In the early 1900s, the average sugar consumption in the United States was around 6.3 pounds per person, per year. Six pounds of sugar seems like a lot! In the U.S. today, the average sugar intake per person, per year is a whopping 150 to 170 pounds! That is the equivalent of about 35 five pound bags every year, and that’s just the average. For every person who only eats 10 pounds a year, there is somebody who eats close to 350. All of this sugar can have a toxic effect on the body.

Breaking this statistic down even further, between 150 and 170 pounds a year means that the average American consumes between one-quarter and one-half pound of sugar every day. That’s over 1,800 caloriesa day -- just from sugar. No wonder worldwide obesity rates have doubled since the 1980s.

Here is another interesting statistic: the same time that obesity rates doubled, so did the amount of gym memberships in the United States. There have also been hundreds of fad diets and it’s obvious that people care about being healthy and make an effort to stay in shape, so what is with the skyrocketing obesity rates?

It all started with a study performed decades ago in mice that found that a diet high in fat caused sickness, obesity, and health problems for the little critters. This study caused an uproar, and fat was quickly demonized for being the sole culprit for obesity, and the health risks associated with it. Food companies seized the opportunity to expand their businesses and created entire lines of low-fat and fat-free products. The only problem is that everyone knows low-fat and fat-free versions of the foods we love taste terrible. The solution? Add a boatload of sugar.

The sugar, in all its various forms and names, that were added to these companies products, increased the calorie count and filled our foods with empty calories. Sugar doesn’t just put weight on your body; it also effects your brain function. Studies have shown that people who consume a lot of sugar become physically addicted to it. When doing scans of the brains of obese people who drink a sugary soda, the same parts of the brain light up as someone who takes an illicit drug they are addicted to. Another study showed that sugar is also more addictive than cocaine. Ninety-four percent of rats in a study who could choose either cocaine or sugar water picked the sugar water over the cocaine.

Our bodies have not evolved since the days of living in caves and eating roots, berries, and occasionally red meat. The sweetness associated with sugar meant that a food was high in calories, and in the physically demanding Stone Age, eating enough calories to stay alive was priority number 1! In the 21st century, getting enough calories to stay alive isn’t a top priority for most people, yet our bodies still crave that high calorie sugary sweet taste. This leads to an over-consumption of calories without even realizing it, and therefore, increased obesity rates.

The truly terrible thing about this is how it is affecting younger generations. We grew up watching cartoons on Saturday morning. Almost every single commercial I remember from my childhood had to do with food: Sugary cereals, candies, Pop Tarts. From what I remember, the commercials were always so entertaining and funny. It made me want to eat another bowl of cereal or get my mom to go to the store and buy more Eggos. Marketing products so high in sugar toward kids nowadays has been compared to the tobacco industry a few decades ago. The goal is to get kids hooked on sugar as early as possible so that they will buy sugar-laden products for the rest of their lives. The sad thing is that it is working.

Childhood obesity has doubled in the past 30 years and quadrupled in adolescents. For both age groups, the percentage of kids who are obese is close to 20 percent. One third of children are either overweight or obese. This is causing side effects that the medical community doesn’t know how to deal with. Doctors know what to do when a 50-year-old man comes in with type II diabetes, but what about a 15-year-old? We are seeing metabolic syndrome earlier and earlier in youth. It is a precursor to things like diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. A very recent study showed that after just 10 days of not eating sugar, the blood markers and other indicators of health in obese kids dropped significantly.

Who is responsible for this increased rate of obesity in children? It’s not the kids fault; they really don’t know any better. And no, a 10-year-old cannot fight the marketing department of a multi-billion dollar company. It’s not their parents, who are usually uneducated about sugar and nutrition, in general, and misinformed by the media. It isn’t even the government, although their complacency may be partly to blame. In truth, it is the companies whose products contain all this sugar is who we should blame for the rising rates of obesity.

Junk food and soda companies have lobbied for the government's recommended daily allowance for sugar to stay at 25 percent of ones' caloric intake instead of the healthier and more widely accepted level of 10 percent. If you look at a food label, there is never a listed percent of daily value for sugar (although the rules may change, hopefully soon). This number isn’t listed because even at the higher recommended dosage of 25 percent, a 20-ounce bottle of soda would contain 130 percent of your recommended intake of sugar.

The sugar industry even blackmailed the World Health Organization by threatening to withhold the United States monetary grant if they published a study that showed that 10 percent DV was a much better recommended level of sugar than 25 percent DV.

One problem is the same arm of the government, the USDA, is both responsible for promoting farmers and their crops i.e. corn (high fructose corn syrup) and also setting the guidelines for nutrition in these companies. A large amount of their money goes toward promoting the farmer (the original purpose of the USDA), and not much is left over to promote a healthy lifestyle with a safe amount of sugar.

As a country, if our current sugar intake remains high and our activity levels remain low, our society is going to end up like WALL-E.

The sugar industry is full of billion dollar companies that have a huge amount of power over what we eat, what we watch, and have a heavy clout in government. There isn’t much we can do to fight against these companies besides properly educating ourselves on what we put into our bodies.

As much as I love exercise and working out, it is not the key to staying in shape. You would have to jog for 20 minutes to burn off the amount of calories in a single cookie. No one has time for that. Most people have time to dedicate an hour a day to working out, but it is controlling what goes into our mouths that is the hardest and most important thing to do in order to stay healthy. At the end of the day, it is up to us to make healthier food choices, be mindful of what we eat, and to educate ourselves on current research.

If you are interested in this topic further, I recommend watching the documentary, "Fed Up," on Netflix.