Tw Are Sweeter

Tw Are Sweeter

You Think f

(Editor's note: Here is one in s series of releases on consumer education by Don Long of tbe agricultural economics department at Virginia Tech.) How sweet are you? In other words, bow much sugar do you use? When I was . asked this question last week, my immediate answer was, *Very little! we seldom buy sugar, so we don't use much at our house.* That is when the fun began! Before I got out of that conversation, I found outlwasfar Sweeter, in terms of sugar eating, than I knew. I had no idea that I, at least according to that legendary term •average*, used so much sugar. .According to all this, I used about 95 pounds a year. Now, I was sure there was something wrong. Ninety-five pounds times five members in my family meant 475 pounds of sugar per year for us. There was no doubt in my mind that we didn’t buy that much or even one-fourth that much. So, I again protested vigorously about that average figure. About that time, I was treated to quite a lecture about sugar eating and usage as well ’ SB how these have changed. It seems that 40 years ago each of us ate, on the average, 97 pounds of sugar per year, t Last year, each of us ate, on the average of 96 pounds of sugar. That adds up to about ,S one percent change in 40 years,' which is almost no change at alL However, the way we eat and use that 96 to 97 pounds has Changed drastically. Just 10

most of our sugar

She

70

ent of the sugar used was

through this outlet. Today, just 10 years later, this picture has completely reversed. Seventy percent of our total sugar supply goes to industrial users and only 30 percent is sold through grocery stores. • In other words, we used to get our sugar as sugar and then use it ourselves in cakes, cookies, canning and the like. Today we let the bakers, the canners, tbe packers and others put the sugar in our food for us. We eat the same amount but we buy it in an indirect way. As a result we, at least I don’t, realize that we use as much as we do. In fact we are really using as much as we did 40 years ago. Actually, I am still not completely convinced that I am quite average so far as sugar eating is concerned. Ninetysix pounds sound like a lot of sugar to me. Yet, all this did convince me that I do eat much more than I had thought.

Or, more likely, you are among that other 190,000,000 who lave now and then watched a water skier zipping across a lake behind a fast motorboat and thought to yourself that it would be fun to try sometime.