5 facts you need to know about sugar
Like a dog at the airport, I am sniffing out the sugar from every food product I touch. See, a friend recently posted (on Facebook) a video of an endocrinologist giving a one and a half hour speech on the toxicity of fructose, which he pronounces “fruck-tose”, and I'm starting to think that might be more appropriate, but I will resist losing the “r”.
I have known since 1994 when I read "Sugar Busters,” that sugar is addicting and that it generally amounts to empty calories. I've gone without sugar before, but it’s always a trial. Like a true addict, I have to take a vow, make a plan, and then I'm on the wagon. I fall off the wagon, I get back on, and I fall off again. It's a vicious cycle. The first three days of no sugar, I get a headache, I'm cranky, I'm moody, even sad, and yet, wonderfully, my body literally starts to deflate. Because, what I've learned recently, is that sugar causes inflammation. Sugar also causes more sugar cravings, and now I've learned that sugar causes liver damage, cancer, and heart disease. This is overwhelming information when it’s about as common as, say, water!
Wait just a ding-dang minute, here! Don’t we run on sugar? Glucose is a sugar. Doesn't all of our food ultimately breakdown into glucose for the body to use? I was listening in Biology class! How could it be poisonous? Isn't it natural? Sugar cane is natural. Hell! Fructose is in fruit, and we are supposed to eat that… Right?
Well, yes. All of those things are true, but when we use fructose, we're not using it in its natural state, and we are putting it in EVERYTHING. So basically, I'm pissed off. So much so, that I'm going to give you a summary, cheater cliff's notes if you will, so that you don’t have to sit through a 90 minute lecture. The following takes approximately 6 minutes to read.
I think this is incredibly important information because what this doctor is dealing with on a daily basis is obese children. And he's working against 30 years of nutritional misinformation — that a low fat, high carb diet fights heart disease, that calories in/calories out is an exact formula, and that a calorie is a calorie. It’s just not true. A sugar calorie does a lot more damage than a protein calorie. So, here you go:
1. Which sugar is which?
Sucrose, which is table sugar, is made up of 50% glucose and 50% fructose. We've heard a lot about fructose and high fructose corn syrup in the news. And guess what? Sugar, meaning table sugar, and high fructose corn syrup are equally bad, and here is why:
One half of sucrose, which is glucose, is the energy of life. It is what we run on. Our body knows how to use it. Every cell in our body can handle it. There is very little waste product. It feeds the glycogen stores in our muscles so that we can run/walk/live and our bodies can totally handle it. However, the other half of sugar is fructose. And the fact that fructose is a toxin is what we learn from this lecture. Fructose naturally occurs in fruit, yes, but it always comes surrounded by fiber and loaded with antioxidants, because nature provides the antidote with the poison. If you gnaw on a piece of cane sugar, it's like eating a tree trunk, so there’s a big fat clue.
2.The beginning of the end
In 1982, we were told that we should go low fat, high carbs. Sparing you the details, the study on which this was based was done without a computer, and ultimately concluded with faulty logic. Anyhow, cooking low fat at home is tasty enough, but packaged low-fat food is another story. When you package low fat food, it tastes like crap. So they fill it with carbs and corn syrup (corn syrup is incredibly cheap) and then, so that it has a shelf life, they strip the fiber out of it. So now everything we're eating, pretty much our entire food supply, including almost every loaf of bread, every cereal, every everything that people buy on a daily basis, is high carb-low fat, high sugar-no fiber. I have often said that “the dawn of the fat-free Entennman’s was the beginning of the end of American’s health”– and I kid you not, he makes the same reference in this video.
We see some changes now in packaging because companies are advertising, “hey! there's no high frucktose corn syrup in this!” Okay, that's great. You get a frucking medal for that. Congratulations. But guess what? It’ll include crystalline fructose or cane sugar or evaporated cane juice or something equally “healthy” sounding. It all sounds quite lovely. But it's all the same ugly stuff.
3. What’s the big deal?
Here's the big, bad news. Fructose, like ethanol, which is the alcohol sugar you drink when you're having your tequila or vodka, causes about 12 known diseases. This, along with its tendency to make you an idiot, is why its distribution is governed. Well, fructose behaves the same way in your liver (and even performs a few extra little tricks) and causes eight of the same diseases that ethanol does! It is not metabolized in the brain, so don’t blame it for your embarrassing photos. The only organ that can handle fructose is your liver, which pretty much by definition makes it poison. Your other cells don't know what to do with it.
So basically, without boring you with the math, a coke and a beer are equally toxic to your liver. Top it off, that Coke, by the way, has phosphoric acid in it, which leaches the calcium from your bones and rots your teeth.
Have a Coke and a smile.
