Few are going to disagree that sugar is bad for our health. Apart from being high-glycemic and favoring weight gain, another problem with sugar is that the body needs a lot of different minerals and other nutrients to metabolize it (it’s quite a complex process executed by the liver). Natural sources of sugar, like sugarcane and dates, are also rich in minerals, as well as fibers, therefore the body gets what it needs. When the sugar is refined, such nutrients are lost, and the body has to sacrifice its own stock of nutrients to metabolize the sugar, which leads to different problems. In other words, nature created fruits and vegetables rich in sugar as a package that contains what the body needs to metabolize it. The problems start when we dismantle the package and take only the sugar.
If we eat a little bit of sugar in some preparation rich in nutrients (like when we take a small piece of milk sweet after a meal, for example), it’s probably not going to do any harm, but if we consistently exaggerate in foods that have a lot of sugar and little nutrients, we may face serious problems later.
The worst possible way to consume sugar is when you take something very rich in sugar by itself, as a snack or drink, and not as part of a meal. For example, many have the habit of drinking soda, coke, or other soft drinks. Soda is basically just a combination of sugar and citric acid. A 600 ml bottle has about 60 grams of sugar, which is already far more than we are supposed to consume in a day. Someone that got the habit of drinking it when he feels thirsty, can end up ingesting more than 100 grams of sugar per day just from the sodas!
Sugar can very easily cause weight gain. Most of the obesity we see all over the world is because of the increase in the consumption of sugar. Why does sugar cause more weight grain than a plate of rice and beams, for example? The answer is in the composition.
Table sugar is composed of a combination of fructose and glucose. Although considered a type of sugar, fructose is metabolized by the body in a quite distinct way. No cell in the body can use fructose directly, therefore it needs to be converted into glycogen or into fat by the liver. This is quite a long and complicated process.
The first problem is that in order to convert fructose, the liver has to execute a complicated process that involves the use of minerals like magnesium and zinc. Sugar contains only trace amounts of such minerals, therefore the body has to use its own minerals in the process, causing deficiencies. Minerals are one of the biggest deficiencies in modern diets because commercial agriculture depletes the soils. To eat foods that deplete minerals that are already in short supply in the body is not a good idea.
The second problem is that the liver can store only a very small amount of energy as glycogen, about 300 to 400 calories in total. In practice it is much less, since (unless one is fasting for several days) the storage will be always partially full. Most of the time the liver will not have space for more than 100 or 200 calories. All the fructose that exceeds this amount is going to be stored as abdominal fat (which is the most dangerous type of fat, stored in the belly, around the vital organs). Not only too much fructose causes accumulation of abdominal fat, but it also may lead to fat liver, and even non-alcoholic cirrhosis, a dangerous condition.
When one eats a small quantity of fructose, like in a fruit, for example, this is not a problem, since the body would just use it to replenish its reserves of glycogen or store it as a very small amount of fat that would just be used later. Sugar, however, is usually eaten in much bigger portions, resulting in the accumulation of the most dangerous type of fat.
The third problem is the associated glucose. Sugar contains glucose in its refined form, therefore the absorption is extraordinarily fast. When one drinks a bottle of soda, the glucose is very quickly absorbed and injected into the bloodstream. This forces the body to release a huge amount of insulin so it can be absorbed by the cells. Insulin increases hunger, and at the same time blocks the burning of fat. These two factors in combination assure that whatever you eat alongside the sugar will be stored as yet more fat. Over time, the fat accumulates and one becomes obese. Most cases of obesity are associated with excess sugar.
There is also a fourth factor, which is perhaps even worse: high glucose in the bloodstream is highly oxidative. In other words, it basically rusts our body from the inside. Not only does it cause premature aging, but it also attacks our veins and arteries. We can see practically that people with diabetes usually have serious problems related to the vascular system, which results in damage to the kidneys, eyes, circulatory problems in the hands and feet, etc., problems that are directly caused by high levels of glucose in the blood, a serious problem for diabetics. A non-diabetic person will not face such serious problems because the body can respond to the increase in the glucose levels by releasing more insulin. Still, the glucose can cause a lot of damage, especially to the arteries, which over time result in clogs. Many think that clogs in the arteries are caused by cholesterol, but actually, the cholesterol is a response from the body to the damage caused by the glucose, just like firefighters are a response to a fire and not the cause of it.
