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"According to Laurel's Kitchen, "the average consumption of sugar in this country is 100 pounds per person per year and 15 pounds of corn syrup -- about 500 calories of sugar per person every day. You may not think you eat this amount -- but do you know that aside from the obvious desserts, soft drinks, and sugar-coated breakfast cereals, sugar is also added to canned and frozen vegetables, soups, mayonnaise, peanut butter, baby foods, flavored yogurt, and many other products? Under the current labeling laws, added sugar does not even have to be listed on the labels of many foods because their legal definition includes the extra sweetener. Yet some physicians are claiming that sugar should be listed on the labels of all such foods, not simply as another ingredient, but as a potentially dangerous additive."
Sugar is refined from plant material (beets or sugar cane) so that 100 percent of all nutritional value is removed. Not only does it have zero nutrients (only "empty calories"), but when sugar is consumed, it actually robs nutrients from the body, particularly from the teeth and bones. Sugar also is harmful to the stomach lining and can interfere with digestion of nutrients from other food. Sugar consumption requires the body to need more nutrients than would otherwise be needed without consuming sugar, therefore it has been classified by some as an "anti-nutrient." Sugar is addictive like a drug, can cause drastic mood swings like a drug (from hyperactivity to depression) and has withdrawal symptoms like a drug. And the common combination of sugar and starch leads to a fermentation in the digestive process that breaks down to alcohol (a drug) and other toxins. Considering all its adverse effects on human health, and the fact that refined sugar has zero nutrients, it becomes difficult to defend the common perception of sugar as a food rather than a poison or an addictive drug. Because sugar is added to the vast majority of all processed foods, this becomes a health problem for people of all ages, but children are the one group with the reputation for being addicted and affected by it most severely. Dental decay, obesity, hyperactivity and diminished immune systems that lead to frequent colds, flu symptoms, earaches and infections, sore throats and worse, are the modern-day plagues of children who eat lots of sugary processed foods. The average American consumes a third of a pound of sugar per day, according to Frances Moore Lappé in Diet for a Small Planet. The main reason American sugar consumption continues to increase over the decades is that we are eating more processed foods with sugar added. Many breakfast cereals are about half sugar. Colas have up to 11 teaspoons of sugar and about 25 percent of America's total sugar consumption comes in the form of colas." Sugar: Leaving a Legacy of Dental Decay, Obesity, and Dysfunctional Immune Systems for our Children by Michael Dye"
In Sugar Blues, the classic documentary on sugar, Dufty explains how our emotional state is affected by sugar intake: "The brain is probably the most sensitive organ in the body. The difference between feeling up or down, sane or insane, calm or freaked out, inspired or depressed, depends in large measure upon what we put into our mouth. For maximum efficiency of the whole body -- of which the brain is merely a part -- the amount of glucose in the blood must balance with the amount of blood oxygen." He then quotes Dr. E.M. Abrahamson and A.W. Pezet from Body, Mind and Sugar as further explaining, "… When we take in refined sugar (sucrose), it is the next thing to being glucose in our bodies. The sucrose passes directly to the intestines, where it becomes 'predigested' glucose. This in turn is absorbed into the blood where the glucose level has already been established in precise balance with oxygen. The glucose level in the blood is thus drastically increased. Balance is destroyed. The body is in crisis." Dufty adds that for someone who has gone very long without eating sugar, the physical signs become very apparent when you have eaten a restaurant meal containing sugar: "… taste is not always infallible. However, if you get sleepy after such a meal, you can be sure something had sugar or honey in it." Sugar: Leaving a Legacy of Dental Decay, Obesity, and Dysfunctional Immune Systems for our Children by Michael Dye"
Sugar Busters!: Cut Sugar to Trim Fat, by H. Leighton Steward (editor), Morrison C. Bethea, MD, Sam S. Andrews, MD, and Luis A. Balart, MD. Sugar is America's most widely consumed drug, with Americans consuming an average of around 150 pounds of sugar per person each year. This book suggests lowering (but not necessarily eliminating) sugar consumption in order to lose weight and improve your health. It goes beyond simply advocating reducing sugar consumption to advocate a diet designed to minimize the body's insulin production. Published in 1998. Reviewed by Amazon.com.
Why not try giving up sugar for awhile and see if you feel better?
Note: I recognize that sugar (as well as dietary fat) is quite popular because it provides enjoyment and pleasure. I'm definitely in favor of enjoyment and pleasure (within reasonable boundaries). But I want to let people know about the health costs of dietary sugar and fat and let them know about healthy pleasures as well. Then everyone can decide for themselves how much of what type of pleasure they want to enjoy or indulge in (being aware of both the joy and the cost of different types of pleasure).
Eating is also sometimes used as a form of stress control. Exercise and stretching are just two of many alternative ways to relieve stress.
"If you go back to Guyton’s medical textbook on physiology, if you go back and look at Wilson and Foster, you saw those charts in the book, we have that Wilson and Foster diagram [page 16] and they tell you exactly what’s happening when you consume something that turns into glucose rapidly, a big shot of insulin comes in, da da-da da-da. And then Dr. Guyton tells you that it is mainly the sugar you consume that turns to body fat as opposed to the fat that you consume. But that is not what we have been told for the last 25 years here in the United States." Shugar Busters:
Glycemic Index
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