Opinicus muttered....
> <Alan > wrote in message
> ...
>
>> For whatever reason, we in North American have gotten used to a lot
>> of foods having sugar in them -- especially prepared foods from food
>> factories.
>> I don't like it, but it seems to have spread over the last 40, or so,
>> years.
>
> I'm wondering if it's because of:
>
> 1. Baby foods with sugar added to them to make them more palatable to
> mother and baby
>
> and/or
>
> 2. Sugar-frosted breakfast cereals targeted at kids
>
I think that modern "health" concerns have removed most/all of the added
sugar from baby food (and most of it was added not only for baby tastes but
to be appealing to moms who tasted).
Kids only? When it came to cereal, that which was first aimed at kids
certainly broadened the target to adults (especially with all the sweet
granola).
I subscribe to an older, more historic approach....
We (hosts) serve to ourselves and to guests sweetened
foods/sauces/condiments as part of ancient cultural memory, that we were of
an affluence which allowed us to purchase sweeteners (in a time when sugars
were vastly more expensive/harder to get than today).
Certainly, in the US South, "sweetening" has cultural/societal
implications. Pooor man's cornbread remains sugarless unto this day, while
most of the current mixes - the cornbreads of even modest affluence - are
so heavily sugared as to be unpalatable. "Sweet" tea, massively pre-
sugared, is a typical restaurant and home manifestation of "moving up"
among the lower and lower middle class venues in which it is most often
available. Unsugared hams are hard to find, and most of the pink loaves
currently purveyed are more sweet than they are "hammy".
TMO