4. I’m still hungry!
I have sworn myself off sugar many times in the past because I have always associated it with weight gain. I have noticed that not only do I feel better, but I tend to eat better overall when I'm not eating sugar. For one thing, I am not substituting good food with all those empty calories, and even better, I just seem more satiated and have almost no cravings. Well, guess what? There's a reason for that too…
Sugar interferes with our ability to “hear” Leptin, which is the hormone that lets you know that you're full. Awesome news. This is called Leptin Resistance.
You will notice kids who eat sugar and drink sodas are always hungry. And they always want something sweet!
5. Fat can’t resist me.
Insulin Resistance is big in the news these days. Thanks to Dr. Agatston, who wrote the South Beach Diet, we know that when you raise your insulin, with white carbs and sugar, your body becomes more efficient at storing fat. Dr. Agatston, by the way, is a heart doctor, not a dietician, and he too was concerned that the high carb/low fat diet thing was not working. It turns out your triglyceride (sugar related) levels are more important than cholesterol (fat related) in determining your risk for heart disease. So, this is why the fat get fatter and this is why it's so hard to lose weight when you have incorporated any kind of sugar into your diet. Because you don’t know you’re full, and you get more efficient at storing fat.
The Bitter Truth
So, if it’s a poison, why aren’t we all dying?
Ummmm…. we are:
“Diabetes is one of the leading causes of death and disability in this country. An estimated 16 million Americans have diabetes, a serious condition that often leads to blindness, heart attacks, atherosclerosis, peripheral blood vessel disease, strokes, kidney failure, amputations, and nerve damage. Type 2 diabetes (diet related) accounts for about 90% of cases.
In regard to Heart Disease:
“Guidelines released last year by the American Heart Association recommend that men eat no more than 150 calories of added sugars each day and that women limit themselves to 100 calories. That works out to about 5% of daily intake.
That's far less than the 25% limit suggested in 2005 by the Institute of Medicine. The World Health Organization endorses a limit of 10%, an amount that didn't appear to harm blood lipid levels.”
Basically, you need to look at table sugar the same way that you look at booze.
Giving your kid a Sprite is like handing him a beer without the buzz.
What’s left in my fridge!?
So, what can you eat? Yes, you can eat fruit, two to three servings a day. Not juice, but the whole fruit. And yes, you can eat vegetables. You can also eat lean protein, healthy fats, and healthy carbs. But sugar needs to be dessert, and dessert only...really, really limited. Keep it under 30 grams of sugar (sucrose) a day to really keep levels nontoxic, particularly if you're trying to heal from anything, if you have any chronic diseases, or any immune disorders. That is echoed by the Heart Association’s recommendation above.
What do we do?
Sugar has been put into our entire food supply and as consumers it is our job to change this with our dollars. You vote with your dollars. That's the only thing that works. . Personally, I have to stop buying the ‘energy’ bars, which are fancy candy bars. My kids like them and they have protein… convenience is so rarely healthy. Bummer.
Don’t give Coke and Pepsi your hard earned money. They are poisoning your kids with everything from soda to Gatorade and Vitamin Water. These are two full daily doses of sugar in one bottle. Every time I see those mini-soda cans that are made for school lunches, I just cringe. Juice boxes too (bummer). Get your kids used to water. It will help them have a better life.
There is an option to buy glucose. You can buy glucose to have a sweetener in your house, and it’s not toxic. It still has calories and there are more nutritious calories out there that your body needs.
They even sell fructose as a “healthy” sucrose substitute. Yeah, that's just cancer in a bag, so don't buy that. Remember, fructose in nature is delivered with fiber and anti-oxidants. Eat the WHOLE fruit. Agave Syrup has been touted as having a low-glycemic index, which it does, but it is also 80% fructose and only 20% glucose, and it's highly processed. So, sadly, that's not a great option.
Can I fake it?
On sugar substitutes: Sucralose (Splenda) causes gastrointestinal problems. Aspartame (NutraSweet) causes depression. Saccharin (the pink one), is still the best sugar substitute I think, because those poor rats would have to drink 50 diet sodas a day to get cancer and it tastes so awful, you can hardly use too much of that stuff. Agave is yummy, but a big ol’ disappointment health wise. Stevia is natural and healthy, but a little bitter in my opinion.
Glucose is still dessert, but at least your body knows what to do with it.
Maybe consumers can convince beverage companies to switch, even though it costs more.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1892841,00.html
This article from Time Magazine makes this argument.
If you want to see the video, it is called “Sugar: the Bitter Truth” here’s the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
Personally, I am officially cutting sugar out of my diet except for a little dessert or occasional martini mixer, ‘cause a girl’s gotta live a little.
