Danger Of Sugar On Your Health

Why Is Sug­ar Con­sid­ered White Poison? It is not easy to avoid sug­ar as it is almost every­where in our food. How­ev­er, it’s more dan­ger­ous than we can imagine! Our main con­cern is the added sug­ar or refined sug­ar, not the nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring sug­ar we ingest in fruits and vegetables. Added sug­ar is defined as sug­ar added by some­one to their food like (cakes, ice cream, cere­al, cook­ies, can­dy, pas­tries, soda, and muffins). As well as (bread, sal­ad dress­ing, crack­ers, and pas­ta sauce) but in small­er amounts. The sug­ar con­tent of an apple (and oth­er fruits) is embed­ded in plant fibre. There­fore it takes more time to digest and more time for the sug­ar to release because the fibre in the fruit min­i­mizes the sug­ars’ impact on blood sug­ar lev­els. Besides, you also get vit­a­mins, min­er­als, and oth­er healthy nutrients. On the oth­er hand, added sug­ar releas­es imme­di­ate­ly into our blood­stream at the same moment diges­tion begins. Lat­er, our pan­creas secretes insulin hor­mone to man­age ele­vat­ed blood glu­cose and dis­trib­utes it to dif­fer­ent cells through­out your body for use as energy. If there is no need for ener­gy, it turns fast to fat. If you need ener­gy but are overeat­ing added sug­ar, the liv­er will get over­loaded with fruc­tose and is forced to turn it into fat. So, the same result is the end of the process. This is reflect­ed in an increased fat accu­mu­la­tion in the bel­ly and liver. Many stud­ies stat­ed that the excess con­sump­tion of adding sug­ar is one of the most impor­tant caus­es of abdomen and liv­er fat.

Sugar & Health — The Slow White Poison

Six Main Reasons Why Eating Too Much-Added Sugar Could Be Hazardous For Your Health:

1- Cancer 

Sug­ar is not a car­cino­genic (caus­ing can­cer) sub­stance. How­ev­er, the excess con­sump­tion of added sug­ar can con­tribute to obe­si­ty, which is a sig­nif­i­cant risk fac­tor for can­cers such as breast and colon cancers. That is due to the indi­rect link between can­cer and sug­ar. Eat­ing lots of added sug­ar over the years can cause you to gain weight. And stud­ies show that being over­weight or obese increas­es the risk of 13 dif­fer­ent kinds of cancer.  There is a sin­gle study that sug­gest­ed there could be some­thing else going on. As researchers found that peo­ple who drank too much added sug­ar drinks had a slight­ly increased risk of can­cer, regard­less of their body weight. Still, more stud­ies will be need­ed to rely on that.

2. Cardiovascular Diseases

In a sci­en­tif­ic state­ment, the Amer­i­can Heart Asso­ci­a­tion suggests: “Tak­en in total, all the stud­ies indi­cate that high sug­ar intake should be avoid­ed. Sug­ar has no nutri­tion­al val­ue oth­er than to pro­vide calories.”

3- Depression & Anxiety

Too much added sug­ar in the diet could lead to an increased risk of depres­sion or anx­i­ety, espe­cial­ly among men. A study in the UK has found that men con­sum­ing too much sug­ar (more than 67g a day) had a 23% increased chance of suf­fer­ing from a com­mon men­tal dis­or­der after five years than those who con­sumed low­er sug­ar lev­els (less than 39.5g a day). This study found no link between sug­ar intake and new mood dis­or­ders in women, and it is unclear why, but more research is need­ed to test the sug­ar-depres­sion effect in large pop­u­la­tion samples. Anoth­er study of over 67,000 women showed that those with the high­est intakes of added sug­ars had a high risk of depres­sion symp­toms than those with low­er added sug­ar consumption.

4- Weight Gain

  Obe­si­ty occurs when ener­gy intake from food or drink con­sump­tion is high­er than the ener­gy spends through metab­o­lism or exercise. There are dif­fer­ent ways to clas­si­fy body weight, but the Body Mass Index (BMI) is the most wide­ly used. A per­son is con­sid­ered obese when their BMI exceeds 30 kg/m2. How­ev­er, a high BMI does not con­sid­er to be a defin­i­tive diag­no­sis of obe­si­ty. As some peo­ple can have exces­sive mus­cle bulk, which increas­es their weight, but it is gen­er­al­ly a good indi­ca­tion of whether you are over­weight or not. Added sug­ar prod­ucts are often referred to as emp­ty calo­ries as they’re rel­a­tive­ly high in calo­ries and lack nutri­ents (min­er­als, vit­a­mins, pro­tein, Fiber and fat), which our bod­ies need to work cor­rect­ly, and those nutri­ents are essen­tial to give us the feel­ing of full­ness. Also, added sug­ars affect the appetite-reg­u­lat­ing neu­ro­trans­mit­ter, which may cause the effect of desir­ing food and lead you to overeat. Not to men­tion the pro­longed ele­vat­ed blood sug­ar and the insulin resis­tance the added sug­ar leads to, all of that linked to weight gain and excess body fat, espe­cial­ly around the waistline.

5- Accelerate Ageing

  Too much added sug­ar in your diet can cause dark cir­cles, dehy­drat­ed skin, and wrin­kles and fast-track the age­ing process.

