By Shelley Krupa, Business Operations Coordinator at Lake Hallie Memory Care
Hello Spring! Are we ready to avoid the sweet snacking and jump into Spring donning our warmer attire? If you’re nodding yes, you’re not alone and wise in thinking ditching the consumption of non-essential sweets is a goal to keep going for positive changes in your life and help your brain feel happy too.
Sadly, the total U.S. sugar consumption toppled to around 11.3 million metric tons between 2021 and 2022. Outstandingly, there were 181 million metric tons of sugar produced worldwide. 5.3 million metric tons more than was consumed in 2018/2019. That may be good for agricultural technology, but it is not so good news for sugar consumers and their brains.
The impacts of 2020 and 2021 kept us isolated safely at home. Some folks nibbled away on chocolate chip cookies dipped in that desperation to have contact with someone else drive-through vanilla latte in hand. A pining for and dabbling in sweet treats of comfort welcomed sugar-buzzed courage not to stop there. They ventured out, and down the middle of the store aisles where extra sweet, oh, so yummy, cookies grabbed their attention.
According to my mishmash Google search, sweet goals were high for 245 million Americans who consumed ready-to-eat cookies in 2020 & 2021. On average, we consume over 2 billion cookies/per year, 300 per person, or 35,000 in a lifetime. Astonishingly, 95.2 percent of households consume cookies. Perhaps the other 4.8 percenters who don’t may be onto something important for us to consider.
Guess who consumes the most cookies? You’d think kids, right? Nope, you’d be wrong. The highest consumption of cookies is for the over-65s. Yes, you read that right - the over-65s munch on them the most. That age group is at the highest risk for other not-so-sweet things.
Our brain uses glucose for energy, but too much of the wrong energy source can be detrimental when the glucose comes from high fructose corn syrup-laden foods like cookies. Too much-processed sugar in our diet puts our brains at risk and our bodies at insulin-chaotic levels. And may lead us on a detour to diabetes and compromised immune systems that can’t utilize Vitamin D. Making us susceptible for you guessed it - to the ever-lurking COVID-19 virus, small-vessel disease, vascular dementia, and Alzheimer’s.
It’s not that complex for our brains to process. Sugary cookies ditched from our diets will help us save more lives.
Set a sweet goal for 2023 and beyond - skip the cookies – grab an apple or avocado instead.