Why so much sugar?!?

I'm not anti-sugar, but really, why is American food so super sweetened?!?

Today I bought a smoothie at the grocery store (having just finished a workout and needing something to hold me over for teaching). I usually make my own smoothies, but this morning I got out of the door and sort-of forgot to eat a substantial breakfast -- and I don't go too far on just a cup of coffee w/ biscotti.

Anyway, I bought this "dairy beverage" and it was TERRIBLY sweet. Turns out to not only to contain HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) but a long list of other ingredients like sucralose and other artificial ingredients I was not familiar with, and I could not get it down. Not wanting to waste food, I later tried to "thin" it down with OJ and plain (unsweetened yoghurt) -- what a waste -- I still could not drink the stuff. YUCK! I finally tossed it.

Busy day today, and for dinner Liesl made a quick pizza using a commercial pizza sauce (the one that comes in the Boboli pizza crust package) -- yikes, again, way too sweet!

I keep on cutting sugar out of American recipes -- last week I made zuccini muffins in an attempt to make a dent in our zuccini stash -- I ended up cutting the recipe's sugar in half!
Kids were happy: it was still plenty sweet.

So if you're wondering why I don't blog much anymore -- too busy gardening, working and cooking from scratch...