Sweets are an integral part of traditional Ramadan dishes, like Kunafa, qatayef, and baklava, as well as juices and sugar-sweetened beverages. They all have a sweet taste and flavor, but their impact on health and the environment is not as sweet as their taste.
Global sugar consumption has quadrupled over the past half-century, and sugar now accounts for about 8% of the total calories people consume, according to “The Conversation” website.
Sugar addiction and health risks
The calories provided by added sugars have little nutritional value, lacking vitamins and fiber, and do not provide the same feeling of satiety as traditional foods. This increases the body's total energy intake, which contributes to obesity. The “World Obesity Atlas” estimates that half of the world's population may be overweight or obese by 2035.
The term "sugar addiction" has become universally recognized, describing an increased desire to consume foods high in sugar. While the body's need for sugar is natural, consuming excessive amounts of sugar, exceeding the body's natural needs, can cause health risks, including insulin resistance, depression, and an increased risk of certain chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart and arterial diseases.
Environmental risks
Sugar is among the most widely cultivated crops in the world, and as such, it is responsible for numerous environmental problems, including water, soil, and air pollution in local environments in several countries, including the United States, Australia, India, and Brazil.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) notes that sugar cultivation leads to significant habitat fragmentation and biodiversity loss, due to massive land-use changes and the leakage of chemicals used in agriculture, particularly sugarcane, which is produced as a monoculture, without rotation, within tropical regions rich in diverse and distinctive ecosystems.
Environmental benefits of lowering sugar consumption
Scientific communities recommend limiting sugar intake to less than 5 to 10% of total dietary calories, as excessive sugar consumption is linked to disease, and also due to environmental concerns surrounding sugar crop cultivation,
A British-Chinese study proposes a set of environmental benefits that would accrue from implementing a scenario of low sugar consumption and reduced cultivation of sugar crops (cane and sugar beets).
First: Freeing approximately 9 million hectares of the total global area allocated to sugar crops, and converting this land to beneficial environmental or agricultural uses, for example, by growing other important food crops that contribute to solving the problem of food insecurity, especially cereals, which have a high nutritional value and contribute more than 50% of the total calories consumed worldwide.
Also diversifying agriculture and replacing sugar crops with non-sugar crops can support soil health, improve productivity, and increase economic profits.
Second: Instead of reclaiming sugarcane land for other crops, the study proposes reforesting it and restoring it to its original state as natural forests. This would transform it into a giant carbon sink, absorbing and storing the equivalent of 99 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually, or about 2 gigatones of carbon dioxide equivalent over the first 20 years, slowing the pace of climate change.
These forests will contribute to supporting ecosystems and thus biodiversity, in addition to improving resilience to extreme climate conditions such as flooding due to the dense natural vegetation cover, which acts as a more effective barrier to water.
Third: The study, conducted by Oxford and Peking Universities, proposes another scenario in which excess sugar production and the amount saved from reducing human consumption could be diverted to more sustainable purposes, including biofuel production.
Sugarcane is a source of biofuel. Ethanol is extracted from the natural fermentation of sugar, and unlike fossil fuels, it is a renewable energy sourced from agricultural crops.
With the development of ethanol production technology in recent decades, sugar can be used to increase biofuel production. The study predicts the production of approximately 198 million barrels of ethanol, which will be used as an alternative to fossil fuels, reducing carbon emissions by approximately 89 million tons annually.
Sugar reduction scenarios offer solutions for improving food production and the use of natural resources such as land, water, and energy, which contribute to achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals. Therefore, we should consider the holy month of Ramadan a golden opportunity to adopt a "low-sugar" lifestyle that delivers significant environmental and health benefits for all.
