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By Kirk Draheim
"There’s a fire inside me, and it’s what people call passion. I am passionate about helping myself and my people become stronger through the food they eat. “We are what we eat,” is not just a saying, it’s one-hundred percent true. Food is how we transduce the energy given to us by the universe into our bodies so that we can enjoy that which is life. The organic matter that makes up our bodies comes from the food we eat. When we starve our bodies of the nutrients it craves, we limit its ability to grow and function properly.
Sugar from fruit is a great way to provide fast acting and high caloric density energy to our bodies. Sugar also triggers a massive dopamine rush when we taste it. Our brains have been biologically wired to seek out sugar since before we evolved to walk on two legs (bipedal locomotion). Before farming was discovered, food was scarce; sugary fruits were an extremely effective and rewarding way of obtaining energy. The problem we face now, in the 21st century, is that we are surrounded with an abundance of added sugar (sugar added to foods) in our food system. We no longer need to seek out sugary things as we once did, yet we can’t resist the temptation to do so. Our desire for sugar bypasses reason and logic because the primitive part of our brain, the Nucleus Accumbens our pleasure center, is neurologically wired to seek out its reward.
Food corporations are taking advantage of this. Added sugar is hidden in74% of packaged foods. This pattern needs to end soon or we face huge consequences, for example, 1 in 3 people will be diabetic in 2050 according to the CDC. How can it be 2015 and we still don’t have the recommended daily value of sugar on our food labels? This question is what drove my quest of designing a sugar warning label for the world’s most popular treat, Coca-Cola."...
For full post, click on title above or here: https://medium.com/@kirkdraheim/designing-socially-sustainable-food-labeling-57023b8fd55c#.bomkz7bkk
