The Allure of Sugar- Guest Post by Writer Tom Bentley

For a very long time in our past, our ancestors were hunter-gatherers: they would seek food, but they didn't grow or raise food.  With the advent of farming our forebears gained some measure of control over The Third Necessity, but famine was always lurking just around the corner, ready to pounce at the slightest dusturbance in the elements.  Every human in ancient times spent their lives living under the constant spectre of possible starvation.  This is not just ancient history- the forces of hunger have shaped us in deep and profound ways.  Modern America is, in spite of recent events, a land of abundance.  Today, when presented with foods containing concentrated sugars or fats- powerful energy sources that sustained our ancestors in the lean times- we often still react by giving in to temptation and eating more than we should of foods that we, well, shouldn't.

I asked my friend, writer extraordinaire Tom Bentley, to do a guest post here in which he delves into the mind of a sugar-chasing adolescent, namely himself.  Come along for the ride as Tom, in his inimitable way, gives a look into the window of: Ourselves.

 

You've probably seen a variant of this in some horror film: some trusted character's face, benign and loving, is suddenly revealed from a shocking new angle. Maybe horns sprout, there's a death's head skeleton seen shimmering within, a slight smile joins with brimstone eyes into a twisted evil thing. But then the character returns to the irresistible charmer you always knew her to be.

 

That (with the appropriate Tesla arcing of electricity) would be my happy child's face, paired with the alternating skin-stripped-away face that reveals, over time, my tormented teeth. Tormented? Aye, cap'n: these are the teeth of a man who was such a dedicated consumer of sugared objects—the more sugary the better—in his youth that it's miraculous that I still have any grinders left to grimace with.

 

I went from kid-hood to punk-hood from the late 50s to the late 60s, and that was a time when the processed foods industry was truly in its ascendance. Convenience foods, like packaged cereals, were, well, convenient. Corn syrup had yet to stab its nutrition-sucking needle in every product under the sun, but there were still many demons in the product aisles.  Candy bars were a nickel—five cents for a blast of sugared dynamite! I blasted, and enjoying the sensation, blasted again and again.  My brother and I would eat an entire box (and children, the boxes were bigger then) of Frosted Flakes at one sitting. Mmmm! I frequently ate an entire half-gallon of ice cream; a dozen doughnuts: no problem. My mother, the beleaguered shopper in this tawdry enterprise, began to despair of both my teeth and her wallet, and she began restricting our intake.

 

But by that point, around age 9 or 10, I was addicted; sugar was my soulmate. The neighborhood store personnel called me the Candy Man, because I would come in and buy 5, 7, 10 candy bars or other treats at a time, along with a giant RC Cola or two. Where was I getting the money? Well, if you're near my age, you might remember those square, folding coin-collecting books that had slots for the coins. My parents had given those to my siblings and me, and they'd let us go through their coins when they came home from work. We worked on those collections for years, books  of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and even half-dollars. We had nothing actually rare, but there were some nice old coins in those collections. 

 

"Were" is the word: my father had stored the more-full books in our attic, and I began taking them down and filching the coins to feed my sugar flame. Before it was discovered that Little Tommy was on the take, those books were about 1/4 their weight. Candy! Candy called to me, the sweet siren song, coin collections be damned.

 

I engaged one of my friends to be a sugar child with me, early co-dependency. We'd go to my Candy Man store, load up, and then go back to my room, close the door, and eat everything we'd brought back in our laden bags. I called them "Celebrations." Benders, essentially. Of course, I was so sugared-up that I hardly wanted to eat anything at dinner. Vegetables? Get thee behind me, Satan!  

 

There were consequences. My boyhood dentist drove a lovely Jaguar XKE; I had to have at least paid for its transmission. I once was diagnosed with seven cavities at one appointment. Many, many crowns adorn my non-regal enamels. Three root canals. One bridge. Some periodontal work. A hole where an implant should be. (Damn things are pricey.)

Of course I'm careful NOW. I floss, I pick, I brush religiously. But my candy-crazed mind didn't pay that much attention to my mother and father telling me to do those very things back then. I still love sugar, though; I just don't eat it in nearly the quantities that I did. I'm more choosy, going for the good chocolate, the high-end confections. I don't eat dessert after breakfast, lunch and dinner anymore. But sometimes, when I eat a small bowl of good ice cream, I can still feel the fever of my old self heating up—I KNOW I could eat a half-gallon again, delirious, inward-eyed, my soul glazed and syrupy.

 

I don't want to be one of those hovering protectors, preventing kids from having a nice dessert, an ice cream on a summer's day, but for some kids like me, man, that stuff should have come with a warning label.

 

-Tom Bentley

http://www.tombentley.com/wordpress/

  

Comments

[George Quirk]

Great article, doc, as always. I think getting away from sugar is close to impossible. There will always be a craving deep in your soul, haha. It's okay to indulge on it once in a while. I have a bar of Snickers in my bag in case of emergency.

[E.S Akshay]

Thanks for sharing with us...................