Twelfth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

There is a incessant virtual war in the commercialization of foods targeting our youth, our future. From McDonald’s and other fast-food industries to so-called organic food offerings, to the foods constituted as junk food: such as chips and beverages, sugar is a mainstay in the ingredients. Those companies touting their products as organic whose ingredients are not clean are just as culpable. It is our youth who are inundated with the daily consumption of these products containing the most deadly and addictive substance outside of street and pharmaceutical drugs. This paper will attempt to survey the war on sugar that is transcribed with clarity in the text, Sugar Blues, along with other data-driven statistics relating to the concatenation of sugar and early onset diseases of the young body and mind. Consider the number of students who cannot concentrate on their studies, dropouts, or those labeled as troubled makers under the aegis of their social class. Instead they are strung out on the drug which is peddled in the marketplace as nutrition. What of the sugar babies suffering from depression, or ADHD stemming from the sugar they consumed? How will the companies reconcile their lost innocence, their unrealized potential? The severity of the problem is incomprehensible, and I argue changing the culture and mental habits of our youths. Manufacturers are mandated to include the ingredients on packaging, but sugar is inclusive, inconsequential. It is imperative that sugar is labeled as an ingredient of detriment, a signification of a pending crisis.