While rowing last night, I watched a fascinating documentary about sugar on the History Channel. They covered all kinds of issues, ranging from the role of sugar in the Caribbean slave trade to its use in modern cosmetics.

Perhaps most interesting to this audience were the nutritional details that they covered. For example, did you know that only 10-15% of all sugar consumed in the United States is self-added? The remaining 85-90% is already contained within the foods that we consume.

They also pointed out that a 12 oz can of soda contains the equivalent of 10-12 teaspoons of sugar, though “real” sugar was replaced by high fructose corn syrup in the US soft drink market starting back in the 1980s.

Another interesting tidbit was the importance of sugar in Brazilian energy policy. Sugar cane has been grown in Brazil since the 16th century, but it wasn’t until the 1970s oil embargo that things really exploded. In the decades since, Brazil has more than doubled their sugar production, and ultimately achieved energy independence through the production of large volumes of ethanol.

Anyway, if you have the chance, I highly recommend checking it out. The website doesn’t currently list any additional showing in the near future, but it’s just a matter of time before they re-run it.

This is just a quick note to say Happy New Year! We’ve been out of town since before Christmas, and won’t be back home for another couple of days. While we’ve been away, I’ve managed to squeeze in a few walks and lots of playing with the kids (including an afternoon of football), but nothing else.

The good news is that I seem to have made it through the entire Holiday season without hurting myself playing pickup sports. You may recall that I nearly ruptured my Achilles tendon playing pickup soccer on Thanksgiving 2008, so I’ll consider my lack of injuries to be a small victory.

Where to from here? Well… When we get back home, I intend to jump back on the rower. Unfortunately, I’ll be leaving again shortly thereafter for a business trip. This time, however, I’ll be traveling sans family, so I’ll (hopefully) have more time to seek out exercise opportunities.

Beyond that, I’ll probably be putting pen to paper (so to speak) about my goals for 2010 after we get back into town. I haven’t had much time to think over the past week, and I don’t want to waste my time writing up a bunch of half-assed goals that I’m not 100% committed to.

In other news, I did manage to complete the Concept2 Holiday Rowing Challenge before we headed out of town. I actually broke the 100km mark by squeezing in an extra session about an hour before we left for the airport.

And with that… Happy New Year!