https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9nE2spOw_o
“Sugar, Sugar”

“Sugar, ah honey honey. You are my candy girl. And you got me wanting you.” -The Archies (1969)

A fitness-freak friend of mine has been recently schooling me on nutrition. I admire his daily training regimen and low body-fat physique, and appreciate his advice – usually. The other day I sent him a picture of what I had been led to believe was a “healthy” breakfast: fresh strawberries and yogurt topped with granola. It tasted great (less filling!) and gave me a burst of energy. When he saw the picture, though, he about hacked up a fiber-rich furball. 
“Do you know how much refined sugar is in that, mate?” (he’s English, it’s not that we’re on a ship.) I told him that I didn’t put any sugar on it because the strawberries have fructose (I thought I had him with the word “fructose.”) Then he broke down how many grams of sugar I had just consumed in the metric of candy bar consumption and what percentage of my daily caloric intake that was, and then said something about a glycemic index (yes, he said “glycemic index”, aka GI) and suddenly I felt quite bad. My energy spiked and crashed, and I felt a bit depressed. Refined sugar can do that, I guess. 
When I was a kid growing up in a small farm town of mostly German ancestry in central Wisconsin – before our country even knew what the metric system was – there was little talk of “nutrition” and certainly no prohibitions on artificial sweeteners. The only time I was verbally reprimanded for sugar intake was when my mom caught me with the proverbial finger in the sugar bowl, although I was using a spoon. She told me that too much sugar is bad for the teeth and can cause tooth decay. I didn’t know exactly what “decay” meant, but it didn’t sound good. I knew it meant something like “rotten”, and I didn’t want rotten teeth.
Since then, I’ve come to realize that it’s a major contributor to obesity and all the bad things incumbent on being in the upper range of the Body Mass Index (aka BMI – lot of “indexes” regarding health, I gather). When I told him that I also have oatmeal for breakfast he gagged, again, because I mentioned that I like the instant as opposed to the one in the red and blue paper tube carton with the picture of the smiling old dude with long white hair and goofy hat, like a Mormon or something.
I asked my friend if the Sugar in the Raw (aka turbinado cane sugar) I had in my pantry was okay and he expounded that anything processed or refined was basically stripped of any nutrients, and then went on a half-marathon raving rant about how the sugar industry and media have hoodwinked us on how much refined sugar is crammed into most of the junk we eat at fast food restaurants and convenience stores. Now I was getting really depressed. I didn’t even want to tell him about the non-dairy powder creamer I dump in my morning coffee (sugar is the first ingredient listed, which means that’s what it has the most of, I’ve learned). 
I thought of watching my mother and grandmother bake coffee cakes and cookies and all sorts of other sweet goodies. They bought white sugar by the bag and filled bins with it. I really liked all those coffee cakes and cookies. I had my favorites, but I liked them all. Let’s don’t even talk about candy bars and ice-cream treats. I may go into glycemic shock.
After googling the detrimental health effects of too much refined sugar – diabetes, obesity, liver and kidney damage, acne, depression, accelerated skin aging, heart disease – I’ve decided to seek my sweeteners from more unrefined and natural sources, such as fresh fruit, honey and maple syrup (that “fructose” as opposed to “sucrose” thing). At least I caught the problem before tooth decay took root and I bounced out of my BMI. I haven’t had a pimple in decades. 
I do see a lot of tweaky people with tons of pimples and rotten teeth, though, but they’re all skinny, so it can’t be refined sugar that makes them look like that. Must just be all the rock cocaine and bathtub crank that they do so like to smoke. They’re methed up. I guess that’s the sugar of the modern day unrefined. Let me eat cake! I say, echoing the silly French queen of days gone by. And snickers and cookies too! Just don’t tell my friend. It could put him in cardiac arrest…