Sugar Intake In The United States: An “Inescapable” Trap

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of sugar in the American diet, the population’s health, and the economic and political spheres. The thesis aims to answer three overarching questions: (1) How has U.S. sugar consumption changed over time, and how has this change impacted the nation’s health? (2) Why does the U.S. food system allow for sugar’s continued prominence in the population’s diet if it negatively impacts the nation’s health–which this thesis argues it likely does? and (3) How can the nation improve and decrease its sugar consumption in the future? To answer these questions, information from both primary and secondary sources has been accumulated and analyzed to generate new insight on the topic of sugar in the American diet. The goals of this thesis are to reveal the truth about sugar and the organizations that foster its consumption, to recognize the modern health movement and the headway it has made in moderating sugar intake, and to present a realistic take on what is necessary to escape this sugar trap the country is caught within.