06/01/2018 The moral argument for quitting sugar

The Sydney Morning Herald

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The moral argument for quitting sugar

Elizabeth Farrelly

Published: January 6 2018 - 12:05AM

At the local gastro-pub I was leaning to the burger option. It sounded all right. Grass-fed beef, fresh
radicchio, organic greens, aioli. Then, in a moment of prescience, I asked about the bun. I hoped for
sourdough, or at least proper house-made bread, non-plastic, but the waiter came back quick and proud.
"Brioche." Blech. I went with pizza. Guaranteed fat, salt, carbs and E-numbers, but at least it wouldn't
taste like pudding.

Maybe you've noticed. Everything tastes like pudding now. We all vow to quit sugar and a new year is
opportune – especially this new year, with diabetes and obesity rising around us like the carbon-
swollen seas. But even as we speak, going sugarless is becoming all but impossible. Our politics may
be increasingly bitter but out there in the world, everything is sweet.

These days your Sunday morning eggs benedict will likely arrive on a podium of brioche. Most
supermarket bread tastes like cake. Sushi rolls are like seaweed-wrapped rice pudding veined with
sweet mayo. Chai, which should be peppery, is a lab-made syrup. Spirits come pre-mixed with uber-
sweet lollywater. Teens routinely suck sugar drinks for "energy" and toiletries, from shampoo to body
lotion, reek faux-edibly of vanilla custard, butterscotch and strawberry-cream.

Less known but more sinister is that fruit and vegetables – our healthy alternative to sugar – are also
getting sweeter. This includes obvious things like melons, but also foods whose main virtue is in their
sourness (such as tomatoes) or bitterness (such as lettuce, broccoli and kale).

Monsanto's Beneforte broccoli, EverMild onion, Frescada lettuce and EverSummer melon may not be
genetically modified. Indeed, being laboratory-bred, they may be technically organic, the crowd-
pleasing "super-veggies" of next-wave health conscious consumerism. Designed to secure Monsanto's
purchase in the supermarket's coveted outer aisles and sold now in 150 countries, Monsanto's 21 super-
veges may have higher vitamin and antioxidant content than the originals. But they're also much, much
sweeter.

It's like we're all suddenly four years old. Like our entire taste-spectrum has shifted fifty points to the
sweet. Cake is the new bread, candy the new cake, fruit the new veg and caramel-creme the new
fragrance. Our response to this escalating sucro-addiction is even stranger. Despite epidemic diabetes
(amputations rose 25 per cent between 2014 and 2016), obesity at 30 per cent and all kinds of new fat-
linked cancers, we act like it's mere mechanics, devoid of numinous resonance. Garcon! I'm fat. Have it
fixed, could you?

A recent article by UK psychiatrist Rafael Euba argued that "applying a human moral construct to
nature by dividing foods and lifestyles into good and bad is misleading. In reality, nothing in nature is
either good or bad."

What nonsense. Of course food is a moral issue. Euba's argument is strictly about whether red wine or
animal fat are really bad for you, but his failure to parse the moral issues, or to distinguish the semantic
shades of good (good to eat, good for you and morally good) doesn't mean such issues and distinctions
don't exist.

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06/01/2018 The moral argument for quitting sugar

In truth food, in its various aspects – aesthetic, environmental, health, communal and providential – is
core moral territory. Food involves killing, discipline, creativity, generosity, control, respect and
gratitude. It involves taking the world inside the self, and therefore sits at the heart of the self-world
relationship. How could it be anything other than moral?

Sugar is no exception. We want to consider it value-neutral; to believe that eating yourself into limb-
loss or endometrial cancer is just some random mechanical event. Sooner or later, though, we'll have to
recognise the moral allegory bedded into sugar's delicious centre, since we can't fix it if we don't
understand the cause.

I know. You hate that word moral. It feels like a stricture, so discussing food in moral terms seem
dangerously close to fat-shaming. But morality is just life wisdom; nothing more, nothing less. Moral
rules are those that enhance long-term, big-picture health and happiness. They're not strictures, they're
gifts. Consolidated eons of collected insight. Tips.

In sugar's case, my image is of an Indigenous Australian kid shinnying up a tree for the sugar-bag.
Native honey. It's a rare treat, a small quantum and he's taking a risk to get it – height, bark, goannas.
Plus, if he does prevail, the honey will have to be shared.

In other words, sugar is meant as a rarity and a reward, a treat. This is supported by the absence of
nutritional value, and the sense of satiety that sugar brings, which is why it is traditionally used as the
endpoint of the meal. Full stop.

We've decided it's fine to mess with this, to consume sugar constantly and whenever. Which is where
Big Food steps in, rubbing its greedy hands.

They want sweet? Hell yes, we'll give 'em sweet. Sweet bread, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, carrots. Sweet
broccoli, ffs. In a market-forces context, this means the decisions on what goes into our bodies are
made by white-coated chemists serving multinational corporates in industrial labs. They have zero
interest in our wellbeing, and zero responsibility for it. Why would we trust them?

We know that bitter foods – water-cress, rocket, radish – help digestion, stimulate bile production,
contain fibre, enhance metabolism and improve nutrient absorption. They're also nutrient-rich, reduce
free radicals and support liver detoxification. There are also floods of research linking gut health to
mental health. So perhaps it's not surprising that a recent study by epidemiologist Dr Joanna Dipnall
made sugar one of five major risk factors for depression.

Of course the causality is complex. But what's interesting is our response, our infantile yearning to
outsource responsibility, make it someone else's problem, hoping some government will impose a sugar
tax (as the UK) or a waist-tax (as in Japan) or, better still, publicly fund lap-banding, like some
institutionalised version of ancient-Roman bulimia.

Maybe, instead of ingesting the sugar and externalising responsibility, we could flip it around; take a
little control, get off our fat moral arses, find some moral fibre and drop some of that weight.

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-moral-argument-for-quitting-sugar-

20180104-h0dn8r.html

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