What exactly is sugar?
Sugar can be defined as anything with calories that makes food sweeter. Sweeteners are a broader category, which includes both sugars and non-caloric, or artificial, sweeteners.
Why is sugar harmful?
It used to be believed that sugar was dangerous only to diabetics, and for everyone else sugar was simply empty calories, filling you up so you eat less healthful food. It is now known that sugar is a toxic chemical that can adversely affect every system in your body, including hunger and hormones.
Sugar feeds yeast, which can grow out of control and cause any number of health problems. Yeast then causes more sugar craving in a vicious cycle.
The relationship between sugar and tooth decay has been known for a long time, but the dental effects of sugar are systemic – come from the sugar in the body – and not just from sugar’s contact with the teeth.
Many if not most degenerative diseases and health conditions are due at least in part to sugar, including:
- Diabetes and poor insulin regulation
- Heart disease as well as associated high blood triglycerides and inflammation
- Cancer
- Osteoporosis
- Obesity
- Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and digestive problems, depleted beneficial bacteria
- Mood disorders
- Impaired immune system
- Low energy
How much sugar do we eat?
The average American eats 48 teaspoons of sugar per day in various products – the equivalent of one teaspoon every half hour around the clock, or 120-130 pounds of sugar per person per year, or 500-600 calories per day.
Where is sugar found?
Food manufacturers want to sell as much food as possible, and they make use of the fact that sugar is pleasurable to most people as well as being addictive and causing more cravings. For this reason, sugar is added to a great many foods, including some you wouldn’t suspect.
There are the obvious sugar sources: candy, cookies, cakes, donuts, pies, ice cream, soda, fruit drinks, syrup, jams and jellies, and baking supplies including sugar itself. In addition, sugar is added to much canned and frozen fruit and even vegetables such as corn. It’s in pasta sauce, ketchup, relish, and in fact most condiments. Many cereals and breakfast bars have so much sugar that they’re essentially candy.
Differences between types of sugar
The white crystalline granules that most of us think of as sugar are called sucrose. However, there are many other kinds of sugar. Most of these end in -ose, such as fructose, glucose, maltose, and galactose. There are other kinds of sugar, such as high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), honey, maple syrup, agave nectar, coconut sugar, and date sugar. If an ingredient ends in -ose or has the words sugar, syrup, sweetener, or nectar in its name, it’s sugar.
Buyer beware
Food manufacturers have to tempt customers with food that tastes good, and customers like sweetness. However, manufacturers also have to cater to the growing number of aware customers who want less sugar in their products. In addition, whatever they put into their products must legally be listed on the label in descending order of predominance. Juggling all these legal and consumer needs leads to creative labeling, such as using several different kinds of sugar so that no one kind is among the first ingredients listed. Another dodge is to use unfamiliar sweeteners, such as maltodextrin, to disguise the fact that it’s essentially sugar. Still another is to use a healthy-sounding name such as evaporated cane juice…which is just plain sugar.
HFCS or sugar?
High fructose corn syrup, although similar to sucrose (sugar) in many ways, is even worse for you than sugar. Among other effects, beverages with fructose don’t stimulate the release of leptin, the hunger control hormone, as do those with glucose or sucrose; in fact HFCS increases hunger. This is in part why sodas have been supersized: you can just keep drinking them without getting that I’ve-had-enough feeling. Studies have shown that people who take in a lot of HFCS, such as those who drink a lot of soda, tend to have more of a problem with obesity, more harmful abdominal fat, and higher triglycerides than those who take in little or no HFCS.
Artificial sweeteners
Artificial sweeteners are more accurately called non-caloric sweeteners, since some caloric and non-caloric sweeteners are more natural or more artificial than others. These non-caloric sweeteners include aspartame, sucralose, sugar alcohols (ending in -ol) such as sorbitol and xylitol, saccharine, and acesulfame K. Any food labeled diet, lite, or sugar-free most likely contains one or more of these. Stevia is a more natural non-caloric sweetener, but it’s still highly processed.
One of the many down sides to using artificial sweeteners is psychological. For many people, they seem to be a license to eat other sweet or highly caloric foods. There are also physical reasons that these sweeteners cause more food consumption.
Artificial sweetener consumption more than doubled between 1987 and 2000, the same time period that saw Americans getting progressively fatter. Using chemistry to trick the tastebuds is apparently not a good weight loss strategy.
It has been found that these non-caloric sweeteners can be even more addictive than sugar.
Which do you choose?
Which is worse, caloric sweeteners (sugars) or non-caloric sweeteners? It’s hard to say. They both cause harm, but in different ways. It’s best to avoid any of these, and get used to eating food with no added sweetener.
Sugar addiction and cravings
For many if not most people, sugar can be as addictive as any drug. The more you have, the more you want. Conversely, though, if you eliminate sugar from your diet, as with the CAM detox diet, it only takes a few days before your system recalibrates and you start losing your sweets cravings, especially if other measures are taken to reduce yeast overgrowth in the body. Once you’ve been away from these concentrated sources of sweetness, the natural sweetness in even green vegetables can be detected and enjoyed, and other flavors are heightened as well.
The following have proven to be useful in reducing sugar cravings:
- Protein
- Complex carbohydratesfor slower sustained release of blood sugar
- Chromium and vanadyl sulfate for bloodsugar regulation; zinc
- Aloe vera,caprylic acid, and grapefruit seed extract for controlling yeast
- Myrrh, black walnut
