I fail to see how 'sugar' as it comes in refined sucrose form, as opposed to how 'sugar' comes naturally in fruit, veg and dairy is adding a thing that is healthful or essential to the diet. I think there is a bit of sleight of hand going on due to the confusion between the use of the word 'sugar' in refined sugar vs 'sugar' as we speak of fructose, lactose, dextrose, etc. As omnivores, we do indeed include the latter form of sugars in our natural diets (berries, milk etc), but processed, refined sugar hardly falls into this category. Our friends the bears, also omnivores, also love to eat berries, and honey, and will munch on them when they can, but it is protein, as in fish that they seek out for their survival. You would have to gnaw your way through a whole lot of fibrous sugar cane to get what goes into a Mars bar. Same goes for corn syrup. And honey was meant for bees, not humans (or bears).

This does not mean to say that we shouldn't have the choice to partake of honey, but to argue that it is an essential food is a joke. People with insulin issues and metabolic syndromes, etc should avoid it, and for the rest of us it should be an occasional treat, as it was for our forebears (pardon the pun) and not just placed in foods in order to make them 'more palatable'. It has always annoyed me that I would have to comb the shelves at grocery stores to find peanut butter, tomato sauces etc that weren't laced with sugar.

Val