Sugar Free Diet: Overdoing Dietary Sugar is
No Sweet Deal for Your Body
|
Sugar Free Diet - Is It Possible?
When you read food labels, look for these terms in the
ingredients. If one appears among the first two or three ingredients, you’ve got
a sugar bomb in your hands. And if there is more than one listed, chances are
high that the overall sugar content is high: Brown sugar, Corn sweetener, Corn
syrup, Dextrose, Fructose, Fruit juice concentrate, Glucose, High-fructose corn
syrup, Honey, Invert sugar, Lactose, Maltose, Molasses, Raw sugar, Sucrose,
Syrup
|
Cast your eyes
along almost any grocery store shelf. It sometimes seems as if there’s a low-fat
or fat-free version of nearly every commercial food product. But what about a sugar free diet?
Nutritional
research studies show we just eat these foods up. Years of concerted effort to
educate consumers about the relationship between a high fat diet and heart
disease really made the low-fat mantra part of the consumer consciousness.
Indeed, the
percentage of fat in the average American’s diet has actually declined over the
last 20 years, so why are Americans themselves still getting fatter and fatter?
Probably
because fat isn’t the only villain in the obesity epidemic. While
high-cholesterol dietary fats are definitely a chief contributor to the problems
of heart disease, when we talk about the rapid increase in the rates of obesity
and diabetes, the fat isn’t where it’s at.
No, more than
likely, it’s the sugar. Research shows that while we so painstakingly avoided
fats, Americans’ consumption of sugar has increased by 30 percent over the last
couple decades. The average American adult eats nearly 200 pounds of sugar a
year!
But it’s not
just the obvious offenders like candy, snacks and soda. Even things we think of
as good for us are full of sugar: juice and sport drinks, breakfast cereals,
baked goods.
Canned fruits
and vegetables are often full of added sugar, even those we don’t tend to think
of as “sweet.” Pick up almost any canned tomato product; sugar is likely to be
listed second or third among the ingredients.
The USDA recommends that we eat
no more than 10 teaspoons of added sugars a day, but many foods provide that
maximum in just one serving!
A cup of regular fruit yogurt provides 70
percent of a day's worth of added sugar; a 12-ounce Pepsi provides 103 percent,
and a Hostess Lemon Fruit Pie provides 115 percent.
So what is sugar,
exactly? Physiologically speaking, sugar is the most basic source of fuel for
our bodies. All our foods can eventually be broken down into molecular sugars,
and indeed, they must be, in order for us to convert them to energy.
The complex
processes of digestion and metabolism do that job. Carbohydrates are easiest for
the body to convert, followed by proteins and dietary fats. But the highly
processed sugar in most commercial foods is already close to the pure form our
digestion process is supposed to produce.
That makes it
much more quickly absorbed, which will cause a spike in the blood sugar. That,
in turn, causes a spike in the production of insulin, the hormone that processes
normal blood sugars into cellular energy.
All that extra
insulin gets to work cramming sugar into our cells for storage, but because it’s
already so processed, the job doesn’t take as long as it should, and the insulin
overdrive then causes a sudden drop in blood sugars.
We may not
know the cause, but most of us recognize the symptoms of that drop: feeling
irritable, tired, headachy, dizzy and hungry. And what do we do to feel better?
We eat! And given our typical diets, that usually means eating more
sugar!
Foods that
make the body work harder to digest them have a different, less dramatic effect
in the body. Proteins and complex carbohydrates take longer to break down and
metabolize, and don’t produce those jarring fluctuations in the blood sugar.
If your snack
or meal doesn’t have some of these for your body to work on, you’re about five
minutes from your sugar high, and just an hour or two from your crash.
Yet the
discomfort of that rollercoaster isn’t the real problem with a diet high in
processed carbs and sugar. Nutritionally speaking, these are mostly low-value,
even empty calories. Yet the more we eat of these foods, the more we tend to
want, even crave them.
And over time,
all that highly processed sugar changes how our bodies function, raising our
insulin production to help handle the sugar load, and slowing the metabolic
process in general, so that our bodies turn more and more of it into—you guessed
it—fat.
Those
metabolic changes have even more serious consequences. Left unchecked, that
spike-and-crash cycle evolves into conditions like insulin resistance and the
metabolic syndrome, precursors for diabetes. Not surprisingly, diabetes rates in
this country are skyrocketing right along with the rates of obesity.
Further, the
more we eat of the processed foods that are taking us on that rocket ride, the
less room we leave for the whole grains, fresh vegetables and protein-rich foods
our bodies really need to help us stay healthy and grounded.
According to
USDA data, people who eat diets high in sugar get less calcium, fiber, folate,
vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, zinc, magnesium, iron, and other nutrients.
They also consume fewer fruits and vegetables.
Sadly, a lot
of people think more about the quality of the fuel they put in their cars than
the quality of fuel they provide their bodies. Complex, high-powered machines
need premium grade—the good stuff—not just whatever’s cheap and easy at the
local gas-n-go mart.
To Place Your Order Click Here
Related Links:
Diet Food Delivery
Diet Food Delivery Chicago
Diet Food Delivery Program
Weight Gain During Menopause
Diabetic Diet Delivery
Diet Food Delivery