Toxic Sugar

Sweet death...

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1GJMVhC

The average American today consumes around 20 teaspoons of sugar today, with soft drinks being  the number one source of these so-called empty calories.[1]  We are consuming nearly 160 lbs of sugar per person per year.  Compare this staggering number to the paltry 4 lbs per year that Americans of 1776 consumed (or even the 20 lbs we ate in 1850).[2]  High-sugar intake has historically been linked to diabetes and obesity, two preventable American epidemics.  But in recent years many nutritionists conducting experimental studies as well as researching data and compiling meta-studies have begun to make claims of added sugar’s other deleterious physiological effects.  One leading expert has gone so far as to describe sugar with words such as “toxic” and “poison.”  Dr. Robert Lustig and carrying similar convictions warn that sugar is worse beyond merely being the “empty calories” that the USDA, FDA, CDC, AHA and other leading authorities on nutrition leave it and that spokespeople for industry icons like Coca-Cola even admit it is.  Far more insidious than just contributing to weight gain and Type 2 diabetes development racking our country, “toxic” sugar may be adding to the frighteningly high rates of heart disease, our number one killer.  Unlike complex carbohydrates present in grains and starchy vegetables like potatoes, the fructose contained in sucrose (the scientific identity of our beloved table sugar) has been definitively proven to contribute to the thus-far surprising development of fatty liver disease in non-alcoholics and healthy-weighted people.  Perhaps most frightening for those of us eating a typical-western diet but lacking the visually-obvious health concerns like obesity linked to sugar intake, cancer even seems to thrive off of high sucrose and fructose intake.  Insulin response in the bloodstream after sugar consumption appears to make easily-metabolizable sugar available to voracious cancer cells.  Cancer rates in America skyrocketed along with diabetes and obesity in the post-Civil War United States, continue to do so and also are rising in places previously without our typical western-diet that have since adopted it.[3]  Sadly, even the oft-heard warnings against high fructose corn syrup that has largely over-taken cane and beet sugars place in our foods seem to be just as applicable to the very table sugar it has replaced.  Sucrose consists of one fructose molecule bonded to one glucose molecule, making its 50%-50% breakdown into fructose and glucose very close to high fructose corn syrup’s marginally higher 55%-45% fructose-glucose breakdown.[4]  Reducing your sugar-derived caloric intake is the key to preventing a wide range of chronic ailments.  Recent recommendations from the World Health Organization suggest capping one’s sugar intake to 6 teaspoons a day.[5]  Choosing to eat even less than this is probably the best choice for you however.              

---

[1] https://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/NutritionCenter/HealthyDietGoals/Frequently-Asked-Questions-About-Sugar_UCM_306725_Article.jsp

[2] http://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-much-added-sugar-is-too-much/

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[4] http://nutritionfacts.org/video/sugar-vs-corn-syrup/

[5] http://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-much-added-sugar-is-too-much/