or tea. The taste for some
foods was acquired so early that there is no consciousness of any time
when they were not enjoyed, and the impression prevails that the liking
for such foods is instinctive. Sometimes that is the case, but quite as
often not. Children have to be taught by patient repetition to like most
of the common foods which make the staples of the diet, and likings thus
acquired are as strong as those which seem more natural.

However taste be accounted for, we have to recognize the fact that food is
chosen for flavor more than for ultimate benefit. It is one thing to say
that oatmeal is more nutritious than bread and coffee; it is quite another
to induce a man to give up the latter for the former! And yet the
distinguishing characteristic of man is that he can subjugate his
immediate impulses for his future benefit, or find a course that will
harmonize the two--take coffee with his oatmeal for instance, or find some
way to flavor it, perhaps with sugar.

Probably no one flavor is so universally enjoyed as sweetness. "Sweeter
than the honey in the honey comb" is an ancient symbol of appreciation.
When the sugar bowl is empty how many things lose zest! Tea, coffee,
cocoa, breakfast cereals, fruit, might still be acceptable, but cake, pie,
and ice cream are unthinkable without sweetness; the soda fountain, the
bakery, and the candy shop bear further testimony to our love of sweets.
Four million tons of sugar a year for the American people--eighty-five
pounds apiece, nearly a quarter of a pound apiece daily--this is no
inconsiderable amount of flavoring!

But is not sugar good food? Most assuredly. Three lumps of sugar would
furnish the extra energy needed to walk a mile; a quarter of a pound
represents about one-sixth of a man's daily fuel requirement. But one
baked potato would furnish the same energy as the three lumps of sugar; a
quarter of a pound of cornstarch would supply the same fuel as the quarter
pound of sugar. Nutritionally starch and sugar are interchangeable, the
advantage as far as digestion is concerned being with the starch rather
than the sugar. And yet we put sugar on starch! So much for instinct being
a guide to scientific food combinations!

The problem of doing without sugar is primarily a problem of flavor--a
problem of finding something else which is sweet. Hence we turn our
cornstarch into glucose (make corn syrup, for example) outside the body
instead of inside it, so that we ca