If you were like me growing up sweets (sugar) were used as treats. Fortunately for me, we lived in a rural community so we didn’t necessarily get treats every day, but sugar was present in some form or fashion throughout the day. In the morning it was present in coffee and tea and in bread and pastry or if breakfast consisted of oatmeal certainly it sugar would be used as the sweetener. Of course, let’s not forget the juices, even though they are marketed as healthy these drinks, in most cases, are jammed packed with sugar.

At lunch time you gulp down sugar in your soda pop and other similar beverages. Then if you were having cookies with your pop, these cookies were quite naturally laden with sugar and other sweeteners. Those who chose sandwiches were not any better off either because sugar was often used to enhance the flavor of the sandwiches buns. Now, what about dinner? Well, you were no safer here; sugar was all around here too. In the dinner recipes, breads, cakes, drinks, sugary desserts just about everything that made up this meal contained sugar.

As you can see, when we examine the constituents of our daily diet the predominance of sugar in its various forms is overwhelming. No wonder why we turned out to be so heavily addicted to the taste of sweet sugary items. But having been made more aware of the dangers of sugar, I have discovered that continuing to consume so much sugar can only lead to total health destruction. Many common ailments such as high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke are all highly associated with prolonged high sugar consumption.

Personally, I decided to wean my body away from this acquired sugar addition by gradually eliminating many of the sugar laden items from my diet. For a period of time I turned to the totally hyped diet products which were made with sugar substitutes. To some extent they satisfied my sweet tooth, but I later found out that they were just as bad as or maybe even worse than sugar itself. Wisely, I dropped that habit and made a choice just to get rid of refined sugar in my diet altogether. Of course this is just about impossible so my general rule of thumb is not to consume anything that contains more than 10 grams of sugar per serving. For me the closer an item can get to 0 grams of sugar per serving the more I’m inclined to include it in my meal.

From babies we have been conditioned to consume high amounts of sugar daily, but we now know that sugar can set up the body for many common illnesses including hypertension, diabetes and cancer, every effort must be made to eliminate this substance from our diets. However, in doing so please stay away from so call sugar substitutes like aspartame they may expose the body to even greater risks. Natural sweeteners like stevia are beginning to show some promise as safe alternatives to refined sugar for persons who cannot kick the sugar habit.