•The Bitter-Sweet Truth Revealed+20 Ways SUGAR Is Killing YouCandy, cake, cookies, ice cream, chocolate, pasta sauce, ketch up, marinades for grilling, soft drinks, energy drinks, sport drinks, salad dressings, you just name it, almost everything we put in our mouth has some sugar in it…..we have it natural, raw, refined, caramelized, melted, we even have white sugar and brown sugar.
Imagine how distracted we get at the sight of a chocolate bar….hmmmm…..it’s not just the attractive design the manufacturers slap on the wraps, it’s almost instinctive, immediately we see a chocolate or piece of cake, we start imagining the sweetness. It does not matter where you are, school, church, mosque, bus, airplane or ATM queue, if someone passes a chocolate bar right in front of you to another person, your eyes will almost instinctively follow that chocolate to see where it ends and you find yourself salivating….yummy!Let’s get to ‘The good, the bad and the ugly’ of sugar; If you ever watched the cartoon, Cinderella as a child, now, the good here will be Cinderella, the bad; the step sisters and the ugly of course is the step mother…..let’s get to the nitty gritty….
The good: Sugar is an important source of energy for the human body, but too much or too little in the blood can harm the body. Sugar is a crystalline carbohydrate that makes foods taste sweet. There are many types of sugar, including glucose, fructose and lactose (also known as table sugar), the afore mentioned sugars occur naturally in all foods that contain carbohydrate, such as fruits, grains, dairy, rice, yam, potato and other starchy food, consuming whole foods that contain natural sugar is okay, the fact is we need sugar, our brain needs glucose to function well, we need glucose for energy and metabolic activities our body carry out.
The Bad: “ADDED SUGAR”……….run from this. Added sugars are sugars that we add to a product ourselves to enhance the flavor or sugar added by manufacturer. It is added sugars that have been cited as a contributor in many health problems. Too much added sugars can be one of the greatest threats to cardiovascular diseases. Sugar has a bitter sweet reputation when it comes to health.
Now that consumers (You and I) are being health conscious, with more research coming out about the dangers surrounding sugar consumption, manufacturing companies are scrambling to protect their image and still maximize profits, manufacturers now promote healthy alternatives, but really, how healthy are these alternatives?.Sugar is being disguised in food by many companies, sometimes we go to a convenience store to grab some items and because we want to eat right we opt for the ‘sugar free’ or ‘zero sugar’ products and we stroll to the cashier to pay feeling like we just made the smartest choice, right?…..clap for us….”weh done” (well done)…we manufacturers got smarter and now use other names on the labels, sugar has so many names, some of which are;Cane crystals, Corn syrup, Dextrose, Fructose, Maltose, Sucrose, Syrup, Lactose, Glucose, HoneyMalt syrup, Molasses.
So if you are looking for the word ‘sugar ‘on the label, and you don’t find it, it does not make it sugar free, it could be the manufacturer used another name. Nutritional labels are required by law to list their most prominent ingredients first, so by putting two or three different types of sugar in the food and calling each a different name, they can spread out the sugar content of the product across 3 ingredients and have it show up further down the list and not first on the label. If it ends in a “ose’, its most likely a sugar.
Here comes the UGLY: Too much sugar could damage your liver, endanger your heart and shorten your life! Sugar harms your body in a million ways, how?v Heart: Sugar(not just salt)could contribute to high blood pressure, a major risk factor for a variety of heart problems, according to JAMA Internal Medicine, consuming large amount of added sugars increases your risk of dying from a heart disease.
Bad for your arteries: Your arteries are responsible for transporting blood throughout your body; high blood sugar is a major risk factor for atherosclerosis, plaque buildup in your arteries.
Your arteries need to be able to transport oxygen-rich blood throughout your body in order to keep your organs functioning properly. Depending on the specific arteries affected, untreated atherosclerosis could cause a stroke or kidney failure.v It could be damaging your brain: Too much added sugar can impact your memory and cognitive function especially as you age, too much sugar is a risk factor for dementia. Your brain needs sugar to continue functioning normally, but overloading it can cause even more long term damage.
