The Lure of Sugar

So here's something 'right where we live.'

I love sugar. Always have.

I've always known it is bad for me, at least in quantities I consume. So why do I do it?

"Logic!" say the young. "If we'd all rule our lives by reason!" The implication is, of course, that the speaker does precisely that and further, that such a thing is really possible on any meaningful scale.

Fact is, reason tells us that we do not rule our lives by reason, but largely by feeling and emotion.

My body feels good when I have sugar, so I eat it. A thousand rationalizations are easy. Tonight it was typical: "This chocolate cake is from my birthday. I can't let it go to waste."

I've done this for years and I assume most of us do in measure: we rationalize poor eating habits. This is the wrong use of the reason so touted by the young as the cure for what ails us. That is, reason is at work on a wrong assumption, namely, "If it feels good I should eat it. If it doesn't, not so much." Reason is serving our bodily foolishness.

Tonight I read some of a piece about the link between sugar and cognitive decline. Could this move me to 'lick the sugar habit', as goes the title of a book my wife hopefully gave me some six years ago?

Am I really going to answer in the negative such questions as these?

• Do I want a healthy mind as long as possible?
• Do I want to optimize my options for good health and activity?
• Do I want to enjoy my family for the longest possible time?
• Do I want to be here to love and care for my wife as long as possible?

Every indulgence of the sugar habit says "no" to those questions. and this is not some dour, ascetic attitude. We should have dessert. Just not all the time, in Mt. Dew and coffee creamer and German chocolate cake and pizza and jelly, doughnuts, syrup-on-pancakes, candy, cookies, twizzlers, and on and on and on.

I do not trust my will-power, which is fodder for another blog. But this article all-but pushed me over the edge. I must change these habits that undermine good living and increase the possibility that my children will unduly suffer because of my fault.. I do not want that to happen,

What say ye?