The Crusade Against Sweetness

[robyn]

I had to agree with Smarmy, at least in the beginning of this thread.  I just hate, hate, hate canned salsa which has sugar in it.   There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to put sugar in salsa.  Why don't I make my own?  It's WINTER.  There are no good tasting tomatoes to be had....

I made some salsa last night with plum tomatoes that I bought in Publix in north Florida. Pretty good. Probably helped that the recipe called for grilling/broiling them and the other ingredients until they were a bit charred. Since it was cold and rainy last night - I passed on the grilling. So don't give up! Robyn

[robyn]

Hmmm, interesting, I haven't noticed that in Hellman's, but I have noticed it in Acme brand mayo (last time I buy that stuff).

What really gets me is when someone tells me something is mayo, and then it turns out to be Miracle Whip.  Blech.  (or, as Jinmyo might say, Gah, gag me with the Devil's cock).

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I'm looking at the label for Hellman's and it's a bit confusing. Sugar is listed as an ingredient - but it also says the carbs are 0% - and all of the calories come from fat. So perhaps it's simply a trace amount of sugar? Robyn

[robyn]

An even bigger pet peeve is salted nuts. So maybe I'd crusade against saltiness.

Pan is The Devil's stooge.

Who knew?

Salt, used judiciously, sharpens and lifts and heightens other flavours just as sugar dulls and flattens them.

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Nothing wrong about sugar - "used judiciously" - in the right dishes. I made a pork tenderloin last night - sweetened and soured with a citrus juice marinade (there's an acid component as well as a sweet component in citrus). What's wrong is too much of it - in the wrong dishes.

Likewise with salt. I can't stand the taste of overly sweet things - but I can't stand the taste of overly salty ones either (nor do I like waking up at 2 am in desperate need of a liter of water because dinner was too salty).

I can't say that moderation is always the key - but it certainly is more often than not. Robyn

[NulloModo]

Hmmm, interesting, I haven't noticed that in Hellman's, but I have noticed it in Acme brand mayo (last time I buy that stuff).

What really gets me is when someone tells me something is mayo, and then it turns out to be Miracle Whip.  Blech.  (or, as Jinmyo might say, Gah, gag me with the Devil's cock).

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I'm looking at the label for Hellman's and it's a bit confusing. Sugar is listed as an ingredient - but it also says the carbs are 0% - and all of the calories come from fat. So perhaps it's simply a trace amount of sugar? Robyn

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According to the FDA if a product contains less than .5 grams carbohydrate per serving, it can be listed as 0 on the nutritional panel (if it has between .5 and 1 grams, it can be listed as <1 gram per serving). So, as long as the sugar is less than that their labels are (legally) accurate.

[kellycolorado]

One of my big gripes is I'm trying to avoid all the HFCS sodas when eating out at casual places- Sometimes I want more than water, but the sweetened lemonades or teas are SO sweet. Adding lots of ice or water to the lemonade helps or getting unsweetened iced tea and trying to get that 1 sugar packet to dissolve helps too.

Don't get me started on how sweet a mocha latte is at Starbucks. Undrinkable- yech.

... I suspect that even sweetened lemonade or iced tea is going to skew someone's tastebuds far away from those of someone who normally drinks water, wine, beer or unsweetened tea with meals.

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Yes, I normally drink any one of the above with meals at home. Sparkling water is my current nonalcoholic favorite.

Edited December 28, 2004 by kellycolorado (log)

[SethG]

It's time someone said something.  ...  The infusion of sugar into everything from barbeque sauce to curry to coleslaw must end!