The antidote for the oxidative damage caused by glucose is antioxidants, which are found in fruits and vegetables. Therefore, to reduce the damage caused by the glucose, we need to act on two fronts:
- By making it be absorbed by the body slowly, which means to consume foods with a lower GI, where the starches and sugars are combined with fibers and other nutrients.
- By eating plenty of antioxidants, which implies a diet rich in vegetables and fruits.
By doing these two things in combination, the damage is contained and the glucose can feed our cells instead of poisoning our body.
We can see that sugar is both high-glycemic (being absorbed very quickly) and completely devoid of antioxidants. This combination makes it very damaging to the body. It’s better to limit our consumption of sugar to natural sources, like fruits. Different from table sugar (which is the concentrated, isolated form) fruits are a package that includes fibers, vitamins, minerals, and a good amount of the all-important antioxidants. Two observations about fruits: it is always much better to eat fruits whole, instead of making juices (which takes out the important fibers) and that although fruits are generally healthy, they can still have adverse effects if one eats too much of them.
If you are going to take juices, another alert is that the only acceptable fruit juices are the ones you make at home. Industrial fruit juices are stripped from all the fibers and most of the nutrients are destroyed by the pasteurization process and contact with the air. In fact, orange juice loses its taste and color completely during the processing, becoming a white liquid that has to be mixed with citric acid (which is actually produced from black mold) and other flavoring and coloring agents so it can again look and taste like orange juice. Industrial fruit juice is not much better than soda or coke. If you don’t drink soda, you are also not going to want to drink it.
Apart from fruits, there is also the option of using honey (provided you can get “real” honey, not the processed, adulterated type that is sold nowadays under many brands). Chemically, honey may be similar to sugar, but the way it acts in the body is very different. Many recent studies point-out that honey has a positive effect on the body and traditional ayurvedic medicine recommends it as a means to preserve health and increase longevity. Different from white sugar, honey contains significant quantities of antioxidants, enzymes, and minerals, as well as an antibacterial agent that acts against microbes and germs, preventing different diseases (if you put honey in an open wound and cover it with a bandage, it will cure much faster, for example).
If you are a vegan and don’t eat honey, two other options are molasses and dates. Molasses are the “good” part of the sugar cane, what is left after the white sugar is extracted. Molasses concentrates practically all the minerals and most of the vitamins of the original sugar cane. The problem is that molasses have a strong taste that many people don’t appreciate, therefore many brands mix table sugar on it, selling a concoction that contains actually very little molasses. The same applies to brown sugar, which is almost always a combination of white sugar and a small proportion of molasses. If you want to try, you should do your research first. Real molasses is very dark, have a strong taste, and is only mildly sweet. It’s usually sold as “blackstrap molasses”.
Another good option is dates. They are so sweet that can also be used as a natural sweetener in many circumstances. However, just as honey, they contain several important nutrients, which (in the right quantities) make them beneficial for our health. By using small quantities of honey, dates, or molasses instead of sugar, we are taking out something that is harmful to our health and adding something that (in moderate amounts) can actually be beneficial.
Not only is sugar unhealthy, but it is highly addictive, messing up with the chemistry of our brains. Every time we eat sugar, opioids, and dopamine are released. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a key part of the reward circuit of the brain. Every time we eat sugar, dopamine is released and we experience pleasure, which in turn leads us to want to re-experience it. Research shows that sugar can be as addictive as drugs like cocaine, leading to cravings and compulsive behavior. We can practically see that many become addicted to oreos, milkshakes, soda, and so on, and for most it’s very difficult to stop.
Human beings are accustomed to consuming sugar in the form of fruits and honey since antiquity. The point is that, as explained, the sugar in fruits is not concentrated like white sugar, and therefore the effects are mild. Although many people like to eat fruits, we don’t see people addicted to apples or oranges, for example. Fruits are natural foods, while white sugar is actually a chemical substance. In this case, the problem is not so much in the substance, but in eating it in a concentrated form.
The addictive nature of sugar started to be debated in the 1970s, with the publishing of the book “Pure white and deadly” by John Yudkin. From there, more and more evidence piled-up. Fortunately, unlike heavier drugs, consumption of sugar doesn’t result in permanent changes in the function of the brain. Just as it’s easy to become addicted to sugar, it’s also not so difficult to break one’s addiction. As soon as one stops completely with white sugar and changes to a diet rich in nutritive food (vegetables, beans, nuts, low-glycemic carbohydrates, milk, and butter, etc), the cravings for sugar diminish or even completely disappear in a span of a few weeks. One just needs to have the willpower to go through this withdrawal period.