Excess Sugar; The Arch-Rival and Enemy to Optimal (Good) Health.
Excess Sugar, The Arch-Rival and Enemy to Optimal (Good) Health
Most people are addicted to sugar, and along with grain addiction, the over-consumption of added sugars whether they are high-fructose corn syrup, fructose, glucose, dextrose, or the sucrose from sugarcane and sugar beets is one of the major health problems facing our nation today.
For just a partial idea of the ill health effects of excess sugar consumption, consider that sugar has been cited as a contributing factor to:
- Overweight and obesity
- Immune system suppression, inviting infection and disease
- Premature aging
- Cancer of the breast, ovaries, prostate, and rectum
- Decreased absorption of calcium and magnesium
- Diabetes
- Fatigue
- Decreased energy and reduced ability to build muscle
- Heart disease
- Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis
- Osteoporosis
- Yeast infections
- Depression
- Dental decay and gum disease
Sugars are simple carbohydrates processed by the body in the same manner as grains.
That is, any excess sugars in the body are converted by insulin into fat and just like grains, we’re consuming an enormous surfeit of sugar.
In the past two decades, sugar consumption has increased by over 30%.
The average per-person sugar intake is now 175 pounds per year
That’s 300,000 calories per year, or 800 calories per day, from sugar
The average person now is consuming well over 3000 calories per day, including over 20 teaspoons of added sugars.
The majority of these added sugars are coming from soft drinks, which the average person drinks an estimated 56 gallons of each year.
That’s an average of 600 cans of soda pop per year each
Just one can of this soda has about 10 teaspoons of sugar and 150 calories, along with 30 to 55 mg of caffeine.
Soda also contains harmful additives including phosphoric acid, which can interfere with the body’s ability to use calcium, leading to osteoporosis or softening of the teeth and bones.
Phosphoric acid also neutralizes the hydrochloric acid in your stomach, which can interfere with digestion, making it difficult to absorb nutrients.
Eliminating or reducing soft drinks from the average person’s diet is a distant but noble dream that would alone vastly reduce the rate of obesity and add years to our average lifespan.
Moreover, there are high-sugar culprits disguised as “healthy” by food marketers such as:
- fruit drinks,”
- fruit beverages”
- and “fruit punch,” such as Snapple, which contains anywhere from 1% to 40% of fruit juice but which all contain loads of sugar, usually high-fructose corn syrup.
But even the sugars in 100% real fruit juice can quickly add up:
Real fruit juice, whether store-bought or freshly squeezed, has about eight full teaspoons of sugar per eight-ounce glass.
This sugar is typically a fruit sugar called fructose, which is every bit as dangerous as the regular table sugar sucrose since it will also cause a major increase in insulin levels.
This doesn’t mean that you should avoid fruit, just fruit juice.
When the fruit is intact and whole, its fibre will moderate the release of fructose and secondarily insulin into your bloodstream.
However, if you are overweight, have high blood pressure, or have high blood sugar levels, you would be wise to avoid most fruits and just stick with vegetable carbohydrates until you have these problems under control.
This is especially true if you are a Protein Metabolic Type.
Carbohydrate types are generally better designed to handle the carbohydrates in fruits, especially citrus fruits.
On a different note,
Sugar substitutes such as saccharin (Sweet-N-Low), sucralose (Splenda), and aspartame (Equal and Nutra sweet) should be avoided.
Their negative health effects can easily exceed the sugars they are replacing.
Some scientists, for instance, believe aspartame might cause altered brain function and behaviour changes.
Over the years there have been complaints about aspartame, including fibromyalgia symptoms, multiple sclerosis symptoms, dizziness, headaches, and menstrual problems.
You should also avoid the latest sugar substitute rage, sucralose.
First of all, few human studies have been published on the safety of sucralose.
Second, in animal research studies, sucralose was shown to cause;
- decrease in the size of thymus glands,
- liver and kidney enlargement,
- reduce growth rate,
- decrease red blood cell count,
- and decrease placenta and foetal body weights
and this is only a partial list.
Sucralose also has the potential to contaminate your body with pesticides, and heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, and more, as it has been found to contain small amounts of these dangerous substances. Finally, if you are trying to lower your weight, there is no clear evidence that sucralose or any artificial sweetener is even useful in weight reduction.
There is evidence that these substances may stimulate your appetite.
For many people, sugar is an authentic addiction, akin to cigarette dependency.
And it is affecting their health as severely as cigarettes would, if not more so.
The real solution is not to keep hunting for ways to “safely” maintain the addiction, such as artificial sweeteners, which are kind of like the equivalent of “Light” and “Ultra-Light” cigarettes that is, equally as devastating to your body.
The solution is to overcome the addiction.
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