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What Sugar Problem? People keep harping about how hideous sugar is for your health. Can it really be as bad as they say? Experience Life, July/August 2003 © by Gary Legwold A lot of people need to lighten up about sugar. This is sugar, for Pete's sake, the pure white stuff you put on cereal, the ingredient in Grandma's cookies. In a nutrition world full of harmful fad diets, food additives, fats, fats, and more fats, surely people can pick on something other than sweets. Right? Just the other day, I'm savoring my scone at the coffee shop and reading about Sugar Blues, by William Dufty. This guy is still getting ink about his 28-year-old book. I had read it years ago but was put off when, on the second page, he calls sugar "poison." Poison! Webster's defines poison as "a substance that through its chemical action usu. kills, injures, or impairs an organism." Sugar a poison? C'mon. ‘Sugar Blues' So I pick up Dufty's book and another, The New Sugar Busters!: Cut Sugar to Trim Fat, by H. Leighton Steward; Morrison C. Bethea, MD; Sam S. Andrews, MD; and Luis A. Balart, MD. Whew! You start reading these books—and there are lots of them—and you get sucked into some serious sugar slamming that spills over to hundreds of articles and Web sites and whatnot. Geez, these folks make it sound like this is Drano we are sprinkling on our corn flakes. One Web site is titled "78 Ways Sugar Can Ruin Your Health" (http://www.mercola.com/article/sugar/dangers_of_sugar.htm). Nancy Appleton, Ph.D., author of Lick The Sugar Habit, compiled the list and its supporting bibliography. I'll spare you the list, but this is just one example of scads of sites, all blasting sugar. So now I'm thinking either these people are all hardcore hypoglycemics in need of a Krispy Kreme, or maybe they're onto something. Even if they are off the mark with, say, 70 ways sugar can be ruinous, that still leaves the eight that may bring me down. I revisit Sugar Blues. Much of the book is Dufty seeing history through sugar-or-not eyes. He takes us back in time to when sugar was all but absent from the diet. He explains how sugar negatively affected armies and nations as they were seduced by sweetness. He labors to link sugar to slavery; heroin, tobacco, and alcohol addiction; papal oppression; the Crusades; the Plague; depression, schizophrenia; masturbation—he's all over the block. It makes for fascinating—and disturbing—reading, especially when Dufty throws in anecdotes like this one. In 1793, a ship carrying a cargo of sugar wrecked. The five surviving sailors were rescued after being marooned for nine days. They were in a wasted condition, having survived on rum and sugar. The incident led to a French physiologist's experiment that forced dogs to eat sugar or olive oil and water. All the dogs died. "As a steady diet," Dufty writes, "sugar is worse than nothing. Plain water can keep you alive for quite some time. Sugar and water can kill you." Linking sugar and diabetes, Dufty asks why Hippocrates, with his keen powers of observation, did not describe diabetes. Because sugar was not in the diet and diabetes was nearly nonexistent. Diabetes got on the board big time, however, once we started eating sugar. In 1880, the average Danish citizen downed 29-plus pounds of sugar a year (there's a reason a Danish is called a Danish). At the time, the recorded death rate from diabetes was 1.8 per 100,000. By 1934, the per capita sugar consumption had jumped to about 113, and the recorded death rate from diabetes was 18.9 per 100,000. Sugar busting I put down Sugar Blues. I've got a sugar low. I'm tempted to dismiss Dufty. I mean, who is he? He's not a Ph.D or MD. He may be just another "nutrinazi" who knows his history. I check out the dust cover on The New Sugar Busters!, a 2003 book. The authors are three MDs and a CEO. Let's see what the old-guard types say about sugar. To make a moderately long book short, these guys hate sugar. They state that obesity, which is strongly associated with diabetes and heart disease, will soon be our number-one killer. Between 1958 and 1998, diabetes in America rose 600 percent and by 2015, it will increase another 150 percent worldwide. These sugar busters want us to eat less sugar and more high-fiber carbohydrates. They cite a Harvard Nurses Heath Study that found that people eating this type of diet had a 250 percent less risk of contracting diabetes. While others blame fat intake for the rise in obesity, the sugar busters blame sugar. In the last 30 years fat consumption has dropped about 16 percent, yet the incidence of obesity has almost doubled. Why?