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If anyone here is serious about this subject then I hope they have read, or will read, the Hesses' iconoclastic book The Taste of America. The insidious infusion of sweetness is one theme in this strongly spiced, unsweet book, a minor classic among food lovers in the US since first published (to some fuss, and critical respect) in the late 1970s. In 2000 it was reprinted in paperback with addenda. One or two popular food icons get skewered, or flamed, in the book, albeit with documented data; some people cannot get past that, as is usual when people's icons are skewered, and others dislike the tone, regardless of the data; but even without those elements the book would be vital, I feel, for its data and frequent source quotations and references. The bibliography is sort of a mini-Bitting. (Bitting is the classic US gastronomic bibliography and was based on the Bitting Collection of San Francisco which became in 1946, if I remember, the nucleus of the US Library of Congress cookbook section.)

I put some comments on amazon, a few years ago after the reprint appeared, on the product information page for this book, which you can call up with the amazon link here.

(Edited for one typo and one really lame sentence structure.)

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I wandered into this thread in order to recommend The Taste of America and saw that you beat me to it, MaxH! Great book. Funny too.

[purplewiz]

One of my big gripes is I'm trying to avoid all the HFCS sodas when eating out at casual places- Sometimes I want more than water, but the sweetened lemonades or teas are SO sweet.  Adding lots of ice or water to the lemonade helps or getting unsweetened iced tea and trying to get that 1 sugar packet to dissolve helps too. 

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This is why I use Sweet 'n' Low (a/k/a the pink stuff, as opposed to the blue stuff or the yellow stuff) in my iced tea. It dissolves almost instantly. But it's so sweet that one packet does 2-3 glasses of tea for me, depending on the size of the tea (one packed for the giant "Abyss Boy" size).

I like my tea very lightly sweet - any presweetened tea is going to be way too sweet for me.

Marcia.

[skyflyer3]

I would be interested in learning in what instances Asian food uses sugar in large quantities.  It doesn't fit with what I know about Asian eating habits.

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An interesting point to note: Many people in Asian cultures like to eat jelly with a spoon, as if it were a dessert, and not a condiment. I had a couple of boyfriends from China and Vietnam who would actually grab the jelly jar out of the fridge and just eat it. And if you visit Asian groceries frequently, you'll see many jelly desserts in individual serving packages, which are meant to be spooned up and eaten straight. And these aren't thick, chunky fruit preserves either.

Now, I don't find anything wrong with that, though I don't eat jelly that way. I really enjoy meeting people from different cultures and noticing the differences in eating habits. But this one seems sort of interesting, as it could make a trip to IHOP very advantageous, since there's a dispenser with a bounty of free dessert packets on every table.

And I'd say this is one of many examples where Asians certainly get their recommended daily allowance of sugar.

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Speaking of Asians and jelly, my co-worker brought in some Korean Honey Citrus Tea. It comes in a huge glass jar, and looks just like marmalade. You dump a big spoonful in a glass, and then add hot water. Very yummy. I can't find it locally, so I will have to purchase it from someone traveling there next. Honestly, I think there'd be a huge market for the stuff here in the Northwest. It's interesting, tasty and exotic.

I agree that processed things are too sweet nowadays, including mayo, and especially cereal. I like that Frosted Flakes now has a less-sugar option, although I think they added Splenda and then half the sugar. Why can't they just make it less sweet? (This is coming from someone who loves sugar, by the way).

[Busboy]

I like that Frosted Flakes now has a less-sugar option, although I think they added Splenda and then half the sugar. Why can't they just make it less sweet?

I think you're missing the point.

Less-sugar frosted flakes is called corn flakes.

[NulloModo]

I agree that processed things are too sweet nowadays, including mayo, and especially cereal. I like that Frosted Flakes now has a less-sugar option, although I think they added Splenda and then half the sugar.  Why can't they just make it less sweet? (This is coming from someone who loves sugar, by the way).

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That was a health marketing thing I'm pretty sure instead of a taste thing. Similar to the Coke with half the sugar, figuring some people would buy into it that cutting back a bit would be a wise health choice.

[beccaboo]

Speaking of Asians and jelly, my co-worker brought in some Korean Honey Citrus Tea.  It comes in a huge glass jar, and looks just like marmalade.  You dump a big spoonful in a glass, and then add hot water.  Very yummy.  I can't find it locally, so I will have to purchase it from someone traveling there next.  Honestly, I think there'd be a huge market for the stuff here in the Northwest.  It's interesting, tasty and exotic.

