Part Two
Let’s continue our conversation about sugar. In Part One we covered what sugar is, why we need it, a bit of nutrition, and a bit of history. Now let’s look at what the problem is with sugar, how it impacts us, and some major issues associated with sugar consumption.
Americans eat a whopping average of 60 lbs of added sugar a year! That’s 12 – 5 lb bags of sugar per year per person!
This excessive sugar intake has directly contributed to the prevalence of metabolic illnesses like Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease in the US and other countries.
When we eat sugary foods or certain carbohydrates (think bagels, breads, crackers), glucose is quickly released into the bloodstream during the digestion process. Remember that glucose is the body’s energy currency. In response to this spike in glucose, the body creates insulin to manage it and get it into the cells where it can be used for energy. Once the energy needs of the cells are met, excess glucose is eventually stored as fat.
This is an ingenious mechanism! Our bodies store fat like a little extra money is stored in a savings account.
When times are lean we can rely on this savings account to get us through.This fat is a great thing when we run out of food and need to rely on our fat stores for energy. In our hunter/gatherer days, this mechanism allowed us to survive winters, droughts, and times of food scarcity.
But in modern times, most people do not run out of food and these fat stores linger. Instead of having to rely on these fat stores, when our bodies signal that we are hungry, we only have to open the pantry, open the refrigerator, or stop by a fast food outlet for more food. When the body is constantly ingesting more food and especially simple carbohydrates that are readily converted to glucose, the call for insulin becomes constant which isn’t how the body was made to function.
The constant call for insulin causes a strain on the body and the insulin production and receptivity gets out of whack. Over time, this may culminate in the condition known as diabetes. Diabetes is a serious blood sugar control (dysregulation) condition that leads to all sorts of health issues and even death.(see What is Type 2 Diabetes? below for a full description) Before the full onset of diabetes, a condition known as prediabetes occurs. Prediabetes is an early indication of blood sugar dysregulation that is determined using laboratory tests such as fasting blood glucose and hemoglobin A1c. It is estimated that 7 out of 10 Americans have Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes! That means of your 10 closest friends, 7 of them are likely to develop Type 2 diabetes! Of the 20 kids in your child’s class,14 will develop Type 2 diabetes! This is insane. Especially because Type 2 diabetes is predominantly caused by poor nutrition, something that we can easily control. And what is the primary contributor to this condition? Sugar of course!
What is Type 2 Diabetes?
Type 2 diabetes is a condition in which your body’s insulin production has become out of balance. Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas and although its role in the body is not completely understood, two of its major functions are to regulate blood sugar and the storage of excess sugar as fat. The more sugar you eat, the more insulin your body needs. When the blood sugar levels exceed what the body can use, insulin triggers the body to store the excess as fat. Continually eating too much sugar taxes the insulin production mechanism and eventually the body just can’t keep up. Too much sugar can also make the cells less responsive to the insulin. Because Type 2 diabetes has become much more common, it may seem relatively benign, but it is a condition with serious health implications. It can lead to cardiovascular disease, nerve damage, kidney damage, eye and vision problems including blindness, and even gangrene and amputation. This is serious stuff.
Obesity is another serious health concern and is often linked to diabetes or prediabetes.The world is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2022,1 out of 8 people in the world are living with obesity! (What!!) The amount of overweight and obese children has been steadily climbing and in 2022, 160 million children between the ages of 5 and 19 years old are obese. Although it is not the sole cause, added sugar in our food is directly related to this epidemic.
This statistic about children makes me so sad. Children should be running and jumping and playing with boundless energy. Instead, they are overweight and sedentary. Food companies target children with their sugar laden products and it’s not because they want to provide nutrition to the children. Think of all the colorful candies and sugary cereal and cookies with all the cartoon characters, TV slogans, and propaganda aimed at children. Because we are bombarded with these marketing strategies and because added sugar has become the norm, parents don’t even realize the potential harm of all these “kid foods”.
How did we get to this critical point? How is it that sugar is added to almost all processed foods?
We need to go back to the late 1950’s to answer this. About that time, scientists became aware that the Mediterranean diet showed significant health benefits especially with cardiovascular disease. This diet gets most of its fat content from olive oil, an unsaturated fat. Because a connection was made between saturated fats and cardiovascular disease, people were urged to reduce their saturated fat intake. (The conclusions drawn from this study were later shown to be questionable.) Fat was subsequently removed from many foods and ”low fat” became a common household term.
So how does this relate to sugar you may ask? The sugar industry was represented by a group called the Sugar Research Foundation. This Foundation funded research to refute claims of a connection between sugar and heart disease. In addition, this Foundation saw an economic opportunity in decreased fat intake. They moved to replace the calories from the fat taken out of food with calories from sugar. Through these two acts, the sugar industry hijacked our food supply.
Fat is a flavor enhancer and makes you feel satiated, so removing the fat makes food less appealing and less filling. (Side note: not all fats are created equal and there are health implications from getting too much and the wrong kind of fat, but that is a conversation for another day.) Sugar is a taste enhancer as well, but instead of making you feel full like fat, it makes you crave more. So if your product is sugar and you want people to eat more, you put it in everything and anything you can, knowing they will come back for more.
The sugar industry and many food companies have taken advantage of our innate desire for sweetness and put sugar in just about everything. Food companies actually hire “craveability experts” to figure out how to make their food addictive. For most people, sugar is addictive. In fact, using brain scans, the US National Institute on Drug Abuse has determined that sugar creates changes in the brain similar to those produced by cocaine. While cocaine is a controlled substance in the US, sugar is added to countless foods and drinks.
Some of these foods are obvious sugar sources like candy, cookies, soda, and ice cream, but others are unexpected like pasta sauce, ketchup, and peanut butter to name just a few. We have gotten so used to added sugar in our food, that we don’t even notice anymore. Because sugar is such an ingrained part of our current food supply, it’s so easy to overdose.
How much is too much?
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends limiting added sugar to 6-9 teaspoons a day for adults and 3-6 teaspoons a day for children. However, food labels typically list added sugar in grams. Each teaspoon of sugar has a mass of approximately 4 grams. The Dietary Guidelines recommendation translates to limiting added sugar to 24-36 grams per day for adults and 12-24 grams per day for children.
Just one 12-ounce can of soda has more than double the adult recommended allowance of sugar for a day! Certain yogurts have more than the daily recommended allowance for children in one serving. Some fruit flavored yogurts contain 16 grams of added sugar in just 6 ounces of yogurt. Most of this is added sugar with only a small amount attributable to the fruit. What’s even worse is that many of these high sugar yogurts are marketed for children. Parents buy these yogurts for their children thinking they are giving them healthy food, but what they don’t know is the added sugar makes these yogurts a health detractor.
In a nutshell, Americans and many other westernized cultures are ingesting large amounts of sugar and all this extra sweetness is making us sick and unhealthy. Food companies profit from the addictive nature of sugar and prey on uninformed adults and especially children. So what can we do about it? How do we step off this hamster wheel?
Tune in next week for Part Three of my Sweet Diatribe about Sugar where I will discuss the different types of sugar, sugar’s many aliases, and ways to cut the sugar habit and regain control of your health.
One response to “Sweet Diatribe about Sugar …continued”
So much more information! Keep it coming and thank you.