I'm definitely a stress-eater and my favorite snack is something sweet! My jelly-bean binge and post on Cutting Calories yesterday made me wonder about the environmental impact of sugar production. Is my sweet tooth fueling environmental degradation?
Sadly, the answer is yes.
According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) about 145 million tons of sugar are produced annually in some 120 countries. A 2004 WWF report called "Sugar and the Environment" shows that sugar may be responsible for the loss of more biodiversity than any other crop due to the delicate tropical ecosystems of a lot of sugar-producing countries, deforestation and destruction of habitat to make room for plantations and intensive irrigation and use of chemicals. What's worse is that our growing collective sweet-tooth is fueling further natural habitat destruction and an estimated 5-6 million hectares of of cropland is lost annually due to severe erosion and soil degradation (sugar cane is commonly grown on slopes which contribute to high erosion rates). The intensive irrigation required for sugar crops has resulted in many dammed rivers and flooded wild land, destroying the homes of many animals and heavily impacting local ecosystems.
One extreme example is the Great Barrier Reef off the West Coast of Australia. Once a thriving under-water ecosystem, the Reef has been extremely influenced not only by our changing climate, where a one degree change in water temperature has caused severe bleaching, but also by pesticide run-off from sugar farms. Moreover, in some other parts of the planet, such as Papua New Guinea, soil fertility has dropped 30% since the 1980s due to decades of heavy sugar cane production.
On our end of the cycle we also see the negative of effects of sugar consumption from skyrocketing obesity and diabetes rates.
But, the good news is that there are things we can do to collectively make a difference -this will be good for the environment and our health!
After reading this article, I was surprise to learn that brown sugar was the worst culprit of the sugars! I had always thought that it was less processed than white sugar and therefore ... not as bad for me as processed white sugar! If you want to know more about how different sugars are processed, I recommend the above article as a good starting point!
In the end, the author of the greenliving article concludes that out of the different varieties of sugar, raw-sugar, the least-processed of the lot, has a smaller impact on the environment due to less waste accumulated through processing than white or brown. However, the best thing we can do is to actually eat less sugar since we don't really need to eat highly processed sugars to survive, and, eating all these refined sugars is bad for us! The author writes that it is more about our rates of consumption than the type of sugar that we buy and that we can get all the sugar we need from natural sources such as fruits and vegetables.
So, I think it is time for me to try and reign-in my sweet tooth -what do you think?
Sources:
http://environment.about.com/od/pollution/a/sugar.htm
http://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/73/1/White-sugar-vs-raw-sugar.html
WWF's Sugar and the Environment
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