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I've seen that in the tea aisle at Uwajimaya's.

[MaxH]

I like that Frosted Flakes now has a less-sugar option, although I think they added Splenda and then half the sugar. Why can't they just make it less sweet?

I think you're missing the point.

Less-sugar frosted flakes is called corn flakes.

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Not only that, but people "of a certain age" with memories will notice that products sold for many years in the US as Sugar Pops, Sugar Smax, and Sugar Frosted Flakes became, if I've got this right, Corn Pops, Honey Smax, and Frosted Flakes. The names changed; I'm unaware of how much the substance did.

(N.B.: This phenomenon is not limited to breakfast foods.)

[Mabelline]

I have to admit I'm surprised no one has commented so far about the jam or jelly on a spoon. With all my Mediterranean and Arabic cookbooks, especially the first "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", by Claudia Roden, there's quite a long explanation of 'spoon fruits', a traditional way of cooling off in the heat of day. Basically, I understand it to be a demitasse-style spoon of an exquisitely perfect preserve floated down into a glass of the coldest water available, then leisurely consumed. I found it to be a very civil way to cope with the extreme heat.

As far as excessive sugar, I feel we just need to look around us and see it's effects. I think very few folks today could go out and do the work of everyday survival our forbearers lived one day at a time. I feel that excess sugar weakens a person, rather than being a strength or energy supplement.

Edited December 28, 2004 by Mabelline (log)

[MaxH]

Here is something related to this thread, from the Hesses' book (cited earlier), its chapter on Eliza Leslie's great 19th-century US cookbook (available today not only in the original but in a popular Dover paperback reprint, and mentioned previously on this site by me and doubtless by others).

“... the great majority of ketchups that characterized early American cooking was gradually replaced by the ubiquitous tomato ketchup. ... [Leslie in 1837] published recipes for eight kinds: anchovy (two), lobster, oyster, walnut, mushroom, lemon -- and tomato. (Be it noted again, there was no sugar in any of them.)"

The fairly rapid late-20th-century change in the meaning of "ketchup" is a favorite cliché topic among people interested in food history in the US. (More popular than, say, the parallel shift in the US-only meaning of "French" salad dressing, or the evolution of Reuben sandwiches toward seasoning with "thousand-island" dressing and thus away from their roots.) The various US cookbooks that I have do call for different kinds of ketchups besides tomato up until the 1950s and maybe even later, and from the recipes, these condiments were certainly savory rather than sweet.

-- MaxH

[jgarner53]

Isn't anybody going to mention all the sugar in most commercial peanut butters? Many of the country's most popular brands (Jif, Peter Pan, Skippy) all contain quite a bit of sugar and taste very sweet. Add jelly to it for a sandwich, and you might as well be giving a kid a Snickers bar and calling it lunch.

(Says the aunt who watched her nephew consume little more than sugar in the form of grapes, jelly sandwiches on white bread, yogurt raisins, chocolate cake, and the occasional bite of a syrup drenched pancake over the Christmas holiday - and his parents are unconcerned? )

[misstenacity]

Isn't anybody going to mention all the sugar in most commercial peanut butters? Many of the country's most popular brands (Jif, Peter Pan, Skippy) all contain quite a bit of sugar and taste very sweet. Add jelly to it for a sandwich, and you might as well be giving a kid a Snickers bar and calling it lunch.

(Says the aunt who watched her nephew consume little more than sugar in the form of grapes, jelly sandwiches on white bread, yogurt raisins, chocolate cake, and the occasional bite of a syrup drenched pancake over the Christmas holiday - and his parents are unconcerned?  )

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Just happened to be reading this thread while eating Smucker's Natural PB out of the jar. Peanuts and salt. Yum.

:-)

Andrea

http://tenacity.net

[Mabelline]

You GO, Smucker's!!!