Chocolate Busters: The Easy Way to Kick It!. Jason Vale

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       5 Sweet, Sweet Surrender

      SIMPLE UNNATURAL GLUCOSE, ADDICTIVE AND REFINED

      William Duffy was one of the first to warn of the dangers and addictive nature of this substance in his excellent book Sugar Blues. Since then there have been many more books warning of the dangers of this apparent ‘sweet and innocent’ food, and if there’s one ingredient in chocolate which I feel more passionate about than any other it is white refined sugar. If you get nothing else from this book, I truly hope that you leave it understanding the full implications of putting white refined sugar into your bloodstream on a regular basis.

      The chocolate industry is fully aware of the horrific consequences which can easily come about as a direct result of refined sugar consumption/addiction – consequences which go way, way beyond losing the odd tooth or twenty. Yet despite knowing this, it doesn’t stop them lacing their ‘aimed-at-children’ products with tonnes of the white stuff. As a group, chocolate companies are one of the largest buyers of sugar in the world and they are more than aware of its addictive nature. According to the official BBC website,

      ‘All modern commercial chocolate products contain substantial amounts of sugar, a fact which may partly explain chocolate’s supposed addictive properties.’

      The BBC have it right on the Cadbury button. Cadbury alone get through a massive 150 tonnes of sugar EVERY DAY! That’s a whopping 540,000 tonnes of white refined sugar entering just the Cadbury UK chocolate chain every year. With Cadbury chocolate plants in much of the Commonwealth, the collective Cadbury sugar consumption must easily reach millions of tonnes every year. But this enormous figure no doubt pales into insignificance compared to what the Mars boys and girls must get through. I say ‘no doubt’ because trying to get any information from Mars (or Master Foods, as they’re known) is harder then getting close to an elephant’s scrotum. One thing is sure, though: with an average mass-market chocolate bar containing a massive 40% sugar, you can be George Bernard Shaw that the annual amount if piled high would probably reach the planet Mars itself. And it is not just Master Foods – the entire chocolate industry plays down the amount of sugar in their products and they have every reason to. They will also use any other word they possibly can on their labels instead of actually saying ‘sugar’. Here’s what the label says on a Mars Bar wrapper in 2003: