolate of the subway news standa to bonbons in a gilded chest. The old-fashioned chocolate cream has a progeny more numerous than the fabled Belgian hare. Ice cream soda, an Invention of the 80's, abounds in America like the proverbial milk and honey of the Promised Land. Bake-shop windows are gaudy with frosted pastries that resemble nothing mother used to make. Sugar comes close to being the American staff of life. It is doubtful whether Uncle Sam would even care for his chewing gum without it. 

The whole story of sugar is, however, a very short chapter in the world's history. Known for some 2,000 years, it has been in everyday use for but 200. Honey was the sweet of the ancients, celebrated in song. Sugar--odd as it now seems--they prized as a medicine, and it appears at first to have come from India, from cane or its cousin, the bamboo. As late as Nero's time a geographer was writing indifferently: "There is a sort of hard honey which is called saccharum(sugar)

But, in 1928,  there was a problem: The article explains that the global supply of sugar was growing even faster than the demand. The sugar industry anticipated we’d all soon be "drowned in sweetness, in a vast and swelling Niagara of sugar." Something had to be done. …

The 1928 article continues, "Either it [the sugar supply] must be dammed at the source or we must somehow eat our way out." Cuba planned to limit output. The American sugar industry settled on the "eat our way out" strategy.

The article reveals that the sugar industry had recently launched "The Sugar Institute," a trade group that would "teach America how to eat more sugar." "If everyone would eat 20 pounds more a year, [The Sugar Institute] pleads, we might catch up with production."

Soon the institute will begin directly to teach America how to eat more sugar. If every one would eat twenty pounds more a year, it pleads, we might catch up with production. America has accomplished greater gourmandizing feats before. Where just after the Civil War the average citizen ate eighteen pounds of sugar a year, today he eats 119. And that does not include maple sugar, corn sugar, and honey, nor the rivers of syrup and molasses with which the national griddle cakes are inundated.