This was a line in an advertisement for a so-called healthy snack bar: tastes like a candy bar. What has happened to our taste buds when a candy bar taste is so appealing that it is being used to advertise something that isn’t supposed to be a candy bar?
We have gone from a nation that eats good food to a nation that only wants to eat sugary foods. How did this happen?
Muffins! They are the culprits! Yes, I said muffins!
Look in any cookbook published before about 1980 and you will see that muffins are a food with very little sugar. They were just a touch sweeter than biscuits. They were even considered health food when made with whole wheat pastry flour and dried or fresh fruit, or nuts and seeds were added. A recipe for a dozen medium muffins that used a cup and a half of flour used 2-3 tablespoons of sugar or less. Then came the muffin store craze. They started springing up in shopping malls, subway stops, and even free-standing locations.
A recipe for a dozen medium muffins that had taken 1-2 tablespoons of sugar for decades changed. Muffins with a cup of sugar or more for the same cup and a half of flour became the norm. Some recipes even went as high as a cup and a half of sugar for each dozen medium muffins. Savory corn muffin recipes often use more than a half cup of sugar. Some muffin recipes contain only ¾ cup of white sugar but also contain a mashed banana. One tablespoon of sugar has 48 calories, a banana has 16 calories.
So a recipe that calls for 9 tablespoons of sugar (more than a half cup) and a mashed banana will have 448 calories. Each muffin will then contain 27 calories from the sugar alone. Compare this to the old recipes that would contain 48- 96 calories from sugar for the entire recipe of a dozen muffins. That’s about four and a half times more sugar than in the 1940-70s. Commercial muffins generally contain a lot more calories when the flour and fat are included. One medium Otis Spunkmeyer Blueberry Muffin contains a whopping 360-420 calories. (This includes the sugar, fat, and flour calories.)
So muffins, a nice low sugar treat, became dessert; as sweet as cupcakes, in some cases even sweeter. The size of the muffins also increased as the sugar increased.
So muffins that used to be considered a ‘health food’ are now so full of sugar and calories that they no longer qualify. Muffin stores operate on a profit, not good nutrition. The more people’s tastes want that sugar, the more they will continue to serve these high-sugar muffins. We can’t tell which came first: our increased desire for sugar or the corporations making everything contain more sugar so we become so addicted to the sugar and high sugar taste that nothing else will do. It doesn’t matter which came first if you have fallen for eating so much sugar hidden in previously healthy foods.
Back to the candy bars. There is a series of TV commercials for a candy bar that shows people who are cranky, nasty, scrappy, or bullying eating a candy bar and recovering. They say you aren’t yourself when you are hungry. It’s a cute ad. But it is encouraging people to eat a candy bar when their blood sugar drops.
When you go without eating your blood sugar will drop because food provides blood sugar as the fuel to run your body. This is why it is so important to eat small frequent meals and keep your blood sugar levels balanced to have the most energy for physical and mental work. If you don’t eat and your blood sugar drops, please don’t use a quick fix and eat a candy bar, caffeinated drink with sugar, or a sugary muffin. This is a quick fix that can often lead to headaches, lack of sex drive, allergies, forgetfulness, obesity, depression, indecisiveness, insomnia, rage, and more. A full list of the symptoms and the solutions can be found in The Anger Cure.
Reduce your dependence on sugar as a quick way to get energy. Eating sugar frequently will let you down in a few hours and create health problems for the rest of your life. Eating fresh vegetables and fruits will not. Small frequent snacks of vegetables, cheese, nuts, tofu, sardines, or a combination of these will give you sustainable energy that will not let you down a few hours later. A small snack could be a quarter of an apple with 2 ounces of natural cheese, a stick of celery spread with a teaspoon of nut butter, a small handful of unsalted and unroasted nuts. Veggie sticks like cucumbers, broccoli, zucchini, red or green pepper, or even jicama, would be great snacks that will be low in calories and great tasting and healthy. Eating vegetable snacks frequently during the day will be a great help in consuming the 8-10 half cup servings of vegetables and fruits a day that nutritionists now feel are essential for good health.
The obesity epidemic created by eating sugary foods is causing many health problems. Here is a quote from the Director of the National Institutes of Health.
“Obesity is a major problem in the US and globally. More than two thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Type 2 diabetes, which affects 26 million Americans, goes hand in hand with obesity. Type 2 diabetes raises the risk of stroke, heart attack, blindness, amputations, kidney failure, nerve damage and a long list of other health problems.” Dr. Francis Collins, NIH Director
Eating so many calories daily as we outlined here can contribute to obesity and a lot of other health conditions. Please consider trading sugary treats for vegetable and nut snacks. You’ll feel better, sleep better, and have more energy.
Kathleen O’Bannon, CNC, is a nutritionist, Wellness Coach, and dynamic public speaker. For information on health please see her best-selling books: The Anger Cure: A Step-by-Step Program to Reduce Anger, Rage, Negativity, Violence, and Depression in Your Life, Basic Health Publications and Nutrition & Health in the Bible, Thomas Nelson. Kathleen is available to speak to your corporation or group on nutrition and health. Wellness at Work, “Help I think I’m losing my mind” is one of her most requested topics. Contact Kathleen at: Kathleen@kathleenobannon.com
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