By Karen Kier
Pharmacist on behalf of the ONU HealthWise team

Julie Andrews was the beloved Mary Poppins in the 1964 Walt Disney film. One of the songs is A Spoonful of Sugar to encourage the children to take a daunting task and make it fun.  Interestingly, Julie Andrews was not a fan of the original work titled The Eyes of Love. Disney asked Richard and Robert Sherman to rearrange the song into a snappier version.  

Robert Sherman got the idea after realizing his children received their polio vaccine. He asked if the polio shot hurt. The children were a bit startled since they reported the vaccine was in a sugar cube. The inspiration was born.

I remember standing in the school hallway waiting for my sugar cube with the vaccine. You may be thinking this article is about taking your medicine appropriately. Although a great topic, I will save it for another day. I want to discuss sugar!

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In 1980, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the first edition of Healthy People. The Healthy People program is designed to provide a focus for health promotion for 10 years. The idea is to provide science-based objectives to promote health and disease prevention. The goals are to improve the health of the nation.

The HHS continues to release the Healthy People goals and objectives every decade. The goals are to be measurable so scientists and healthcare professionals can engage in improving public awareness and education. They provide benchmarks for implementing programs and research opportunities. The HHS directs the program with international experts in public health and medicine with health statistics provided by the CDC.

Even though this program is in its fifth iteration of objectives, I would not be surprised if someone told me they had never heard of this before. It seems to be a well-kept secret among public health and healthcare professionals.  

One might wonder how well the nation did in achieving the goals of the 2020 Healthy People program. The CDC provided the 2020 report card, which some might give a grade of C. The nation met or exceeded 33.9% of the goals with another 20.8% showing some improvement.  Thirty-one percent recorded did not change. For my math experts, you may notice this does not total 100%! Other measures may not have been tracked sufficiently to provide complete data. The 2020 data are designed to provide insight into developing the 2023 Healthy People measures.

In 2022, the HHS released the Healthy People 2030 program. The program has 358 core objectives for the next decade with 41 research objectives. The program provides 111 developmental objectives based on evidence for potential public health interventions. These developmental objectives do not have reliable baseline data yet to set as a core target.  

One of the national core goals of the 2030 program is to cut down on added sugar in our diets.  The national goal and the rationale were described in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on March 10, 2023. The goal is for us to limit added sugar to 11.5% (to be precise) of the total daily calorie intake for those 2 years and older. Based on CDC statistics, the average American must reduce their daily added sugar consumption by 14 to 57 calories per day.  

The FDA defines added sugars as those being incorporated during the food processing stage such as sucrose (table sugar) and dextrose. Dextrose is a simple sugar made from corn or wheat that is identical to the sugar circulating in the blood and found in our tissues. These added sugars are referred to as simple sugars or simple carbohydrates and can include sucrose, dextrose, glucose, fructose, lactose, and galactose. 

In the 2030 document, researchers cited sugar-sweetened beverages, sweet bakery products, candy, desserts and ready-to-eat cereals as some of the top sources of added sugars in the United States. The 2030 goal is designed to reduce these added sugars known to contribute to adverse health outcomes. Some of the problems are weight gain, obesity, depression, cancer, diabetes, dental caries, stroke and heart disease. 

One might find the 11.5% or 14-57 calories per day a bit difficult to implement without extensive reading of food labels plus adding up the daily totals. An article published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on April 5, 2023 put the information into more usable terms.  Limiting processed sugars in the diet is just one way to start plus recognizing them in the foods we eat or when added to recipes or meals.  The authors recommend limiting intake to 6 teaspoons of simple sugar daily including limiting sugar-sweetened beverages to less than one per week.  

The BMJ study compiled evidence from 8601 published studies to reanalyze the data to find relationships between sugar intake and health outcomes. The authors discussed high risk outcomes with sugar including obesity (weight), diabetes, stroke, heart attacks, high blood pressure, allergies, and depression. In addition, they reported a correlation between sugar intake and the risk of breast, pancreatic, and prostate cancer. 

Maybe a spoonful of sugar may not be our best way to help the medicine go down! Contact your healthcare provider, registered dietician, or ONU HealthWise for more information. 

ONU HealthWise is offering COVID-19 vaccines as well as flu shots Monday-Friday from 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Bivalent COVID-19 vaccines are available. Clinics are Monday-Friday from 4:00-6:00 p.m. Please call the pharmacy for information.