The Truth About Excess Sugar
In the summer months… who am I kidding, in all months, you can probably find a pint of caramel cashew cluster or moose tracks in my house or in my hand. I wouldn’t be fooling anyone if I said I NEVER ate added sugar, but over the last few years my family has drastically cut down on it by changing how we view added sugar. Now when we eat sugar we are mindfully eating it, not just consuming it at every meal blindly.
“Compared with those who consumed approximately 8.0% of calories from added sugar, participants who consumed approximately 17% to 21% … of calories from added sugar had a 38% higher risk of CVD mortality.”
Yang Q, Zhang Z, Gregg EW, Flanders WD, Merritt R, Hu FB. Added Sugar Intake and Cardiovascular Diseases Mortality Among US Adults. JAMA Intern Med. 2014;174(4):516–524. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.13563
Added Sugar is in WHAT?
Once the food industry found out the body has an addicting dopamine response to the processing of sugar, they saw the profit potential and began putting it in everything. This included adding sugar to our fruits and vegetables. If you don’t believe me, take a peek in your canned goods cabinet. If you have not been looking at the ingredients in the past, you may be shocked to see how many of them contain added sugar and/or sugar substitutes. Just when you thought you were eating healthy by grabbing those peas and carrots… nope added sugar.
Added sugar is in 74% of packaged foods. Foods that many individuals view as healthy, such as yogurt, canned vegetables, energy bars, cereal, ketchup, salad dressing and pasta sauce all can contain high amounts of added sugar.
Source: Use of caloric and non-caloric sweeteners in US consumer packaged foods, 2005–9
Not only are they adding it to our healthy foods, but food scientist and farmers are also selectively breeding our fruits and vegetables to be sweeter and have longer shelf life. This, along with other scientific improvements, has contributed to a year round access of fruits and vegetables that contain higher amounts of sugar than our bodies were designed to handle. Unfortunately, we have blamed fat and cholesterol for the rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes, while sugar and carbs have quickly taken over the American diet.
At the Melbourne Zoo they were having a problem with fruitarian animals, such as monkeys and pandas, becoming obese and loosing teeth. They narrowed this down to amount of sugar that is now contained in fruits. If the zoos are no longer giving monkeys bananas because of health consequences, then why are we being told to give them to our toddlers every day as a staple in their diet? NPR: How Fruit Became so Sugary.
Doesn’t my Body Run on Carbohydrates?
It is a known fact that Americans are consuming more carbohydrates now than they were 100 years ago. It is also a known fact that diseases such as obesity and type II diabetes were uncommon 100 years ago and now they are an epidemic. For years we have tried to blame anything and everything but Carbohydrates. From sedentary lifestyles, Fat and Cholesterol, anything but the addicting sugars that have taken over the American Diet.
Not to say that sedentary lifestyles and consuming too much food in general are not problems in the United States, they are, but the vast majority of the obesity and diabetes epidemic can be contributed to added Sugars and Carbohydrates.
The body’s main source of energy is glucose. All of the carbohydrates/sugars that we consume go through a process that converts them first to glucose (blood sugar). If during this conversion process your body deems there is too much glucose in your blood, it will trigger the pancreas to release the hormone insulin. The insulin will then signal for your cells to let the glucose in so it can be utilized as fuel. If the cells say “nope, enough glucose in here already” then the insulin will signal for the body to convert the glucose to glycogen so it can be stored in the muscles and the liver. If the liver and muscles say “nope, sorry we are full too” then the body will store the remaining glucose as fat.
Between meals your body will first utilize the glucose in your bloodstream for energy, if your blood sugar begins to drop, your body will signal your pancreas to release another hormone. This hormone is called Glucagon. Glucagon will cause the glycogen in the muscles and the liver to be converted back into glucose and released into the bloodstream. Only after the depletion of the glycogen in the muscles and liver, will the body turn to fat for fuel. Unfortunately, with the increase of carbohydrate and sugar filled snacks and meals, the body typically doesn’t have time to begin to utilize the fat stores before the brain misses the dopamine and tells you, “you need more sugar and carbs.”
Many of the sugars and carbs we reach for when we are looking to please the brain have a high glycemic index, glycemic load and little nutritional value. This basically means our body can process them really fast leading to blood sugar spikes and a lack of feeling full, causing a repeating process where we are crashing again in a couple of hours accompanied by feeling hungry and craving a sugary, carb loaded snack. If this process continues your body can get confused and your cells can become resistant to insulin, this triggers your body to create more insulin to try to get the glucose out of your blood, which causes your cells to become even more resistant. If that cycle continues type II diabetes can occur, along with other diseases that we hadn’t previously thought of being a result of sugar and carbs. Think Alzheimer’s, heart attacks, etc.
The Harmful Effects of Excess Sugar
ConsiderThis has done a good job in this short 6-minute video to give us a taste of the harmful effects sugar has on our body when consumed in the excess amounts that is found in the Standard American Diet.
Excess sugar in the bloodstream can lead to an increased rate of Glycation. Glycation is what occurs when a sugar molecule binds to fat, protein or amino acids creating an Advanced Glycation End-Product (AGEs). AGEs can contribute to inflammation, metabolic defects and free radicals which can lead to diabetes, neurological disorders kidney disease and vascular disease to name a few.
Re-train Your Taste buds
Not only can you become insulin resistant from eating too many carbs and sugar, but your taste buds can actually become accustomed to sweet and continuously crave sweeter and sweeter things. The good news is that you can re-train your taste buds. I did this experiment myself. I used to love milk-chocolate and hate dark-chocolate, it was too bitter and not sweet enough for me. Once my family decided to cut gluten, and to not replace it with the processed “gluten-free” products found on the shelves, our carb intake and sugar intake naturally went down.
Then we cut out juices and sodas and within a few weeks I found myself actually eating dark chocolate and loving it. Now Dark-Chocolate (I’m talking %85-%95 cocao here!) is eaten nearly daily in my house and if on the occasion I decide to have desert, it is “almost” too sweet. I naturally find myself putting the spoon down earlier because sweeter foods are just too much. How come? The body is a wonderful thing, your taste buds can be re-trained. The process takes between 10-14 days. So start retraining your taste buds. Cut out the processed sugars, the fake sugars, the fruits that have been bred to make you crave them, the processed carbohydrates, and in a few short weeks you can start experiencing how good real food can actually taste.
Next week on the blog: What about 0 calorie sweeteners and diet sodas?
By Anna Morris
About the Author
Anna Morris is a CTNC, Personal Trainer, has a BBA in Sales and Marketing and is the founder and owner of Morris Success and Fitness, LLC. Her life revolves around God, her Husband Kurtis and her two Boys, Waylon and Rowan. In addition to God, family and friends, her passions include: nutrition, cooking, developing routines, mobility training, soccer, running, and camping, Her mission is to spread the knowledge that God has given her to help 2,000 individuals define and achieve their personal vision for success and fitness in the next decade.