Dietary Standards: BMI = 30.7

Canadians consume an average of 88 pounds of sugar per year (according to Maclean’s, May 6, 2014). I never thought of myself as having a sweet tooth, but when I look at all the sugar being added to just about everything we eat, I’m sure I used to eat at least the national average. That’s more than a pound and a half a week. These days I average less than 25 grams of added sugar per week – the Halloween candies I bought are for kids who dare to knock on my door tomorrow. After that I’ll be taking the leftovers to work to fatten up my workmates.

Look at what I found in the ‘produce’ section of my grocery store. I can understand the apple crisp mix being there – it might help the store sell more apples – but the other items are ridiculous. One is ‘apple butter’, which I’m sure is delicious, but it should be over beside the honey and peanut butter, not beside the apples. The caramel dip should be over in the snack food aisle, or maybe beside the ice cream toppings. I can’t begin to imagine why the apple display needs cans of maple syrup stacked next to it.

Half of the ‘breakfast bars’ don’t even pretend to be grain/cereal based anymore. I don’t even eat plain granola bars anymore because of the added sugar – but for people who still think a granola bar is a solid breakfast, don’t pick the wrong box or you’ll just be having brownies for breakfast.

I can’t believe these things are still sold as breakfast food. To be fair to my grocery store, they were on the top shelf, well out of the reach of children. The one on the right suggests a serving of 1 cup, 30 grams, which contains 13 grams of sugar. If I ate 30 grams of the Halloween candies I purchased, I would take-in 16 grams of sugar. I seriously think we need to start setting some reasonable standard as to what can be marketed to kids as breakfast.

Since giving up sugar and losing nearly a hundred pounds, I can’t begin to give you any idea how much better I feel. When I see people eating brownies for breakfast and drinking a huge bottle of carbonated syrup for lunch, and then complaining about not having any energy, I just wish had psychic powers to let them experience how much better they would feel without all that sugar.