By Sienna Balmet, read part 1: The truth about sugar – How bad is it really?

If you read my previous post on the truth about sugar, you now understand that the regular sugar cane people buy in stores is not natural. In addition, it is addicting and has many negative effects on the health of a person’s body. Even though the fact that sugar is not healthy is relatively well know, the truth of how harmful sugar truly is for people is rarely taken into consideration.

In his book Sugar Blues, Dufty comments that sugar is needed by people as much as they need the nicotine in Tobacco (180). Wow…that is quite the example. Unfortunately, finding any processed food without sugar is nearly impossible. Check out food labels at the grocery store this week and you will see what I mean.

Nevertheless, people do not only regularly purchase these sugary foods, but also habitually insert additional sugar to their drinks and food as well. Even infant formulas are hard to find without as much sugar as a can of Coca-Cola! If parents feed their babies formula, this much sugar does metabolic damage to a child from their first day of life (Mercola). I do not think any parent would want to do that to their babies.

Getting babies hooked on a substance that is huge in the development of multiple diseases is horrifying. A New Jersey Dentist, Dr. Robert Boesler adds that, “Modern manufacturing of sugar has brought about entirely new diseases. The sugar of commerce is nothing else but concentrated crystallized acid.”

People must come to understand the role sugar plays in acquiring diseases as well as other health problems, so they can re-evaluate eating so much of it.

Sugar Induced Illnesses & Diseases

Obesity is often a result of frequent sugar consumption.

Foods with high glycemic index levels tend to increase our hunger making us want to eat more high GI foods. People then consume too many calories which get stored as fat. A study done in Nutrition Reviews for June 2000 proved that individuals eating a low GI diet stayed full for longer, and over several hours consumed less calories than the subjects eating high GI diets. Also, elevated blood sugar activates the release of insulin which furthers the storage of calories as fat.

The article Diet, Glycemic Index, and the Food Pyramid written in Havard Womens Health Watch, which gets it’s facts directly from over 8,000 researchers and doctors from Harvard Medical School, states,

“Because high-GI foods – such as processed cereals, potatoes, and white bread – are easily digested, they tend not to “stick” with you. These foods cause a rapid elevation in blood sugar; then, after a couple of hours, the blood glucose falls, resulting in a yen for more food.”

So, the more sugary foods a person eats the more they will crave! Ouch! 🙁

An article in Prevention Magazine discusses the fact that Type 2 diabetes is preventable. In 2005-2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pronounced 34.3% of all adults over 19 years old in the United States of America obese, and in 2007-2008, 16.9% of all children, 2-19 years old, in the U.S. obese. This percentage does not even include the amount of overweight Americans {it simply takes into account those that are technically “obese”}.

Sugar Consumption Leads to Obesity

With the number of obese individuals rising, people must investigate how their eating habits may be contributing to the risk of obesity. Evidence makes clearly indicates that sugar consumption leads to obesity, which is a problem since obesity is a primary contributor to the cause of many other diseases.

Diabetes can also be a result of sugar consumption.

Type 2 diabetes occurs when cells become resistant to insulin and sugar consumption triggers the release of insulin. According to the Nurse’s Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study,

“Eating large amounts of carbohydrates with high GI values is associated with an increased risk for adult onset diabetes…”

This may be because after the pancreas has been required to churn out extra insulin to accommodate the extra sugar in the blood stream, the body may eventually become insulin resistant. According to the American Diabetes Association, there are millions of Americans suffering with the consequences of Type 2 diabetes and millions of others unaware that they have it. Also, research done has shown that,

“In 1893, there were fewer than three cases of diabetes per 100,000 people in the United States. Today, diabetes strikes almost 8,000 out of every 100,000 people [in the US]” (Mercola).

Diabetes is a disease that people should strive to prevent, instead of treating it as insignificant and continuing to consume sugar as a regular part of their diet.

Reducing sugar in a person’s diet can help prevent heart disease.

Fructose, another form of sugar, enhances uric acid (Mercola). Uric acid refers to how much acid is present in an individual’s urine. Increase in uric acid leads to inflammation. Moreover, heart attacks and strokes can be triggered by inflamed blood vessels (Mercola).

A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Nurse’s Health Study illustrates that participants with the highest diet of simple carbohydrates and other foods containing sugar had twice the risk of heart disease than participants with the lowest diet of sugar. TWICE the risk!

This strong link between sugar consumption and heart disease is astounding. Even more shocking is the fact that people ignore this evidence or just remain naïve about the contributing factors that lead to extremely dangerous diseases such as heart disease and continue to down sugar by the pound.

Elimination of sugar from a person’s diet has been known to treat the symptoms of illnesses such as heart disease (Dufty 139). Sadly, when people generally go to see a doctor for poor health, the person’s diet is not inquired about or sought to be changed (Dufty 21). Rather than just taking any drugs the doctor prescribes, people should be proactive in finding out what in their diet might be aiding the development of an illness. The heart is one of the most important organs of the human body; therefore, great measures should be taken to protect it-including the limiting of sugar intake.

Intake of sugar is a chief cause of oral disease.

In, “The role of diet and nutrition in the etiology and prevention of oral diseases”, Paula Moynihan, a registered public health nutritionist and state registered dietician, writes that, “Dental caries occur because of demineralization of enamel and dentine plaque by organic acids formed by bacteria in dental plaque through the anaerobic metabolism of dietary sugars” (695). In other words, sugar rots teeth.

Food is a favorite part of many people’s day. We have all had days where we are particularly excited about something that’s in the oven or crockpot, or at least I do. 😉 Well, teeth are what allow people to eat the food they love so much. Nonetheless, little time is spent in the prevention of cavities and other oral diseases.

Sure, people brush their teeth and occasionally even floss, but people rarely consider the effect their food and drink have on their teeth. The number of cavities people normally experience is outrageous. The fact that at 18, I had my first cavity is unusual.

Moynihan asserts that people who regularly consume high amounts of sugar have a much higher amount of cavities than people who consume relatively low amounts of sugar regularly (695). A study conducted showed that the availability of sugar accounted for 52% of the variation in levels of dental caries.

If sugar intake is less than 18kg per person per year, the amount of cavities is low. The lack of sugar availability during World War II was followed by a reduction in dental caries, but was increased when sugar was made accessible again (Moynihan 695). Therefore, the fact that sugar is harmful for teeth is evident. If people want to protect their teeth and remain capable of eating food they enjoy, sugar must be strictly rationed.

Taking Steps Towards Healthy Eating

I know all of this can sound scary and perhaps overwhelming – but we write about the dangers of sugars to help inform you and to help your family make better choices.

We also write this to help our own families stay on track! It’s so easy with our modern diet to allow sugar to creep back in from time to time. But all I have to do is look back on research like this to remember why we have such a strong commitment to cutting out sugar – in all forms.

But of course – there is always grace involved with eating healthy! While I know it’s important to my family and I to eat healthy and make my home from scratch – I also know that God is sovereign and sometimes our plans just don’t look the way we expect – and that includes things like illnesses that are out of our control!

Read more about the truth about sugar – how bad is it really? And later in the series we will discuss some great sugar alternatives and yummy sugar-free desserts!