Why Sugar is Not So Sweet

I can't believe I haven't written about this yet.  Sugar is my "pet subject" at the moment.  I'm constantly talking about how horrendous it is.  So I thought it was time I wrote something here.

Sugar has only been widely consumed in this country since the 19th century.  Before that, we would mainly have sweetened foods with honey.  Only the very rich would have been able to afford sugar and its price would have meant that it was eaten in moderation.

Over the last few decades, sugar consumption has risen drastically.  Sugary snacks - chocolate bars, biscuits, cakes, sweets and fizzy pop and available in most shops (even those not selling other food) and often positioned right by the till.  We are sold it at cinemas.  We watch it being advertised on TV,  We even herald the Christmas season by a certain fizzy drink ad appearing on our screens.  Sugar is firmly in our culture.

Now, let me talk about sugar.  It either comes from sugar cane or sugar beet, but we're not eating a vegetable when we consume it.  The sugar crystals we eat are a highly processed substance. And therefore they are a lot stronger than what we would every consume directly from nature.

And that is where the problem starts.  By consuming such a strongly sweet product, many of us get a "hit" as the sugar releases neurotransmitters in our brains.  Unfortunately when we eat some more, our brains have re-regulated their neurotransmitter release and the hit is much lower.  This leads sugar to be one of the most addictive substances around as people crave that original surge of pleasure.

If you disagree with that last statement, try giving up sugar completely.  And if you are one of the lucky people in today's society who don't have an addictive personality, try asking your friends to give up sugar and see what their reaction is.

I've heard it said that sugar wouldn't be legal if it was discovered today, but it's very difficult to make a decision against a substance when many of the decision makers will be addicted to it.

Addiction is a complex issue and not one I'm going to tackle here.

However, I am going to talk about the negative effects sugar has on our body.

Let's start with teeth.  I remember as a child going to the dentist and seeing wrappers from chocolate and sweets and cans from fizzy drinks pinned up on a notice board along with clear bags containing the amount of sugar they contained.  It was quite shocking.  I also distinctly remember a poem by Pam Ayres tell the foolish what would happen if they didn't look after their teeth.  Both stuck wth me.

Sugar will rot your teeth.  Since more or less giving up sugar, my teeth are the most healthy they've ever been.  My dentist is amazed and even he, when I tell him my lack of sugar, stares at me with disbelief and admits he couldn't do without it.  Strangely, the bags of sugar are no longer pinned to the notice board.

Then there is the effect sugar has when you eat it.  We like it because it gives us a "hit".  If we're tired, we may eat a biscuit or a chocolate bar to give us some more energy.  But this is a short term hit and if we use sugar in this way, we are likely to be stuck with a slump fairly soon afterwards.  Either that, or we have to continue to eat sugary snacks.

The pancreas is designed to regulate our blood sugar levels by releasing insulin.  This works fine if we consume just a little amount of sugar, but when we over consume it, more pressure is put on the pancreas which eventually wears out and leads to type-2 diabetes.  

There are many different types of sugars.  Glucose is the type of sugar our bodies use.  When we eat healthy carbohydrates, eg starchy vegetables, the body breaks them down into glucose and this is used directly by our organs.   However refined sugar has a high fructose content and this cannot be used in the same way.   Instead, it gets broken down by the liver.  If we are just consuming a small amount, say in fruit, for example, our livers cope fine.  But if we are consuming the sorts of amounts found in fizzy drinks and sugary snacks, then our livers can become overwhelmed.

This process in the liver produces higher amounts of uric acid.  This puts more pressure on the kidneys and can raise blood pressure.

Fructose doesn't trigger insulin in the same way as glucose, so our bodies don't register when we are full up.  That and the inefficient way it metabolises, leads it to be converted and stored as fat in the body.  Refined sugar is the fastest way to put on weight.

And on top of this, refined sugar contains no useful nutrition.  All the vitamins, minerals, enzymes, proteins and fats have been stripped out.  So when we consume it, we are eating empty calories. Then in order to metabolise it, the body has to take certain nutrients from our cells.  In this way, it strips the body of nutrients rather than putting them in.   Unless, you are in the middle of a famine with nothing else to eat, there is no good reason to consume refined sugar.

So before you reach for that next slice of cake, consider what you're doing to your body.

New Eating Programme

Well, I'm 4 weeks into the new eating programme I blogged about in my last entry - inspired by the fantastic book "Potatoes Not Prozac" by Kathleen Desmaisons. Incidentally she also has a website which provides an overview of the programme and forums where people can send questions or just post their thoughts. I've found it really supportive to read about other people who have gone through similar stuff to me.

So, back to my progress. Well it started really well. The first step is to adjust your breakfast, or for those who skip this vital meal of the day, have one. As I have always eaten breakfast regularly, this was a fairly easy first step for me, although I know my friend has spent a bit more time on this stage. The second step, writing a food journal, also seemed fairly easy. So after 2 1/2 weeks, I was feeling fairly upbeat about moving onto step 3.

This is where by problems started. Step 3 requires you to eat 3 meals a day with protein at each meal (there's a bit more to it, but that's the basics, for the purpose of this blog). Well, I don't always eat 3 meals a day, so obviously I've been a bit up and down since then. It's amazing how such a simple adjustment can bring up so many "food issues". But unlike "wobbly moments" before, this time I feel I have the tools to recover and I have indeed rebalanced myself quicker than I would normally have done.

So while my initial naivety that it would all be easy and really quick has been scuppered again, I am still feeling really positive that this is the eating programme for me.

More later...

Are we getting enough nutrients?

An interesting question? I expect a lot of us who eat 3 home cooked meals a day consider that our diets are healthy and provide the right balance of nutrients for our needs.

I've recently been given a book by my friend Liz, called "Potatoes Not Prozac" by Kathleen Desmaisons, which addresses sugar sensitivity. What's this you may ask - I did. It's the name given for a certain body chemistry which leads us to crave sweet foods. Sugar sensitive people are the ones who have an emotional response to the idea of eating chocolate or cake - you'll have an idea if this is you or not.

Anyway, the idea of the book is to manage this through diet. I can't comment fully on this yet because I'm only halfway through the book, but it partially involves getting enough protein, which is what I would like to talk about.

Having had no real idea whether I was ever getting the "right" amount of nutrients in my diet, I decided to look into this by reading my labels and surfing the web. And to my surprise I noticed that a lot of foods had much lower protein amounts that I would have guessed. In fact so low, that I was confused as to how I was going to get enough protein into my diet to fulfil the requirements of the book's process.

This was until I was discussing the problem with Liz and she was quoting much higher protein values for eggs than I'd researched. On further discussion, I realised that Liz was quoting values for organic eggs and I was quoting values for standard eggs. Standard eggs were listed as 6g protein per egg and the organic eggs were listed as 12g protein per egg.

That's quite a difference when you think that a couple of eggs for breakfast seems fairly normal, but if you had to eat double that because you were only getting half the protein, you'd probably feel you were overeating.

I decided to look into this further on my weekly shop today. The normal Feta cheese is rated as 6g protein per 100g but organic Feta cheese as 16g protein per 100g; an even bigger difference.

This has made me wonder how many people who feel they cannot afford organic are deficient in nutrients and whether, in fact, buying the cheaper food is actually a false economy.