Some Of The Issues Your Body Faces When Facing Too Much Added Sugar 

(A) Gly­ca­tion: When sug­ar enters your blood­stream. The bond­ing of a sug­ar mol­e­cule to a pro­tein or lipid mol­e­cule with­out enzy­mat­ic reg­u­la­tion occurs. Dur­ing gly­ca­tion, tox­ic com­pounds called ( Advanced Gly­ca­tion End Prod­ucts) or AGEs are pro­duced, and these can cause wrin­kles, sag­ging, and dark cir­cles under the eyes. (B) Inflam­ma­tion: Added sug­ars con­sid­er to be an inflam­ma­to­ry food, and overeat­ing of it may cause chron­ic low-grade inflam­ma­tion that can lead to bro­ken cap­il­lar­ies, loss of skin elas­tic­i­ty, and break­down of cells. All of which fast-track ageing.

6- Type 2 Diabetes

  Overeat­ing added sug­ar does not direct­ly cause type 2 dia­betes. How­ev­er, some evi­dence sug­gests that the high­er over­all sug­ar avail­abil­i­ty makes dia­betes more common. A review arti­cle in 2016 sug­gests that the direct effects of sug­ar are main­ly relat­ed to fruc­tose con­sump­tion as the liv­er absorbs fruc­tose (fruit sug­ar) with­out reg­u­lat­ing the intake, poten­tial­ly lead­ing to a build-up of liv­er fats and a decrease in insulin sen­si­tiv­i­ty. The insulin sen­si­tiv­i­ty func­tion shapes how effec­tive­ly cells use glu­cose and reg­u­late remov­ing it from the blood­stream. Decreas­ing insulin sen­si­tiv­i­ty can cause blood sug­ar to become per­sis­tent­ly high, poten­tial­ly lead­ing to type 2 diabetes.

In Summary,

Sug­ar deserves to be tagged as slow white poi­son as it does­n’t kill you in one or even ten dos­es, but it takes time to destroy your body cells through the years and leads you to suf­fer from lots of chron­ic dis­eases.

Though, We Should Have a Question Here:

What Is The Recommended Daily Intake Of Added Sugar?

WHO ( world health orga­ni­za­tion) guide­lines are to reduce added sug­ar intake at all life stages to under 10 per­cent of the total calo­rie require­ment to reduce the risk of unhealthy weight gain, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases and diabetes. Which equals a max­i­mum of 50 g of sug­ar per day (10–12 tea­spoons) for the aver­age adult (at a calo­rie intake of 2,000 kcal). The Amer­i­can Heart Asso­ci­a­tion (AHA) rec­om­mends decreas­ing the amount of added sug­ars you con­sume to no more than half of the total esti­mat­ed dai­ly ener­gy require­ment (kcal).  For women, that’s no more than 100 calo­ries per day or about six tea­spoons of sug­ar (30 grams).  For men, it’s 150 calo­ries per day or about nine tea­spoons (45 grams). Now we almost have an idea regard­ing the dai­ly sug­ar intake, which we can con­sume and still be healthy. So, let us look at how to reduce your sug­ar intake.

Here Are Some Tips To Reduce Your Sugar Intake:

1- Shopping Tips

• Write a list and stick to it.

• Plan meals and snacks for the week and ensure you buy every­thing you need.

• Don’t shop when you’re hun­gry because you will prob­a­bly be tempt­ed by unplanned choices.

• Con­cen­trate on buy­ing foods from a spe­cif­ic gro­cery store. The more stores you will go to, the more added sug­ar prod­uct you will see.

• Read the labels of each prod­uct you shop for to deter­mine the best choices.

2- Switch Sweets & Processed Food To Home-Made Meals

Processed food is what we got in a can or pock­et; if you need a snack in your break, try switch­ing over to fresh fruit, yogurt, car­rot or a small hand­ful of unsalt­ed nuts. Instead of grab­bing a cake, bis­cuit or muffin.

3- Don’t Drink Fruit; Eat It!

Obvi­ous­ly, if you juice your fruit, you will con­sume a lot more serv­ings than if you were to eat it whole because juic­ing takes off the pulp. Which con­tains fibre that makes you feel fuller and more sat­is­fied. Also, your fruit juice will be high in sugar. So, reduc­ing your fruit juice con­sump­tion will be a good start if you want to decrease your sug­ar intake.

4- Switch Soft Drinks To Water

We all know that soft and ener­gy drinks are full of sug­ar. If you reg­u­lar­ly drink either of these, you can quick­ly drop the amount of sug­ar in your diet by decreas­ing your con­sump­tion of these drinks. If you don’t love the taste of plain water and strug­gle to con­sume the prop­er amount. You can buy some sachets of con­cen­trat­ed flavoured pow­der. They come with ten calo­ries per sachet, which is enough for more than 500 ml and dif­fer­ent tastes.

5- Changing Your Hot Drink Habits

Try to reduce the amount of sug­ar you put in your cof­fee or tea, one tea­spoon at a time. Or, if you’re a fight­er, go ahead and take it all off from your hot drink. Dr. Dalal Has­san has med­ical­ly reviewed the article. 

Final Tip!

You can find many healthy recipes online with low sug­ar and more fibre, and it is deli­cious too!