Jared Wilson

Special to The News Leader

My first trip to see the in laws in Norway was eye opening. At first it was all a little confusing. Kilometers instead of miles. Centimeters instead of inches. We’d stop at a gas station and gallons were nowhere to be found. The sale was measured in liters. But, hey, thanks to soft drink companies back in the U.S., I could understand that.

And that brings me to a recent event that really widened and enlightened my viewpoint, more specifically my eating habits.

Out with friends one day, we stopped into the Sheetz in Waynesboro for a quick snack. Our friends offered to pick us up something to drink. Trying to make a healthy decision, I thought lemonade would be a good choice. I knew it would contain some added sugar, but how much could there really be?

Our friends came back with a small bottle of lemonade. Looking like a bottle size I’d seen in Norway, I’d call it “European size.” It contained 400 ml of lemonade “not from concentrate”. That’s a little larger than a can of your favorite soft drink. Twisting off the cap and downing a swig of the lemonade, the sweetness overtook me. But just how sugary was it?

Reading the label, I saw it contained 40 grams of sugar. But how much is 40 grams of anything? When else do I measure anything in my life in grams? In the supermarket produce section, I weigh my vegetables in pounds. Passing by the deli, all meats are sold by the pound. In the seafood section, my personal favorite salmon is yet again sold by the pound.

How to make sense of it all?

Interestingly enough, I recently chatted with a pharmacy technician and was told the metric system is the unit of measure used by most pharmacies here in the US. So how do they convert metric units into something understandable? A teaspoon. Great, something I can relate to! This would prove to be valuable information.

So back to my bottle of lemonade. It contained 40 grams of sugar. So how many teaspoons is that? Good question, right?

Some quick measurement conversion revealed that 1 teaspoon equals around 4 grams of sugar. That means my lemonade a little larger than a canned soft drink contained around 10 teaspoons of sugar.

I’m not going on record condemning sugar. I’m no expert on the effects of sugar on the human body. I’m no historian to compare how much sugar was consumed 100 years ago versus the modern era. What does concern me is how 10 teaspoons of sugar filled up my trusty, all-purpose kitchen measuring cup. It was an overwhelming amount of sugar. It was one small drink, one afternoon. What if I drank this every day?

My wife continues to widen my view. A few years ago, and after much debate, we bought a Vitamix while on vacation. However, in two years of use, I can confidently say blending several fruits and vegetables together (and usually adding a banana for sweetness) I found most drinks she makes me are naturally sweet enough. I didn’t used to be this way. And I think that’s why the lemonade from Sheetz was a sweetness shock.

I’m not sure if we’ll ever really use the metric system here in the U.S. But for now on, I’ll be counting my sugar consumption in teaspoons.

— Jared Wilson of Stuarts Draft spent far too much of his youth watching college basketball and reading books about the Civil War. He spent no time in the kitchen learning how to cook. He’s trying to make up for lost time.