The sweet truth: All about sugar

GUEST COLUMN: Dr. N Prabhudev

Bengaluru, Dec. 23:

Sugar might be sweet, but don’t underestimate the power of glucose!
Hi sugar- I am your ex!
Sugar! No thanks! I am already sweet enough!
Don’t always trust what you see, even salt looks like sugar but is worse than that!
We all need sugar – it’s the basic building block of what runs our bodies – converted into energy and, in fact, it’s necessary,”! Brown sugar, white sugar, honey… they are all ultimately broken down into the same thing: glucose. All forms of sugar are carbohydrates that can be used as glucose.” All ‘types’ of sugar have the same effect on your body.
This is what people don’t understand: obesity is a symptom of poverty. It’s not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It’s because kids – and this is the problem with school lunch right now – are getting sugar, fat, empty calories – lots of calories – but no nutrition.
Eating sugar does not cause diabetes! Inadequate insulin to metabolize the sugar causes diabetes! it’s a complicated problem involving your pancreas and metabolism!
What is the ideal amount – 5% of your total calorie requirement or five tea spoons! We consume way too much added sugar. Adult men take in an average of 24 teaspoons of added sugar per day. That’s equal to 384 calories. So if you eat 2,500 calories a day, you should get no more than 250 of those from sugar! People who got 17% to 21% of their calories from added sugar had a 38% higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease compared with those who consumed 8% of their calories as added sugar.
Consuming too much added sugar can raise blood pressure and increase chronic inflammation, both of which are pathological highways to heart disease! The effects of added sugar intake — higher blood pressure, inflammation, weight gain, diabetes, and fatty liver disease — are all linked to an increased risk for heart attack and stroke”!
Sugar is as addictive as cocaine! Ideally, this consumption should be at around 5% or five tea spoons. Addiction is a strong word not typically applied to sugar, but it can be very close. Sugar looks harmless! But it is killing us slowly but surely!
Obesity epidemic was called “survival of the fattest.” Sugar is one of The Most Evil Molecules! Eating sugar releases opioids and dopamine in our bodies. This is the link between added sugar and addictive behavior. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is a key part of the “reward circuit” associated with addictive behavior.
Sugar comes in the form of different molecules — as fructose, glucose, sucrose, and lactose — all composed of carbon and hydrogen atoms- hence the name carbohydrate. These molecules occur naturally in fruits, some vegetables, sugarcane etc. and dairy products. Your body uses these sugars for energy.
But “added sugars” are the ones we worry about most. These are the sweeteners – most often called sucrose, fructose, and high-fructose added to foods and drinks to make them more toothsome, extend their shelf life, or give them a certain texture. They are also used by the body for energy, like the sugars from fruit, but unlike fruit, which has essential nutrients. And though fruit can be really sweet, it tends to be absorbed into the blood slowly because of its fiber, while soda and candy are metabolized quickly, spiking blood sugar levels.
Sugar is the dietary villain of our body. First it was too many calories. Then it was too much fat. Now there’s a full scale war on sugar, our latest dietary enemy is sugar! We should view the sugar as toxic — in the same league as cigarettes and alcohol. We should call it an addictive drug and regulate it as such.
Sugar is in so many of the foods we eat. It’s loaded into our juice, our BBQ sauce and salad dressing -75% – Some three-quarters of packaged foods and drinks! Most of us could stand to eat less sugar.
Addition of sugar to our food along with salt and fat is a key strategy of food companies to engineer their products for maximum “bliss” and get us hooked. During World War II … Coke made a deal with the Army to provide Coke to any soldier anywhere in the world at a throwaway price, and they got the Army to support that. This means the Army did all the transportation and helped build bottling plants.” By the end of the war, a global infrastructure was in place to deliver Coke all over the world!
There’s a mountain of research on all the ways a sugar-heavy diet can harm our health. Increased risks of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, tooth decay, and heart disease are just some of the most well-established examples. Sugar increases triglycerides in the blood, which may also help harden the arteries and thicken artery walls — driving up the risk of stroke, heart attack, and heart disease.
Not everyone has the same response to sugar. There’s strong evidence that people have unique blood glucose responses to identical meals! There is a subset of the population that does a great job breaking down sugars without bearing the deleterious health consequences. Remember, not everyone who smokes get lung cancer!
Artificial sweeteners may trigger the body’s responses to real sugar — for instance, aspartame in diet soda — is not as benign as they seem. Fake sweeteners affect the brain in weird ways. These sweeteners affect our gut flora — the bacteria in our digestive tracts that help with metabolism and many other critical bodily functions. Emerging evidence —the chemicals in artificial sweeteners cause disturbances in the gut flora associated with like diabetes and obesity.