Mark-
"So its a process of our most dreaded (or should be our most dreaded) food: sugar."
No, no, no. It is not a process. And sugar happens to be one of the most efficient and common and necessary "foods" out there. Sugar, like
water, is both necessary and toxic depending on how it is encountered.
If you have a problem with sugar being a food, then you can't drink
beer, or any fermented alcoholic drinks, since they all rely on the fermentation of sugar. And you can't eat any type of risen bread, since that's relying on the same "process" as xantham gum, the waste product of yeast instead of bacteria, producing CO2 bubbles instead of the xantham gum.
Without sugar "processing", which is our ordinary metabolic process, we'd all be dead. Sugar is never evil, our internal controls over the processing, and our habit of gobbing it in excessively, are the problem.
"In bread making if the bread crumbles it needs more kneading (to stretch the protein) or more protein in the flour."
Uh, no again. There's way more to bread than
wheat flour and without wheat flour and the magic gluten proteins, bread crumbles. All of it, from every other grain, crumbles compared to glutenous bread. Now if you want to talk about evil, look into modern wheat before you look at sugar. Apparently the incidence of wheat intolerance, and the more severe intolerance called celiac disease, have skyrocketed in the past 50 years and no one has any idea of why. It isn't measurement error, they've used old blood samples to test reactions and there is something that has changed in the past 50 years causing major problems with wheat intolerance.
The lead theory being looked into on this, is that about 50 years ago the US (and then the world) switched to hybrid wheat stock, which is genetically different from the older wheats, and contains higher amounts of the gluten proteins as well as some proteins not found in the old stocks. We may have replaced wheat with a highly toxic new form of wheat.
"If people are gluten intolerant they should be having a look at their sugar intake and reducing carbs in general."
Except gluten intolerance has nothing at all to do with sugar problems according to all the celiac sources. That's like saying if you react to poison ivy, you should also get a hayfever test. Not related.
"Our obesity problem is crazy and the easiest way to solve it is to eat natural foods... not the processed stuff and anything that includes sugar."
Natural foods does not mean good or wholesome or healthy! By all means, we have a sugar problem and processed foods usually have too damn much of it. But the key there is to avoid the excessive sugar. "Processing" includes some very simple things like removing toxins, and pasteurizing milk. Don't confuse the baby for the bathwater.
Ever try to find cocktail sauce (i.e. for shrimp) that doesn't have corn syrup in it? AFAIK every brand on the market is heavy on sugar. Except, bless their hearts, the folks at Gold's, who mainly make horseradish and happen to make cocktail sauce without adding any sugar. Proving that it
can be done. (GOld's doesn't pay me, I'm just passing back the good karma.)
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