What If the World Ran Out Of Sugar? | Unveiled

What If the World Ran Out of Sugar?

In the modern world, we’re often told that sugar is bad for you. But if it really is something to be avoided, then why don’t we just abandon it completely?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; What if the world ran out of sugar?

When you hear the word “sugar”, what comes to mind? The granulated white crystals that give certain things their sweetness, most likely. But, really, there’s more to it than just the tasty, sticky bits that make some of our foods more tolerable to eat. Broadly speaking, sugar is important because it’s gives us energy - which is part of the reason we might crave it when we’re hungry or tired. But while it’s true that too much sugar is bad for you, it can fit into a balanced diet. The trick is to avoid drinks, snacks and sweets which are overloaded with the stuff!

While some may claim ro be on a “sugar-free” diet, to truly be “sugar-free” is almost impossible with so many foods having at least some sugar in them - even the healthy options! Not only that, but a literally “sugar-free” diet would be dangerous, as before long your body wouldn’t be able to function properly and you’d eventually suffer from severe hypoglycemia - more commonly known as “low blood sugar”. When this happens it means that you no longer have enough sugar in your system, and you’ll experience a wide variety of symptoms including blurred vision, nausea and vomiting, tremors, palpitations, hearing loss and an increase in anxiety. Those dealing with low blood sugar sometimes find it hard to stand or walk and can end up passing out. Under ordinary circumstances, that person would be in urgent need of a sugar hit from somewhere; but in a world which has run out of sugar, getting that hit would be a lot more difficult!

There would still be ways of getting sugar into your body (which we’ll get to later) but regardless, health and medicine sectors would now be under immense pressure to find new solutions; to find something else to compensate for the sugar we’d now be lacking. In treating conditions like diabetes, we often administer insulin to bring blood sugar down... but here, we’d need something to bring it up as much as possible. And, while there are some medicines which list “raising blood sugar” as a potential side effect, we’d need something more specific that could be made available worldwide. Failing that, we could see more extreme procedures becoming the norm - like artificial organ transplant for things like the Pancreas.

Say we were able to successfully answer these biological concerns, though… the loss of sugar would still be profoundly felt in other aspects of our lives. Economically speaking, take sugar out of the picture and some countries would incur a major financial hit. For Brazil, the number one exporter of sugar globally, the sugar trade is worth more than six billion US dollars… but that market will now have disappeared. Other top producers of sugar include Thailand, France, India, and Germany, all of which would be threatened with economic crisis were sugar to be taken away. That said, it’s not as though this hypothetical would happen overnight, so there would at least be a short window of depleting sugar stocks in which to plan an economic strategy for the future.

In some ways we already have a solution commonly available to us; artificial sweeteners. As our understanding of conditions like diabetes has grown, so too has the market for apparently “sugar-free” sugar. The problem, though, is that a lot of these products are developed from sugar - so they would also have to change. Meanwhile, the general debate surrounding artificial sweeteners rages on, with it often perceived that they can pose a serious health risk themselves - and even cause cancer. In more recent years leading bodies like the NHS, Cancer Research UK and the US National Cancer Institute have moved to dampen these fears, saying that approved sweeteners are “safe for humans”… but there are still some question marks over their long term effects.

On the plus side, sugar substitutes would still serve to sweeten food in a sugarless world, and without the calories. In this way, if the world ran out of sugar then humanity would find itself forced into a lower calorie diet which, given reportedly rising levels of obesity in some countries, would have its benefits too. And there’s also the positive impact it would have on dental hygiene all around the world. However, a “switch to sweetener” wouldn’t solve the hypoglycemia problem, as artificial sweeteners don’t serve to raise blood sugar.

But assuming that this alternate reality hasn’t magically removed naturally occurring sugars (rather that it’s only the refined “added sugar” product that we’ve run out of), then all is not lost. In fact, the future could even look a lot brighter! The natural world actually provides us with a variety of sugar options… some healthier than others; some more abundant than others; and some more affordable than others. But almost all naturally occurring sugars - the type found in whole fruits and some milks - are a better option than refined sugars or sweeteners. And that’s partly because you have to eat the whole thing - a whole banana or packet of raspberries, for example - to get to them, thereby consuming all of the product’s other nutrients as part of a much more balanced snack.

So, if the planet found itself short of “added sugar” then natural sugars would suddenly be back on the menu. And that threat of economic collapse from earlier? Perhaps it could be combatted with an increased drive to grow and export fruit and other natural sugar-carrying products - as these would now be one of our most vital resources in terms of fueling and energizing the world population.

For now, while sugar is still available, it’s important to remember that you can eat a sugary product and still lead a healthy lifestyle. But, equally, we haven’t always had refined sugar so we shouldn’t feel as though we rely on it now. Modern humans have walked Earth for hundreds of thousands of years, but we’ve only had refined sugars for about 2,000 years… We survived before, and we probably could survive again. But that’s what would happen if the world ran out of sugar!