This post is mainly from How much sugar did we use in 2011 with a five year update..

As I dipped into a small dish of yugurt and strawberries as a afternoon snack, I made a note in the farm book, see if I can reduce the sugar in the canned strawberries for half of them, I can with a much heavier sugar base then many of the “new light” canning books say you can as I want my canning to be able to be just as good at the two year mark as at the three month mark.. but still I think I will try a very small batch of four and see if I can bring it down just a tad without loss of texture and taste.. The reason for wanting at least two years, is you just never know what the next garden season will bring.

The answer is NO, you can lower sugar on a number of fruits, but strawberries is not one. I believe because it is so low to the ground and soil that it has a natural “mold” count that you are battling when canning and that means if you want to keep them in that ruby redness of perfection.. you need to use the sugar!

The remark on sugar made me realize that I could now measure out what was left in my big bucket and finish the numbers on what we used for the year here on the farm.. Now according to Dr. Oz “The average person consumes 150 pounds of sugar per year”

Now its worth noting, that I use and tracked three kinds of sugars on the farm.. White Sugar, Molassies and Raw Local Honey. Do I even need to say that there is NO corn syrup on the farm (well to be honest there is a bottle but its been there since the move down from the artic, I used to use it make puff wheat sqaures), I do have some leftover icing sugar from my last sealift order 9 years ago, that is also in storage, if I want brown sugar, I make my own.

So I buy one ten pd bucket of raw local honey once a year, my local bee hive owner down the way has offered to put in another hive this year so that I can buy a bit more, and I am still looking at considering getting my own, for a number of reason’s.

I was surprised to see that I in fact used just over 9 pds of molassies for use in the house..

Now comes the white sugar.. I bought and used 122 pds for the year of 2011, now I can’t say that we consumed 122 pds because approx 88 pds of that went into canning use, and I still have over a thousand of my jars in the cellar, so I canned just around 1300 jars or so.. of them about 70 percent went into either syrup or brine or sauce, all of which used sugar.  Which is right around 900 jars, we have used 300 jars already in this past year, plus I figure another 200 jars from last year, for a total of 500 jars.. so if my math is right, around 48 pds of sugar in those 500 eaten jars for the year 2011.

So waiting in the cellar is at least another 78 pds of sugar and food products for this coming year to be use.. that means we used for baking, cooking and in the canned goods for the year a total of 62pds of white sugar.

So a total of White Sugar 62 pds, Honey 10 pds, and molassies 9 pds, but there are two of us in the house.. so we each used 31pds of sugar, 5 pds of honey and 4.5 pds of Molassies each..

So for in house use, we used 119 pds less then the average person in N.A. -Not bad, Not bad at all.. but then comes the bad part.. how do we figure out how much sugar is eaten on the eating out meals, we don’t eat out often but we both do eat out on trips off the farm, and we do have date nights etc.. so we are going to go with a pd of sugar per month, because this is something we didn’t track, and I can’t even begin to try and figure out..

So that brings up to 43 pds of sugar per year.. now a 107 pds less then average person in N.A. What do you think? Not bad, or still way! to much.. I don’t know, we can certainly cut down our odd meals out, make better choices, track it closer for the coming year to figure out a more closer account.. 

 I can’t and won’t stop using the required amount of sugar for proper preserving, so that stays, I already use fruit or veggie butters for alot of baking, cooking, and use natural dried fruits for adding sweetness to things..

So how much sugar are you using per person per year in your neck of the woods? Got any tips to share to help me reduce the amount? 

So its 2016 this year, and its been five years since this post, for sure time for a update..  I still buy and use about ten pounds of Molasses , but I use a few of them for the critters, I need to buy a bucket of critter grade so I can keep the good stuff in the house for us.

I have changed honey suppliers, my local beekeeper just down the road is no longer, so I get it from a little farther away, still get around ten pounds yearly..

And sugar.. well, I have brought that down, I average about 90 pounds of white sugar use per year for all my canning, baking and COFFEE needs (lets face it, I can not imagine coffee without sugar) so while just like above its a bit tricky to figure out,  we break down to about 35 pounds of sugar per year per person in the house!

So the reason for this reduction, I would like to tell you that we did cut it out for this and that.. but the truth is.. we had already done most of the leaning five years ago. I already cut sugar in recipes in half (unless I am really treating hubby) I use apples sauce, I use prunes, and so forth in baking.

Nope, the savings came from me doing a few things.. drying more food and pressure canning more food as well as added in more fermenting.. yup.. my data shows that the dryer and the pressure canner save me 8 pounds of sugar per person per year. plus we stopped eating out as often, we had gotten into a habit of eating out at least once on each payday and once or twice a month for a nice sunday breakfast out.. we have cut that down to one meal? a month, sometimes not even that.

So how are you doing in regards to sugar use in your household? Well, it turns out that despite looking that it appears that there is no new study, that they say we are still consuming the same amount of sugar yearly..

Its worth noting that I had a full medical workup in 2015, including a ton of bloodwork testing for blood sugars and my numbers were excellent..as in shocked the medical staff, and baffled them a bit..

But I was happy with the results!