Sugar: The Not-So-Sweet Truth | Teen Ink

Sugar: The Not-So-Sweet Truth

August 24, 2015
By jaiom BRONZE, Industry, Maine
jaiom BRONZE, Industry, Maine
1 article 0 photos 1 comment

 Let me take you through the production of sugar. Let me show you it is bad and then I will leave it to you to decide the rest.

Now let’s go to the 1970’s when people started to get really fat. At the same time the sugar companies started to make more money. We the people started to notice this, so the sugar companies covered up by saying a calorie of sugar makes you just as fat as a calorie of almonds. However this is not true, a calorie from a sugary food does not have the fiber necessary to balance the quantity of sugar so your body goes into a sugar rush.

When your body goes into a sugar rush it does not know what to do with the extra sugar so it turns it into fat. However a calorie from almonds has the fiber to stop the sugar from coming in so fast. The sugar companies did not want people to know this so they started taking the fat out of food. But when you take the fat out of food it tastes grouse.

Knowing this the companies had to think of something. The answer they came up with….SUGAR! They decided to nearly double the amount of sugar. Sugar is bad for you; it causes you to have diabetes. Diabetics are prone to illness which can be fatal and cause death. And the sugar companies continue to put insane amounts of it in everything.

Sugar production has environmental impacts, three million tons of soil is lost per year from sugar beet farms in the EU and 1.2 million tons turkey. The making of sugar cane probably caused a greater loss of biodiversity on the planet than any other single crop.

Fifteen countries around the world give between ten and 50 percent of their land area to cane cultivation and in seven countries sugar cane covers more than 50 percent of their land.
Substantial area of biodiversity-rich habitat has been cleared for cane cultivation, such as rain forest and seasonal forest. Land clearance not only results in the direct loss of species, but underlies a range of bigger impacts on ecosystem function, as well as changes to increased soil erosion.


Agro-biodiversity is the diversity related to the agro-ecosystem and encompasses the variety of plants and animals that are necessary to continue the functions and processes of the agro-ecosystem and support the production of chow aka food. The suite of micro-organisms associated with a harvest is sometimes overlooked, although it plays such a critical role in ecosystem function.

Most intensively cultivated agro-ecosystems are relatively ground impacts of sugar cultivation on downstream ecosystems:

Agriculture is arguably the predominant influence on the earth’s land surface and undoubtedly represents the biggest cause of watery land habitat loss this occurs through the runoff of polluted effluent into water courses, due to the weighty abstraction of freshwater resources upstream of wetlands habitats, or by altering the natural flow regime.

The impacts felt downstream are the cumulative result of a complicated set of land and water use decisions in a river basin. Inside this context, cane or beet can play an important role in some sugar producing countries.

And now you decide. Should sugar companies act the way that they do? Should the production of sugar continue the way it’s going? You decide!


The author's comments:

I hope people can see how sugar is harming the environment and ourselves.


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This article has 1 comment.


on Sep. 21 2015 at 12:50 pm
Shakti Das Lescault BRONZE, Industry, Maine
1 article 0 photos 1 comment
pretty good.