HOW MUCH SUGAR DO WE EAT?
Dr Robert Lustig, a paediatric endocrinologist and pioneer in decoding sugar metabolism, says that your body can metabolize 6 teaspoons (30gr) of added sugar per day. That means refined sugar that you add in tea, coffee, or eat in biscuits, cakes etc.
However a recent survey found that our daily sugar consumption is up to 5 times the figure with up to 30 teaspoons consumption of added sugar per day.
Now the confusion lies on the added sugar part, because there are foods that naturally contain sugars, normally called ‘free sugars’. The opinion is that you do not need to worry too much about the free sugars contained in carbohydrates or fruit because they contain fibre which is good for the body, but if you add all the free sugar and the added sugar, you should not exceed 10% of your total food calories and that adds up to approximately 50gr (10 teaspoons) for a woman and 70gr (14 teaspoons) for a man, depending on how active they are.
SO WHERE DO WE GET THE SUGAR FROM?
Soft drinks are the biggest single source of added sugar for young people, followed by sweets, chocolate and jams and younger children also get a large proportion of their sugar from cereals – including cakes and biscuits – and drinks including fruit juice. For adults the main sources are also confectionery and jams, soft drinks and cereals. Alcohol adds another 10%.
Here are also some more information of sugar contents in everyday foods.
1 cube= 1 teaspoon= 5gr sugar
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2127461/Secret-sugars-food-From-cubes-salad-16-half-bottled-water-youre-eating-realising-it.html
HOW IS SUGAR ABSORBED IN THE BODY?
All carbohydrates you eat are broken down to simple sugars in the intestine, where they are absorbed into the blood, increasing blood sugar levels. The process is a bit more complicated, but this is a good chart that summarises how sugar is absorbed and stored in the body:
Glucose is the primary fuel for every cell in the body, and it is so important to the function of your brain that the body has several back up strategies to keep blood sugar levels normal. Even without any carbohydrate in the diet, your body will make sugar from other sources, including protein and fat. Glucose can be metabolized by every cell in the body, while fructose can only be metabolized by the liver, than then gets stored into fat and can raise blood triglycerides. Refined sugar fructose is harmful, while the fructose found in fruit is harmful when consumed in big amounts, but fruit also contains plenty of nutrients and fiber.
HOW DOES SUGAR AFFECT YOUR BODY?
- Skin Ageing- Sugar changes the structure of collagen and makes it more brittle. Now collagen is not only found in the skin, but in all the fascia that wraps around and connect muscles and organs, so it is the scaffolding of our internal organs and muscles.
- Liver Damage- the liver processes sugar the same way that it processes alcohol (both are used to convert carbohydrates into fat), so an overload of sugar can have the same effects on the liver as alcohol over-consumption
- Increases Uric Acid Levels- high uric acid levels can damage liver and heart and now the uric acid level is used as a marker for fructose toxicity. Increased level of Uric Acid lead to Gout, a very painful form of arthritis
- Metabolic Syndrome- this condition’s symptoms are: weight gain, abdominal obesity, decreased HDL and increased LDL, elevated blood sugar levels, elevated triglycerides and high blood pressure. This is a growing epidemic with 1 in 4 adults diagnosed by it and over 30% of people over 50 in the UK (http://patient.info/doctor/metabolic-syndrome)
- Addiction- Please see the section below
- Obesity- Cells that are “resistant” to the insulin message are slower to bring sugar into the cell. Blood sugars stay high longer, and the body responds by making even more insulin. With more insulin present, more calories are stored as fat.
- Cancer- Cancer cells reproduce very fast and need a lot of energy to do that, hence they favour high energy foods such as sugar. Diabetes and cancer occur together more often than would be expected by chance alone and recent research found an association between high blood glucose levels and an increased risk of certain types of cancer over an average of 10 years of follow-up (http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000201).
