I love sugar, but sugar does not love me. Sweet is the first taste we experience from our mother’s milk. We are hardwired to seek out the sweet taste. In nature, sweet taste is almost a guarantee that the food we are about to eat is safe. But we are not in nature anymore. Sweet is not safe anymore. Sugar is like salt – a little goes a long way, and too much kills.
The sweet foods we have created these days have 10 to 100 times more sugar in them than we would ever find in nature. I am not just talking about cakes, cookies, and candies. We put sugar in all kinds of foods that you would never think of associating with sugar. We have even engineered and hybridized our fruit and vegetables to contain many times the sugar levels that natural heirloom fruits and vegetables contained.
So what is wrong with sugar anyway? Isn’t it just quick energy? I thought our body runs on sugar… it is the energy molecule, right? We need sugar to survive, don’t we?
No, we don’t need sugar to survive. Our body is made of protein, fat, water, and minerals – not sugar. Our body has two energy-making pathways – one that burns fat and one that burns carbohydrates (sugar). We developed this dual energy system to enhance our survival. We can survive on just protein, fat, water, and minerals alone, but we can not survive long if any of these are missing. Carbohydrates are the bonus energy system. It is easier to make energy with carbs, but it’s also the one food we can survive without.
So, why all the whining about sugar? Mercola recently had a list of 76 Dangers of Sugar that tabulates what the whining is about (see the bottom of the article).
In my view there are three basic issues. One, our body was designed to handle a limited amount sugar entering our bloodstream at any one time. We vastly exceed that limit. Two, we are not designed to handle more than 15-20 grams of fruit sugar per day – max. We vastly exceed that limit also. And three, every bite of carbohydrate we eat means one bite of the foods we really need to survive we are not eating (so called empty calories.)
Excess is really the only issue with sugar toxicity. Now lets look at this from two angles. First, actual sugar – the real white or brown stuff, is half fructose. That means the most real sugar your liver can handle is about 8 teaspoons a day. More than that is toxic. One can of soda has 10 teaspoons of sugar in it (so where does that put your Big Gulp?) The average American consumes 3 times the tolerable limit of fructose every day. The extra fructose has the exact same effect on the liver as alcohol – creating a fatty liver and cirrhosis, not to mention obesity in general. This is where a chunk of those 76 dangers come from.
Second – The Big Lie: we pretend that eating starches is not the same as eating sugar! Excuse me, but starches all turn into and enter the bloodstream as sugar. It only takes a few minutes to break starches down into sugar. So you might think you are being healthy and good by not eating any sugar, when in fact you may be dumping tons of sugar into your system in the form of starches (carbohydrates). A groovy organic rice cake slams your blood stream faster and harder than eating spoonfuls of straight sugar. The only plus to starches is that you are not getting the fructose – just too much blood sugar.
Remember I said that one key is just how much sugar is entering the bloodstream at a time. Fiber slows down how fast sugar enters the blood. When only a little sugar enters the blood at a time, the body can handle it much better. That is one reason why foods high in fiber are better for you. The more the carbohydrates and simple sugars are bound up in envelopes of fiber (as they are in fresh vegetables and fruits), the more slowly and evenly the sugars are released into your blood.
So is all sugar bad? That depends on your personal genetic makeup. More than 8 teaspoons of “table sugar” per day is toxic for everyone, and everyone would benefit much more by getting their allotment of fructose in the “table sugar” as 2-3 pieces of fresh fruit per day instead of ¾ of a can of soda or from your Starbuck’s Light Frappuccino. But, some people can handle up to 70% of their daily calories as starch while others can really only handle 5%.
Most of us are somewhere in the middle between these extremes. Where are you? Well if you normally carry more than 20 extra pounds, or are diabetic or pre-diabetic, then you are towards the 5% end of things. If you can eat whatever you want and never gain a pound (and your blood sugar is good), then you are tilting toward the high carbs are ok end of things.
Everyone in-between these types needs to be conscious of moderating your carbohydrate consumption by focusing on complex carbs (that means vegetables, fruits, legumes, and low glycemic starches.) I am sorry, but 90% of us (possibly 100%) simply can not safely eat sugar-based foods. Candy, pastries, doughnuts, cakes, cookies, refined breads, muffins, mashed potatoes, cereals, almost anything made from flour, and so on are not safe foods for us as they are currently prepared.
But we love sweet. What are we to do? Who has the emotional discipline to stay away from all sweet foods other than 2-3 pieces of fruit a day? We have tried chemical “diet sweeteners” to solve this dilemma, but eventually we find they are all toxic and deadly.
For those of us without the iron will to eat only healthy foods, there are answers. Stevia leaf, Erythritol, and Lo Han fruit are three natural sweeteners that can meet our desire for sweet taste without killing our livers. And cooking with sources of high fiber can moderate how quickly the carbs turn into sugars and enter our bloodstream. We have to relearn how to cook without the toxic levels of sugar and greatly pump up the levels of fiber in our diets.
We can have our cake and eat it too, if we learn how to cook the cake a healthy way.