Yeah, one of the things that people don't realize is that sugar's hygroscopic nature is a great way to make things shelf stable. This is one of the reasons why so many processed foods end up having a lot more sugar than would typically be in the home-made variant.
Guess, it has to do with profit margin. To be price competitive and also make a huge profit, sugar is added as a filler. Sugar is cheap compared to other ingredients may be. Added sugar varies by countries.
As an European transplant I confirm that. And American sweets are absolutely loaded with sugar, it overwhelms all other flavors and tastes. My naive pet theory is that in order to cover up the use of lower quality ingredients or substitutes they’re flooded with sugar. That also creates an addictive effect so sales jump up
They might also have found that people just want sugar water. A lot of mass market food products get bastardized by being made blander and more sugary.
The reason is simply economics. Low cost, consumer demand, and one magical ingredient.
Sugar is cheap. Less than a dollar a pound, makes unpalatable low quality ingredients palatable, adds texture, volume, moisture, colour, and might be addictive.
Sugar production was also a major driver of slavery.
I grew up in Italy. Over there[1], it's rare for people to use sugar in savoury foods (maybe just a pinch here and there, at most).
When I moved overseas (I moved around a bit then settled down in Australia), it was really hard for me to get used to the fact that most commercially made food had sugar in it. I couldn't stop thinking "why there is sugar in my sandwich", "why there is sugar on my pizza" and so on.
Then I eventually moved over the poverty line (as a new migrant I was broke at first) and started eating "better" food, and I realised that the sugar thing was not a trademark of all Australian food, but just a trademark of Australia's junk food.
Nowadays, in my head I associate the "sugary" feeling to junk food, and the "non sugary" to higher quality food. (Obviously all of the above only applies to savoury dishes).
I'm told that in other countries the average sugar contents tend to be even higher (usually in the form of corn syrup). What is the commercial motivation behind the widespread use of sugar in cheaper food? I personally find it unpleasant but perhaps I'm in a minority? Or maybe there are other factors at play maybe related to food processing etc.?
[1] (not really everywhere though because of regional differences)
The other day I went to buy some canned refried beans. When I read the label, I noticed that it contained refined sugar. WTF?!? There should be no need for sugar in refried beans! After recovering from the shock, I went to another grocery store, where I found refried beans without sugar.
Why does this happen? Obviously, sugar tastes good. That has to be why companies add it to all sorts of things. However, if most people were like me, they would read the label and refuse to buy anything that unnecessarily contained sugar. The companies doing this would lose money, and soon stop doing it. But the opposite has happened. Why?
There can only be one explanation: most consumers are dumb. However, when you read about stuff like this in the mainstream media, it's always framed as if "big evil corporations" is the whole problem. That "average Joe" has a low intelligence is never mentioned. Of course, the media wants as many consumers as possible, too, so calling most of their potential readers/viewers stupid is probably a bad strategy, even though it's the truth.
The southern US used to produce a lot of sugar. Before refrigeration it was heavily used as a preservative.
So there's a big market that expects things to have a lot of sugar in them.
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