- Heart Disease– a study at the University of California found that markers for heart diseases are elevated when consuming high amounts of sugar and caused visceral adiposity or accumulation of fat in the abdominal area, surrounding organs. This is a precursor of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes
- Alzheimer– in 2005 Alzheimer was dubbed “type 3 diabetes” to highlight the link between high blood sugar levels and the disease. Previous research has also shown diabetics have a doubled risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s appears to be intricately linked to insulin resistance (http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/08/13/sugar-alzheimers-disease-link.aspx#_edn7)
- Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)– PCOS has been linked to insulin resistance and in fact one way of treating PCOS is by administering Metformin which is a medication used to treat Type 2 Diabetes and found to slow down hair growth, control blood sugar levels and lowers testosterone production, so avoiding sugar and carbohydrates can help PCOS
- High Blood pressure- one 2010 study showed that consuming a high-fructose diet led to an increase in blood pressure which is greater than what is typically seen with sodium (http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/02/25/sugar-blood-pressure.aspx).
- Type 2 Diabetes- sugar has been shown to be the proximate cause of diabetes worldwide. Eating a lot of simple carbohydrate at once can raise insulin levels quickly. High insulin levels can lead to a rapid fall in blood sugar, in a sort of “rebound” effect. Low blood sugar levels then signal the body that it is low on fuel. This triggers appetite, encouraging you to eat again, to bring blood sugar levels back up again.
- Immune Function- according to recent research, your white blood cells are 40% less effective at killing germs for up to 5 hours after eating 100gr of sugar (content of 1 litre of soda) by competing for space in those cells containing Vitamin C, needed by white blood cells to destroy bacteria and viruses (http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/26/11/1180.abstract).
- Tooth Decay- well you do not need any research to corroborate the impact of sugar on tooth decay. What is interesting though is that one sugar substitute, Xylitol, was found to strengthen enamel and not affecting blood sugar levels. Xylitol is used in fact in toothpastes and chewing gums
- Gum Disease- Bacteria in the mouth are implicated in almost all forms of gum disease, through the development of plaque. The biggest factor in the build-up of plaque is sugar in the diet. These foods create acidic conditions in the mouth that are ideal for the proliferation of plaque-forming bacteria.
IS SUGAR ADDICTIVE?
Sugar is addictive and it can change brain biochemistry by affecting dopamine receptors and the area of the brain that deals with rewarding. Few studies on mice found that when given a choice of cocaine or opioids versus sugar, the mice preferred sugar to cocaine and the research team discovered that intense sweetness “is much more rewarding and probably more addictive than intravenous cocaine.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/connie-bennett/the-rats-who-preferred-su_b_712254.html)
HOW TO START GOING SUGAR FREE?
The first step is to eliminate all refined sugar from your diet and stick to natural sugars like agave syrup, honey, maple syrup, and fructose found in fruit and dried fruit like dates and prunes. You also want to start reducing sugar in teas and coffees to the point that you will not add any sweeteners in them. Also you want to cut all kinds of sweetened soda drinks or juices. Most juices contain high doses of sugar, so swap to water or hot herbal teas.
The main objective is to retrain your taste buds to less and less sugar content foods. In time you will find that, if you eat a normal cake, it will taste really sweet and you will not enjoy it!
Also I found that the first month I was sugar free it was relatively easy, but I really struggled the following two months, partly because I was told by my nutritionist to cut the natural sugars even further and also because I had a lot of sugar cravings. But if you eat proteins with every meal and (if you do not want to loose weight) you add a bit more fat in your diet, then the cravings eventually go away. It took me about 3 months to finally get rid of the sugar cravings, they are not totally gone, but they are manageable.
I also found the 6 teaspoon of added sugar per day helpful, because I felt that I did not have to cut sugar out completely, but it felt more like a Weight Watchers Point System Diet: you can have 6 teaspoons of sugar a day and it is up to you how you take it. Remember that 1 teaspoon = 5gr, so read your labels! And also remember that even natural added sugars count, so if you have high sugar content fruits like grapes, raisins, mango, bananas or dates then you need to count those as well. So it is 30gr of added sugar per day and 50gr (for women) or 70gr (for men) of total sugars per day. If you are a big fruit eater then you need to add those sugars in the total sugar amount per day and don’t forget that all carbohydrates contain sugar as well.