By Dean L. Jones
From October through December this nation ramps up on foodstuff, and thank goodness that even nutritionists agree that eating an ounce or two of dark chocolate a few times a week is healthy. Science-based studies show that antioxidant-rich dark chocolate has health benefits, because it is rich in flavonoids, which are naturally occurring substances found in plants that boost our antioxidant activity.
Although healthy dark chocolate is not easy to find in ordinary grocery stores, the preferred type of chocolate is the less-processed chocolate that contains at least 65% cacao. Dark chocolate has a much higher concentration of antioxidants than something like milk chocolate, not to mention that milk chocolate contains much more added processed sugar and unhealthy fats than dark chocolate.
Sadly, public schools bafflingly manage to navigate around such positive general knowledge in providing healthy provisions for their students. Our Federal government granted $3.2-billion to the National School Lunch Program, and when it comes to purging processed sugar servings public schools go awry. Public schools do provide much more in the way of fruits and vegetables each day, but it falls short when it comes to offering healthy beverages.
Public schools expelled whole milk and replaced it with fat-free or low-fat milk, where the overwhelming number one beverage choice by students in public school is low-fat sugary chocolate milk. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials consider syrupy chocolate milk as acceptable, paraphrasing their words “that the added processed sugar is worth it if it means our students are drinking milk.” Where money is involved, it is no wonder that the School Nutrition Association advisors who direct the foodstuff decisions on student nutrition on high-quality, low-cost meals are representatives from companies such as Coca-Cola, Domino’s Pizza, General Mills, Pizza Hut, Sara Lee and other foodstuff makers.
Aside from the fact that the lactose in milk weakens, not strengthens bones, this substitution of sweetened reduced-fat milk in lieu of unsweetened whole milk lowered the per cup serving of saturated fat by a simple 3-grams and increased the added processed sugar by 13-grams. Somehow education administrators incessantly evade the point that processed sugar-sweetened beverages have been linked to over 183,000 deaths annually. The extended health damage from processed sugar consumption has increased the rates of diabetes, heart disease, obesity and cancer.
In last week’s PACE News, this article discussed how healthy fat had been misidentified as the culprit behind heart disease, when all along it has been the dangers of consuming processed sugar. Overly eating processed sugar ruthlessly increases a person’s risk for heart disease by promoting metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of health conditions that includes high blood pressure, insulin and leptin resistance, high triglycerides, liver dysfunction, and visceral fat accumulation. And so, health necessitates one to persistently strive to live SugarAlert!
www.SugarAlert.com
Dean Jones is an Ethics Advocate, Southland Partnership Corporation (a public benefit organization), contributing his view on certain aspects of foodstuff.
