Sugaring the pot

As in potbelly, that is, to which one major contributor is sugar. The U.S. Agriculture Department says that the typical American consumes 20 teaspoons of sugar a day-and that's only counting what can be counted. Added sugars, what you don't see but are present even in such non-sweet items as mayonnaise and peanut butter, make up 16 percent of overall American diets, and a huge 20 percent of teenager diets. According to data from Kelly D. Brownell of Yale University and Marion Nestle of New York University, the W.H.O. recommends an upper limit of 10 percent of calories from added sugars. But who has a chance, one might ask, when a 20-ounce Coke or Pepsi is packed with 15 teaspoons of sugar. And as another expert has said, one teaspoon of sugar a day can translate into two added pounds a year. You do the math on this one: a Coke a day for one year equals 5,475 teaspoons of sugar; one teaspoon of sugar a day equals two extra pounds gained in a years…

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