Halloween: Sugar, Chocolate, and the Body

Seratonin, the opposite of dopamine, increases in the brain after eating chocolate. It's almost instantaneous. You feel slightly euphoric, like you could possibly do anything, and have the energy to try.

Sugar, a refined form of energy, does something similar but to a different effect. Sugar is a carbohydrate, in fact, makes up the majority of carbohydrates in processed foods. Carbohydrates give the body energy, but in today's 21st century society, we eat more than we use. This unused energy becomes stored as fat in the body. Those who do strength training can replace fat with muscle and can also burn that many more calories, even while sleeping. Unlike chocolate though, sugar let's the body down after the initial, and rather short-lived, high--way down. You begin to feel tired, even less than 40 minutes after you ate. And, because sugar or carbs were ingested, you feel hungry again in less than two hours (which is all it takes to process carbs--protein, however, can take up to four hours to digest).

Chocolate has been recently praised for its antioxidant content. This is probably not a good justification to over-indulge in this sweet treat. There is typically less antioxidants in milk chocolate, if any, and to really get the health benefit, you have to eat a great deal of the darkest form of chocolate-which also has a great deal of fat.

It's Halloween tonight. There will be sugar and chocolate aplenty. It would not matter if this was only one day out of the year, but then, there's Thanksgiving, known particularly for the pie-desserts, including pecan, nothing but sugar; and a month later, Christmas--cookie anyone?
Then a month and a half later is Valentine's Day--heart-shaped boxes full of chocolate, caramels, nougat, and toffee. Easter is April (though March 23rd in 2008--just over a month after Valentine's), followed closely by Mother's Day, Father's Day, and the Fourth of July.

It's not just one night--it's one night every month or so for twelve months each year for the rest of our lives. The average person gains one pound a year. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Add that up over 15 years, 20 years, 25, 30 or more--now, it's not as benign anymore.

And why pass this on to our children? No one wants to be the stingy neighbor passing out trial-sized tubes of toothpaste but we have to work smarter not harder. How does society suffer from obesity? How does it affect our health care benefits? How does it affect our health? How does it affect our life span? Suddenly, a tube of toothpaste doesn't look so bad afterall.

I will be giving out candy--one piece to each child until the bag is gone. Then comes the toothpaste!

Be safe out there!