When denial is high, understanding is low. So, despite all the above, I still don't quite get the connection between sugar and obesity. As it turns out, the missing piece is insulin. According to the sugar busters, "Today's sugary, highly processed foods cause a rapid rise in blood sugar, which immediately creates a big demand for the hormone insulin. Insulin is required to regulate the blood sugar level in your body. It does this by signaling the cells to be receptive to the storage of fats circulating in the blood. … Accordingly, if you consume foods that do not create this big need for insulin, you don't put the body in a fat storage mode." Too much insulin promotes storage of fat and inhibits breakdown of previously stored fat, say the sugar busters. It also causes cardiac enlargement, elevation of cholesterol levels, and possibly the deposition of plaque in our coronary arteries. A complicating factor is many people—perhaps 50 percent of us—are genetically predisposed to insulin resistance. That is, after being bombarded over the course of years with a high-sugar, high-glycemic diet (see sidebar), insulin-resistant cells lose their sensitivity to insulin. This prompts the pancreas to pump out more and more insulin, which promotes weight gain, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. Sugar ban? The sugar busters say the solution to obesity and its sidekick diseases is (gulp) eating no sugar and other high-glycemic carbohydrates that cause an "insulin intense secretion. You must virtually eliminate white potatoes, white rice, bread from highly refined flour, corn products, beets, and of course all refined sugars, such as sucrose (table sugar) corn syrup, molasses, and honey. Also, sugared soft drinks and beer are not allowed." Whoa! Even if I wanted to swear off sugar—and I do after all this—my job is not easy. Sugar of some sort (see sidebar) is in nearly every bottle or food box; it's even in toothpaste—and sugar is known to promote tooth decay! I can consider substitutes, but experts say the only good, low-glycemic natural substitutes are stevia and agave, which are not exactly hogging shelf space at most Piggly Wiggly stores. For non-diabetic types, honey and pure maple syrup can be fine. Fructose in fruits can also be fine; the amount is small and balanced with healthy vitamins, minerals, and fiber. But don't be fooled by high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which is common in foods. Susan M. Kleiner, Ph.D., R.D., writes in Men's Health that HFCS is "making America fat…. It's more easily turned into fat than any other carbohydrate." Citing the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Kleiner says American HFCS consumption in 1970 was about one-half pound per person per year. By 1997, that figure jumped to 62.5, primarily because we chug-a-lug more super-sized bottles of sodas. This means more calories and less insulin release. Fructose, unlike other sugars, has less of a stimulating effect on insulin than other sugars. With less insulin stimulation, there is also less stimulation of the hormone leptin. Leptin, says Kleiner, helps regulate storage of body fat and helps increase metabolism when needed to keep body weight in check. The bottom line, writes Kleiner, is "Without insulin and leptin, your appetite has no shutoff mechanism." Her advice is to avoid buying foods with 8 or more grams of sugar on the label when HFCS is high on the list of ingredients. Lighten up OK, here's what I'm going to do about sugar. Dropping sugar seems overwhelming, at least cold turkey. I did it once before, years ago when I was having digestion problems. After two weeks of withdrawal, I was amazed that I didn't miss sugar. My mood and energy levels were more even, and I slept better. I appreciated proteins more—especially in mornings, which were typically high times around the sugar bowl—because they sustained me long-term, as opposed to getting goosed momentarily by carbo creations. I was less governed by cravings. I was less susceptible to colds and flu. When something sugary did pass my lips, it was too much and I didn't finish the serving. I realized sugar blocked other flavors in the food, which were pretty good in their own right. But, alas, I had a slip along the way. Hey, sugar is sweet, and sometimes sweet is so good. The slip led to another and then another and another. So I'm looking at the labels of two cans of tomato soup. I love tomato soup, but I know it contains sugar. One can is Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup with 12 grams of sugar. The second ingredient named is high fructose corn syrup. The other can is Amy's Organic Soups Cream of Tomato with 11 grams of organic sugar. I choose Amy's. Less sugar and no high fructose corn syrup. It's a start. -OSE (sidebar) You may think you do a low-sugar diet, only to discover you're eating sugar by another name. Well, the food industry can prey upon your ignorance no longer. Below is a list of sugars. Keep in mind the USDA recommends limiting added sugars—from packaged foods and the sugar bowl—to 24 grams daily if you eat 1,600 calories; 40 grams for a 2,000-calorie diet; 56 grams for a 2,400-calorie diet; and 72 grams for a 2,800-calorie diet. Don't worry about the natural sugars from fruit and milk.
Glycemic Index (sidebar) The Glycemic Index is a useful tool that tells how rapidly a carbohydrate is digested into glucose and how much it causes the blood glucose level to rise. The numbers next to foods below are relative to the "gold standard" of glucose, with a GI value of 100. High numbers mean the food is digested faster than low-number foods and more insulin is released in order to bring your blood sugar back to normal. Obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are linked to high-GI foods. Experts point to the Pima Indians in the southwestern US who have the highest incidence of diabetes in the world. This was not the case when they ate the traditional small-kernel, fibrous ears of corn. This corn has a lower GI value than the large-kernel, higher-GI, hybridized corn the Pimas now eat. When the Pimas switched to the large-kernel from the traditional small-kernel corn, the rate of diabetes among the Pimas zoomed to 50 percent.
© Copyright 2004 Gary Legwold and Conrad Henry Press. All rights reserved. |
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