Broadly speaking, about one-fourth of a pound of sugar, daily, in connection with other foods, is well utilized by the system, the quantity depending upon whether one leads an active or a sedentary life.
Candy is often made from glucose instead of molasses or cane sugar, and while glucose is wholesome, it undergoes fermentation readily. Much candy, unless one is actively exercising, tends to indigestion.
The desire of the child for sweets is a natural one, because it uses so much energy, and sugar supplies this energy with less effort of the digestive system. When the child begins to eat more solid foods, if sugar is used in abundance for sweetening, it is no longer attracted by the mild sweetness of fresh milk, and it is well to cut down the allowance of sugar, when the child turns against milk, in the hope of restoring the taste for this valuable food. Many of the best authorities state that the child, up to its third year, should never be allowed to taste sweets, in order that the appetite may not be perverted from the natural sweets of milk.
Sugar is better supplied the child in a lump or in home-made candy, rather than in the sweetening of porridge, oatmeal, or bread and milk, etc.
Sweet fruits, fully ripened, contain much sugar and should be freely given to the child. The natural flavor of fruits and grains is very largely destroyed by sugar, which is used too freely on many articles of diet.
Most vegetables and fruits contain sugar,—indeed sugar is the only nutriment in many fruits. The sweet taste in all fruits and vegetables is due to its presence. Sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, parsnips, turnips, grapes, figs, and dates are especially rich in sugar and when these are furnished with a meal, in any appreciable quantity, the starches should be restricted—notably bread, potatoes and rice.
Harvesters, road-makers and others, who do hard work in the open air, can consume large quantities of sugar in pie, pastry, etc., which are difficult to digest, while one who lives an indoor life, should refrain from an undue indulgence in these.
For one who is undernourished, sugar is a desirable food, if the starch be diminished in proportion as the amount of sugar is increased; but the inclination in sweetening foods is to take more starch than the system requires, since it is the carbohydrate foods which are ordinarily sweetened,—not the proteins.
On account of the latent heat and energy, sugars are more desirable in cold weather than in warm. Nature supplies them more abundantly in root vegetables for this season. More puddings and heavier desserts are eaten in winter.