Gnome turns everything root

["Slim Joe" <slimjoe2k8@gmail.com>]

I want to make my Debian system more Ubuntu-like,
which means doing sudo or sudo-like system
administration. However when I enter my user password to
run update-manager every program in my Gnome menu that
requires root-level privileges is authenticated. That is I
can run without typing my password menu items like "Nmap
(as root)" or "EtherApe (as root)". Other than having sudo
time out after 1 second, is there a fix for this such
that only that one Gnome program I want to use as root
(update-manager in this case) is granted root access.