Give me some sugar

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Hi, everyone and welcome back. With the Mid-autumn Festival and the long holiday week, and hopefully you get to reunite with your friends, family and loved ones.

Now we all know the signature food for Mid-autumn Festival is mooncake, which is a very sweet treat. And incidentally, some of the most popular Happy Hour episodes we've ever done were about desserts and sweet treats.

So just before this special festival, I thought it would be great for us to actually talk about sugar and sweet.

所以今天的酒馆里就让我们一起吃着月饼, 来聊聊甜蜜.

Now everyone knows sugar is an important topic. To talk about our body, we talked about blood glucose. 也就是血糖.

If you're into fitness and health, I'm sure you have seen the discussion of GI of different food groups. 喜欢健身的小伙伴肯定看到过GI 这个概念.

GI stands for Glycemic Index 升糖指数. It is basically a relative ranking of carbohydrate in foods according to how they affect blood glucose levels.

So if we say some food has high GI, it means once we eat it, our blood glucose level will shoot up. But with all the fitness experts telling you how you should stay away from sugar, have you ever wondered, why do we crave sugar？Why do a lot of people like sweet things？

Actually the craving for sugar is hard wired into us. In the olden days, when human beings were living in the forest, sweetness was an indication that a particular thing was safe to eat. We knew fruits were safe because they were sweet. 

So the brain developed a reward pathway that made eating sweet foods pleasurable. And then of course, there is a biological imperative of why we crave things like sugar and fat. They give us quick energy. When we were evolving as a species, this was a great thing. Our brains are biologically programmed to seek out sweets.  This is also why eating sweet things can trigger our brain to feel certain level of pleasure and excitement. So let's look at sugar itself, which is a necessity in any household.

But there are so many different types of sugar. Apart from white sugar, you also have brown sugar and black sugar. Sometimes people would translate the Chinese红糖 into brown sugar, but they're actually different.

So in English it's more accurate to describe the Chinese Hong Tang红糖 as dark brown sugar or black sugar. And then there's something we like to use in our cooking, crystal sugar 冰糖. Now as people are trying to stay away from the actual sugar, some people would also use sweetener （甜化剂）.

So this would be something that gives the food sweet taste without being sugar. Remember I said we get excitement by eating sugar? This is sometimes described as a sugar rush. 吃糖之后的兴奋感在英文里有一个词叫sugar rush.

This is an experience of high energy after eating or drinking a considerable amount of sugar in a short period of time. And this is often associated with hyper active children. If you watch English speaking TV shows you will notice that parents try not to let their kids eat any sweets especially during the evening because they might get that sugar rush and become hyper active and difficult to handle.

But after sugar rush, usually there will be a sugar crash. Basically, after the initial excitement, your moods and energy level will then go down. That is called sugar crash. Because sugar is such a common word, you can see many expressions in English with sugar. When we take some tablets you will notice that there is a sugar coat. 我们吃的药片外面的糖衣叫做sugar coat.

So if we say to sugar-coat something, that means we're trying to make something negative sound less negative. For example, you can say there's no need for you to sugar-coat the truth. Just tell me the truth. No matter how bad it is, you don't have to put a sugar coat over it. There's no need for you to sugar-coat the truth.

And some of you might have heard of the expression. Sugar Daddy, this is usually a rich old man who lavishes gifts on a young woman in return for her company or sexual favors. Sugar Daddy, Sugar Mama. 中文里比较暧昧的那种干爹干妈, 你懂的.

When someone says to you, give me some sugar, they're not really asking you to pass the sugar. What they're asking is a little kiss. This is not necessarily something romantic or sexual.

For example, parents can say to their kids give me some sugar,  sometimes with kids or people who are very close, they might ask for a favor by saying, pretty please with sugar on top. 这句话就是赤裸裸的撒娇了. 相当于我们说的 “拜托呢，求求你了嘛”

Pretty please with sugar on top.

You put the sugar on top to make your request even sweeter. From sugar, let's move on to sweet. There's so many expressions with sweet.

When people go to bed, we say sweet dreams. When someone likes dessert, we say they have a sweet tooth. After a long trip, you go back home. You might cry out: Home sweet home! 有点类似于中文里说的, 金窝银窝不如自己的狗窝. Home sweet home.

But then again, sweet is not always super positive. For example, sweet talk. 相当于中文里的甜言蜜语, but it's often quite negative. It usually refers to someone using sweet words and try to persuade you to do something. But they don't really mean it. For instance, she sweet talked them into buying the product.  Think about people who are selling cosmetics and clothes. If they say this looks so great on you, this looks gorgeous on you. They might just be sweet talking you.

Another similar expression is sweet nothing.  也可以被理解为蜜语甜言, but this is different. Because sweet nothing is actually quite sweet.  When you're in love, you can spend a whole day just looking into each other's eyes and saying all these sweet things that don't really have a lot of meaning. And that would be sweet nothing. For example, he whispers sweet nothings in her ear. 有点类似于卿卿我我, 耳鬓厮磨, 说着情话的感觉. And don't be embarrassed when we're madly in love, we have all said sweet nothings.

But then sweet is not just about lovers, family, people who are very close. You can also use sweet in business and professional world. For instance, you can say a sweet deal. This is a deal that is very good value for money. You can say there's a really sweet deal going on in that shop. Don't miss it.

Another quite interesting expression is the sweet spot. 所谓的甜蜜点. Sweet spot was originally a sports term. For example, in baseball, the sweet spot refers to the part of the bat where the player is supposed to hit the ball with in order to be most effective, sweet spot 最初的意思是指棒球运动员在球棒上的一个最佳击球点. But now in spoken English, we use the expression the sweet spot to talk about the best position or the best situation that can lead to the best result. For example, in business, you can say it's important to find that strategic sweet spot. 

Now in all the flavors, sweet is probably one of people's favorites. But when we pair it up with other flavors, we'll see some interesting concepts. For example, sweet and sour. One of the most popular Chinese dishes outside of China might just be sweet and sour ribs. 糖醋排骨, sweet and sour ribs. Obviously you can sweet and sour pretty much everything.

If you add bitter to sweet, you get bitter sweet. This is a complex feeling a mixture of sweetness and perhaps sadness, of enjoyment and loss. Many would describe their love story as bitter sweet.

And then let’s wrap up was a couple of longer expressions. For people who like winning, they might enjoy the sweet smell of victory. 胜利的美妙味道. Don't you just love the sweet smell of victory？

And to describe you're really, really excited and happy about certain situation. You can describe yourself as a child in a sweet shop. For instance, I felt like a child in a sweet shop. 高兴得像进了糖果店的小孩子.  We’ll finish off with a very famous sweet quote from Shakespeare himself. In his masterpiece Romeo and Juliet, he famously wrote “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

最后奉上莎士比亚的经典名言.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. 玫瑰, 即使不叫玫瑰, 也无损它的芬芳. 

In the end, I just want to say I know a lot of people try to cut down sugar and see sugar as the biggest enemy to health and fitness and waistline. But sugar is actually vital for your brain health, choosing the right type and right amount of sugar can be good for you. And once in a while, live a little, because we all need that little bit of sweet treat to make our lives more pleasurable.

Happy holidays. I'll see you next time. Bye.