Sugar is No. 1

The leading source of calories in the typical American diet may now be from soft drinks and other sweetened beverages, according to preliminary results reported by the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. This study observed that over two-thirds of the respondents to the 1999-2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) reported drinking enough soda and/or sweet drinks to provide them with a greater proportion of daily calories than any other food. In addition, the obesity rate was higher among these sweet drink consumers.

Our national tendency to replace water, fruit juices and milk with soft drinks and fruit-flavored beverages, which are devoid of any nutritional value, has occurred over the past three decades. This may be an example of what, in another context, Jared Diamond calls "creeping normalcy" or “landscape amnesia”, or forgetting how different your surroundings were 10, 20 or even 50 years ago because the changes are so gradual that our baseline for what’s considered “normal” also shift imperceptibly.

While this may be welcome news to food manufacturers and their shareholders, it’s scarcely good news that much of our diet has been replaced by empty calories.

At least there shouldn’t be a lot of dioxins associated with them.