Sugaree, Baby

This morning I stopped at the Backporch Coffee Shop in Bend, Oregon, as part of my commitment to break my morning Starbucks habit. As I ordered my java I spied the pastries pictured above in the glass case below the cash register. Most fascinating, sitting alongside some highly unusual donuts were three glazed maple bars topped with strips of bacon.

For those of you that enjoy a sugar high, I have included the upper third of a pile of one of mountains of sugar I photographed at the Fromme Sugarcane Plant storage building last month in Jamaica. Not to spoil the sweetness of your day, I have included a few statistics I found about sugar consumption from Wikipedia. The average American consumes between 3 and 5 pounds of added sugar a week, meaning up to 200+ pounds of added sugar a year per person.

Now I am not going to harangue about the despicable amount of calories or fat or carbs or sugar there is in most diets, since this is the fodder of much New Age conversation. I also have seen how sugar cane production has been terrible in so many ways for underdeveloped countries in the Carribean and South America, but that is a subject for another time. I just feel letting pictures today whet your appetite for some serious consideration.