Yesterday and today, we had a wet, heavy snowfall. The day is gray and drippy, and everything outside has a soggy, discouraged look. (However the birds have begun their jaunty spring songs, so better weather is ahead.) Heavy snow, of course, means heavy shoveling, and my husband, Clif, and I got up early so that we could clean enough of the driveway to allow him to get the car out and thus go to work. He used Little Green, our electric snow-thrower, while I used my trusty blue shovel.

When we got about two-thirds of the driveway done, I said, “That’s enough. I’ll finish the job, probably in two shifts.” Shoveling this snow is truly an example of nature’s gym, and I figure by the end of the day, I’ll have  burned off enough calories for an extra piece of chocolate, some popcorn, and some other little tidbit.

So in we went. Clif got ready for work, and I took my tea, toast, and orange into my office, where I read the New York Times. Immediately, a piece by Mark Bittman caught my attention, and in this piece he rails against sugar, even going so far as to write:”Sugar is indeed toxic.” Apparently, according to some studies, the major cause of modern obesity is sugar, and the feeling is that this sweet substance is making us sick and fat.

Before I go any further I should make two things clear: First, I am a huge fan of Mark Bittman, and his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is a cookbook I use often. Second, I am also someone who loves sweets. Chips and salty things I can resist without much effort, but when it comes to candy, cookies, and donuts, I am putty.

After breakfast, I went out to do more shoveling and to ruminate about the statement, “Sugar is indeed toxic.” Is it really? Is sugar responsible for the current spike in obesity? Or, did Mark Bittman overstate the case? I considered the issue as I threw shovelful after shovelful of slushy snow, and the dog leaped, barked, and twisted until he was panting. (I’m not the only one who burned off calories this morning.)

Well, I thought, as much as I love sweets, I can’t deny that too much sugar isn’t good for a person. But then again, neither is too much bread, butter, and pasta.  Many things should be enjoyed in moderation, even the current darling, red wine. Too much wine can lead to alcoholism, a damaged liver, and other miseries just as surely as beer and mixed drinks. Yet, a glassful with a meal is considered beneficial to a person’s health.

Then I thought of my childhood, where everyone—adults as well as children—gobbled sugar with a lusty, guilt-free abandon that is shocking to consider by today’s standards. We ate cookies, cakes, brownies, whoopie pies, Ring Ding Juniors, Devil Dogs, and cream horns. Donuts and turnovers. Just down the street from where I lived was the corner store, where my friends and I would go daily to get a bagful of penny candy. But here’s the thing—despite the wanton sugar consumption, hardly anyone was fat, and again this applied to adults as well as children. There was one fat family on the street I lived on, and they were the exception. The rest of us were either slim or normal, and except for one of my uncles, nobody that I knew of had type-2 diabetes.

But, we lived in a rural community, and we kids ran, biked, skated, played baseball, threw chokecherries at each other, went sliding, played tag, climbed trees, and rode ponies. Seldom were we in a car—I even walked to school. The adults were pretty active, too. When time allowed, they played outside with us. They also worked in big gardens, helped neighbors with the haying, cleaned out the chicken coop, and took walks on Sunday afternoons. I know memory is unreliable, but in my memory we were always moving.

This leads to me wonder: Is it really sugar that is making us sick, or is it that we, as a society, sit too much and move too little? Maybe cars are toxic. And computers. And machines such as leaf blowers that make life too easy for us.

I will be interested to see what future studies reveal about sugar. In the meantime, I will enjoy sweets in moderation and get plenty of exercise.