Ashley Moran wrote:
> On Jan 09, 2006, at 12:43 am, Debby Padilla-Hudson wrote:
>
>> I do think
>> a little bit of something bad is way too much,
>> especially since it is so easy to train the taste buds
>> to think super sweet is OK.
>
>
> Well, I don't think even if you went from birth to age 20 without
> ever eating sugar you wouldn't like the way it sweetens things -
> that's just how the human sense of taste works.  But there are people
> that think cultivated strawberries are inedible without sugar (I
> couldn't believe it when I read it) so that shows how dependent we
> are on modifying our food.
>
> Ashley
I agree.

I think it was W. A. Price who talked about the Native Americans and how
tooth decay was relatively unheard of until they encountered refined
sugar. Then it became a problem because they had no idea how to prevent
or treat it. Certainly it wouldn't have been a problem if sugar didn't
appeal to them. They would have just said "yuck" and that would be it.

I don't believe it is an accident that we like sugar. We evolved that
way. Sugar is a great source of concentrated carbohydrate that can help
us survive when we are sick and unable to find and kill real food.
Having a taste for it means that we are more likely to take advantage of
it when we find it. Plus, some of the most nutritious whole, natural
foods, including fruits and vegetables, contain it. The problem is that
we are now able to get it very easily and in large quantities. This is
something that we are not well adapted for.