The White Devil’s Alias Revealed and Malice Exposed
By: Christian Dejeu,
Staff Writer
“That’s loaded with the white devil!”
“No more white devil for you right now!”
“I’m trying to avoid and reduce the white devil.”
“That white devil will do you harm and then kill you slowly.”
These statements and similar others are heard and said more and more frequently, and yet I had no idea of who or what was meant by them. My curiosity peaked and I needed to be part of those in the know.
Who or what is the white devil? Many are wondering, but you should know that many more don’t even know that they should be wondering who or what is the white devil. Looking back, my mom and her sisters provided the crushing disclosure of the white devil’s widely recognized benign alias to me. The white devil is best known as white sugar and exists everywhere in our food, especially in the Westernized diet. Through inquiring, investing, and researching, I discovered you need to be aware of the amount of sugar that you are eating. By eating sugar all the time, people can endanger their physical and mental health; in fact, sugar is a toxic drug in large quantities.
To begin with, good reasons to limit and avoid sugar are that sugar rots teeth and robs energy. Dentists and doctors alike know that sugar feeds the bacteria in your mouth that causes tooth decay and cavities. Therefore, eating too much sugar and not brushing your teeth after a sugar intake increases the likelihood that sugar will be left on your teeth for these beasty bacteria to feast on and produce their acid waste that causes damage to your teeth. Although the idea that sugar robs you of energy appears incorrect, with a greater understanding of the truth of a short-lived sugar energy zing that people initially feel, it has been found to be followed by an energy depleted crash that leaves you more tired and less alert. The National Geographic, August 2013 Issue: Sugar- Why We Can’t Resist It, expertly covers the serious issues with sugar and provides truth to this topic. In this article (Cohen 96), Dr. Richard Johnson shared the cause and effect of sugar energy and summed it up this way: “Americans are fat because they eat too much and exercise too little. But they eat too much and exercise too little because they’re addicted to sugar, which not only makes them fatter but, after the initial sugar rush, also saps their energy, beaching them on the couch. The reason you’re watching TV is not because TV is so good,” he said, ”but because you have no energy to exercise, because you’re eating too much sugar.” Sugar provides only a short-term energy that does not sustain the body’s energy and it quickly tires the body and mind and leaves you sluggish.
Further, better reasons to avoid and limit sugar are that sugar is addictive and provides empty calories with no nutritional value. Sugar is tasty and we crave it, prefer it, and incorporate it in our foods. However, learning how sugar affects our brains is quite shocking. A rush of sugar in our bloodstream stimulates the same pleasure centers of the brain that respond to the dangerous addictive drugs such as heroin and cocaine (Cohen 97). Literally, sugar is acting on our brain, as an addictive drug: we desire it, want more of it, and find it hard to resist. In addition, sugar is everywhere: added to processed foods for flavor and texture, as well as, a preservative to extend food shelf life. Not only does sugar surround us, it is often contained in the cheapest foods, compounding the problem to avoid and limit sugar. The American Heart Association recommends a sugar daily limit of 9 teaspoons for men and 6 teaspoons for women, yet the average American eats about 22.7 teaspoons each day (Cohen 87), which is about 363 calories with no nutritional benefit. By the way, this means a whopping 77 pounds of additional sugar for the average American each year. Overall, sugar is hard to resist or avoid and provides only calories with no nutritional benefit. As a result, sugar does not support health and wellness in our bodies.
Lastly, the best reasons to avoid and limit sugar are that sugar is blamed for the rising rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes and it is literally killing us. Doctors and experts alike believe that sugar is a primary factor in the health crisis the world is facing. Currently, obesity is an epidemic, over a third of adults worldwide have high blood pressure compared to 5% in 1900, and 347 million people have diabetes compared to 153 million in 1980 (Cohen, 87). People need to understand that although the body processes sugar to function, eating too much and or eating sugar in easily digested forms, such as highly refined white sugar forms, results in your liver breaking down the sugar and producing fats called triglycerides. It is these fats, the triglycerides, that stay in your liver and over time can turn destructively dysfunctional, get into your blood stream, and become particularly harmful. The National Institutes of Health shares that over time high triglycerides cause a cascade of consequences, such as causing blood pressure to rise, creating heart attacks and strokes, helping tissues to become resistant to insulin, and causes the pancreas to produce more and more insulin. All of these are the factors of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes that are major causes of chronic disease and death.
In conclusion, the white devil, a.k.a. sugar, is a serious threat; moreover, most “users” are unaware of its harm and threat to their lives. In Christian theology, the devil is the major element of evil, destructively mischievous and wicked. Similarly, the white devil, sugar, is a major element of evil, destructively mischievous and wicked in our diets and bodies. The white devil is sly and in a position of power because it’s cheap, easy to find, tasty and hard to resist. Whether you agree that you should limit or avoid sugar or not, you really can’t argue with the research and findings overwhelmingly demonstrating that sugar can act as a dangerous drug in our bodies; it can be toxic. Know you can do better for your physical and mental health by limiting and avoiding sugar. Although it’s difficult to resist, avoid, and limit, with the power of knowledge and the effort of awareness of what we choose to eat, we can make a real difference in your health and well-being. Ask yourself, “Are you under the influence of the white devil?”
Work Cited
Cohen, Rich. “Sugar Love: A Not So Sweet Tale.” National Geographic August 2013: 78-97.