5th day: A very sweet lesson

Sugar is present pretty much in everything we eat, either in a form or another, either in processed foods or fruits. Indeed, to try to avoid eating sugar is a rather difficult task. Moreover, the daily sugar intake is usually higher than the recommended one and this leads to a series of health issues, and I have tried to explain this to the kids in an enjoyable manner.

Even if some kids have been as intersted as the previous times, some of them, however, have been quite naughty and their constant lack of attention has made it quite steep.

"What do you relate sugar to?" has been the first thing that I have asked. Most of them have said sweet, in a quite a logical manner. A few more have related it to the energy, providing me quite a good way to proceed. Sugar is, obviously, somehow the main nutrient from which we can get energy, a necessary compound in order to develop cellular and
physiological functions. Yet, an excess of it may lead to a variety of diseases. The two widely known diseases related to sugar are dental decay and diabetes, specially its type II, which is also closely related to obesity. 

In this way, I have first talked about the impact of sugar in both diseases and to show the amount of sugar in both natural orange juice and Coca-Cola. Most people belive that juices and fruit don't contain sugar, or that at least the sort of sugar present in it is somehow healthier, and this is actually false. Even if fruits and juices obtained naturally from them are way better than processed foods and soft drinks, they may hold a huge amount of sugary compounds, which are still unhealthy for us, if they are consumed excessively.  

 

After cooking we could observe the amount of sugar present in the orange juice and the soft drink. The kids were quite surprised in the case of the natural juice, since it is always associated to being something good. While the amount of sugar present in a sole orange is not big, the accumulation of three or four oranges (the regular amount of oranges employed for a juice) leads to a pretty big intake of sugar. In addition, the lack of fibre in the juice, as it is completely gone after squeezing the orange, prevent us from getting satiated, thus we'll need to eat or drink more, getting in the process more sugar into our body. 

In the case of the juice, we got an dark orange mass, which is the sugar in form of fructose, the sort of sugar present in fruits. In the case of the cola drink, however, it was a black mass which the kids wanted to try. I thought it to be pretty weird but as it was just sugar and allowed them to do it. 

Even if I wanted, due to the fact that I didn't pour the same amount of cola and juice I could not tell which one hold, in proportion, a bigger amount of sugar. However, according to what I have rea the orange juice has a higher concentration of it, around 12-13 grames per 100 mL, while the cola drink about 10.6 grames.