Hello Everyone, Happy new week and Happy new Month. I hope the month brings us all the greatness we wish for this month and beyond.
So when I saw this topic, "Sugar ban" I just paused in my reading, and it's not because it isn't a valid topic or something, Nope,it just because sugar is something that if you turn left and turn right, you will see it. Like alot of things are made with sugar. Our tea, That favourite brand of bread you like,drinks,and sometimes even in food, I have heard some people say they use sugar in cooking their yam and corn, lol. This one is courtesy of our Yoruba Brethren. Okay so the idea of regulating sugar sounds really logical on the surface, but then, once you must have thought deeply about it, you see that it can get complicated really fast.
So I mean, Alcohol is one thing that you can point to,like you know what it is, you know when you are consuming it,you know when you have had too much of it ,theres age restrictions, warning labels and also Socal rules on it, but then sugar, when you eat for the whole day, you can really tell the amount of sugar that has gone into your system, so how can we really regulate something that lives inside almost everything we eat?
Now that's where we have confusion, because literally everything we eat contains sugar, our carbohydrates, garri, rice, cassava,yam, etc. all these things break down into sugar in the body after we might have consumed them, even the fruits that we say are healthy, they still contain natural sugar.
So now if we say sugar should be regulated, what kind of sugar are we really talking about? Is it natural, processed, industrial or added sugar? The line here isn't clear and since it is like this, enforcement can get really messy.
Another thing here is our culture and lifestyle,see in many homes, especially here Nigeria, we have a lot of sugary stuff going on around us, Nigeria is famous for sugary drinks and snacks, see this is our norms, even children grow up to snacks made out of sugar, like sweetened beverages, biscuits etc, you just name it and it is not seen as dangerous as how alcohol is seen.
Alcohol already carries alot of social warning, "too much of these is bad" but sugar doesn't, infact I can say it is seen as comfort. Imagine birthday cakes,small chops, pastries,all these are all part of our happy moments. Now trying to regulate this In the same way that alcohol is regulated might seem like a threat to daily life.
So that being said, I won't say that too much sugar is good no, it isn't at all, let's not even pretend here, we know alot of issues that has come up due to sugar intake there's literally a long list of health issues that's related to sugar.
I remember when I was in uyo, I went to visit my aunty and her daughter served her fried potatoes and eggs that was fried with scent leaves, when I got to her house, I saw she was just coming back from somewhere, apparently she had gone to a drug store to get this sugar test kit, she checked her sugar level and saw it was really high,she immediately said she wasn't going to eat the food cause it has alot of sugar and might still continue affecting her.
So I understand why people are calling for stricter rules on sugar,yes people need to know what they are getting into and what they are putting their bodies into.
But I personally learn towards education than the strict regulation,what we really need is better awareness, clear labelling,honest information and not those tiny nutritional facts they put there that nobody reads. Something like "High In Sugar" etc , something along this line, when people see it they know what they are going into.
But then at the end of the day it all comes down to personal discipline just like what my aunt did, she had to stop certain food and so had the initiative to test her sugar level.
See nobody is forcing us to add 3-5 spoons of sugar in our tea and pap , we do these things ourselves, if the system makes unhealthy options available , it is still on us to regulate how we take those things.
We should learn to have things in moderation, no matter what it is.
So should sugar be banned , No not exactly, you cannot even ban sugar. But as a person you can control what goes into your mouth. That's my own take.
You cannot compare alcohol and sugar together, they don't serve same purpose, and putting them together doesn't make sense to me.