One lump or two?

What sounds better? One lump or two or one packet or two? Somewhere in the world people are still serving lumps of sugar with sugar tongs. Seen any of those lately?

Not too long ago, I watched a documentary on coffee and learned how most large coffee brands keep prices low and as a consequence, those who grow the coffee cannot earn a sustainable wage. And low price also equates to low quality. I have found that Taster's Choice doesn't taste good to those who have purchased more expensive coffee. If we trace our morning cup of coffee back through the coffee bean to the place where the coffee is grown, the people harvesting the beans are not sitting down in a big house sipping their morning coffee. Most of them can't even afford a house or to send their children to school.

From coffee I moved to tea. Not having had tea in a long time I decided to venture into that domain as well. The tea that I purchased was far more expensive than the popular brands but in the long run worth the price difference.

So what does this have to do with sugar? Even after experimenting with higher grades of coffee and tea I was still using the packaged sweeteners. Either out of force of habit or hearing the echo of "sugar is bad for you", I dutifully ripped open and poured the contents of "substitue" sugar into my coffee and tea.

I suddenly realized that something was amiss. To move even further from my normal routine I purchased a box of real sugar...from Hawaii. I asked the grocer to put the sugar in a separate brown bag in case I was stopped on the way out of the store.

This isn't processed white sugar. The ONLY ingredient on the box is sugar. The first, last, and middle ingredients were sugar.

And, hard as it may seem to believe, sugar tastes good. It tastes so much better than the artificial sweeteners that it's hard to describe. But what price am I paying for this extravagance? One teaspoon of sugar equates to 15 calories. Given that the packaged substitutes have 0 calories and using standard math, it would seem that real sugar contains infinately more calories than the substitute. But 15 calories per cup of coffee? That amounts to 105 calories a week. I can absorb more calories than that by smelling a Hershey's chocolate bar.

Somewhere along the line I bought into the idea that artificial sweeteners are as good as real unrefined sugar or worse that sugar is bad for you.

Truth is, it isn't so.

One lump or two it is.