Liver: The liver is responsible for detoxifying chemicals and metabolizing drugs in your body, without normal liver functions, the toxins in your body could eventually kill you. Fructose could be considered one of these toxins if you eat too much of it over a long period of time. Research suggests that too much fructose could lead to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, it is up to our liver to metabolize the fructose, the same way too much alcohol can damage your liver, too much fructose can lead to serious complications, if a food contains high fructose corn syrup, please avoid it.
Weight gain: When you consume sugar, your body does either of these two things · Burn it for energy· Convert it to fat and store in your fat cells(guess you now have an idea why your waist line is expanding)If you are eating food high in sugar, you will likely gain weight. Research has proved people who increase their sugar intake tend to gain weight. The body does not know what to do with all that extra sugar you are eating, so it simply stores it.
Obesity: Processed foods contain refined sugar(added sugar), which can actually make you feel hungrier the more you eat them. A hormone called Ghrelin is released when your stomach is empty, when your stomach is full, the secretion of Ghrelin stops, but eating large amounts of fructose, often found in sugar-sweetened drinks, messes with this appetite system, if this goes on for too long, consistent over eating(as a result of refined sugar intake) could result in overweight and obesity.
Cancer: Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. The metabolic problems associated with sugar consumption are a known driver of inflammation, another potential cause of cancer. Multiple studies show that people who eat a lot of sugar are at a higher risk of getting cancer
Diabetes: The pancreas is responsible for the production of insulin which helps the sugar you eat move from your blood to your cells. Type 2 diabetes develops when the body becomes resistant to insulin. High blood sugar causes your pancreas to produce more insulin, if this continues it simply can’t keep up. A sugar-heavy diet is often what pushes your body from insulin resistant to diabetesv Skin: Excess sugar intake breaks down the collagen in your skin making you age faster, the collagen and elastin fibers in the skin are affected by a lot of sugar in the blood stream.
20 WAYS SUGAR IS KILLING YOU
1.Can cause cancer, 2.Rots your teeth, 3.Provides empty calories with no nutritional value, 4. Contributes to diabetes 5.Contributes to heart problems 6.Can suppress your immune system 7.Contributes to ulcer 8.Raises blood sugar levels 9.Feeds candida 10.Promotes wrinkling of skin 11.Makes your blood acidic 12.Contributes to obesity 13.Weakens eye sight 14.Speeds ageing 15.Contributes to eczema 16.Can cause arthritis 17.Robs you of energy 18.Can lead to osteoporosis 19.It is addictive(almost as much as drugs) 20.Can cause gall stones
Seriously, added sugar is the worst ingredient in the modern diet, it contains no essential nutrients and is bad for your teeth as it provides easily digestible energy for the bad bacteria in the mouth. Tips To Reduce Sugar Consumption· Cut back on the amount of sugar you add to food and drinks, such as tea, coffee, creals and pancakes·
Replace sugar sweetened beverages with sugar-free or low calorie drinks· Compare food labels abd select products with the least amount of added sugars· Try replacing sugar in recipes with spices like ginger· Eat more veggies since non starchy veggies fractional amounts of fructose (starchy veggies such as sweet potatoes and pumpkin have a higher sugar content), go for avocado, cucumber, eggplant, lettuce, mushroom, tomato etc·
Don’t leave out the dairy, although milk and milk products contain lactose ….a naturally occurring carbohydrate that is converted to sugar in the body – it’s a fairly small amount. Choose milk, cheese and yogurt that have no added fruits or other ingredients, if you are limiting sugar (both natural and refined) for health reasons, then keep your dairy intake low.· Nuts: Nuts are sugar-free, nuts like almond and walnuts are healthy snacks, choose unsalted and unflavored options to avoid added sugars.
Eliminating sugar from your diet can significantly improve both your health and the state of your waistline. Avoiding processed foods makes cutting sugar out of your life easier. Lean, unprocessed meats do not contain any sugar. Beef, chicken, lamb, pork, veal, rabbit, turkey, fish are completely sugar free.Steer clear from processed or canned meats such as bacon, cured ham and sausages as they could have sugar added as a preservative.Be sure to read labels on food products before buying.
Do you know that your brain responds to sugar the same way it would to cocaine?Eating sugar creates a surge of feel-good chemicals; dopamine and serotonin, and just like a drug, your body craves more after the initial high!
