Claire Gardner: Please don’t mention the deadly ‘S’ word

We got all over-excited about being able to sit and gossip and nurse a bottle of wine for the first time (ish) in about 31 days that we forgot when to stop.

To top it all, I got so carried away that I ended the evening with a sneaky cigarette.

The cost to my health is a fuzzy head and a sore throat. And as I try the time-tested cure – sugary drinks and copious quantities of sweet things, I’m also cramming as many bits of fruit into my mouth as something of an apology to my body.

We all know that drinking too much wine, especially on a weeknight, is wrong and that the unmentionable act of smoking – even if it is just one sneaky cigarette – is so unmentionably bad that I’m almost sorry I mentioned it.

And no-one can pretend they don’t know that fizzy drinks and sugary snacks are also on the naughty list.

But what I hadn’t realised is that, according to a new report, much of the healthy stuff has been well and truly sat on the naughty step too.

Yes, for all those who allow themselves a small self-satisfied smile as they reach into their Tupperware box full of sliced apples and pears and strawberries – the news is – beware!

The warning comes because fruit contains the deadly “S” word: sugar.

According to new research, this sweet substance is now considered so bad and damaging to public health that there are calls for it to be controlled in a similar to way to alcohol and cigarettes.

To be fair, I rather think it’s food with added sugar these health gurus are focusing their fatwa on, but fruit still contains a lot of the deadly sweet-stuff.

The recommended daily allowance of sugar is 12 level teaspoons. A handful of red grapes has the equivalent of five teaspoons, with a large banana providing four teaspoons of sugar.

Eating four of those bad boys will push you well and truly over your daily sugar limit – that’s certainly food for thought. However, let’s not be in any doubt about how serious the authors of the report in the journal Nature are about the harm too much sugar can do.

They claim it is fuelling a global obesity pandemic that contributes to 35 million deaths each year across the world from diseases including diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

In fact, the public health experts from the University of California, San Francisco, propose regulating sugar in a similar way to alcohol and have suggested taxing sugary foods and putting an age limit, such as 17, for those wanting to buy a sugary drink.

Very serious stuff indeed.

I am not in any doubt that we would all be much healthier if we didn’t throw so much sugar down our necks – especially here in Scotland – a country where more than a quarter of adults are obese.

However, trying to imagine a Scotland where you have to be over 17 to buy a can of Irn-Bru, is something of a struggle.

I’m sure the Scottish Government would relish the challenge of drafting laws that would see a “finger of Fudge” put on an equal “evil” footing as, say, a packet of Marlboro cigarettes. There would no doubt be an argument for introducing a ban on buy-one-get-one-free on all sweets, as well as a minimum pricing for chocolate bars and bananas.

And what about our love affair with cans of juice? Would there be a time when a 17-year-old’s birthday would be marked with his first sip of the forbidden nectar– a can of Coke? The words “hell” and “freezing over” spring to mind.

However, the message is loud and clear – too much sugar is just as bad for us as alcohol or cigarettes. So it is with this in mind I have already decided that a dry January next year is out of question.

Instead, I will be introducing a sugar-free month instead.

While I’m sipping my wine and sneaking off for a cigarette, I will be virtuously avoiding eating chocolate and fruit – for the sake of my health.

That’s my argument and I’m sticking to it.