Aside from tooth decay, is the “risk of heart disease” often cited because it is comorbid with obesity?
Well you’re already acknowledging tooth decay and obesity. It is looking like sugar is also the primary cause of non alcoholic fatty liver disease. There are no benefits of processed sugar that I’m aware of.
Added sugars are so unnecessary, and I personally find them incredibly addictive.
They also take up calories in your diet that could be filled with foods that have nutrients. It’s hard enough to get all of your nutrients without them!
I think it depends on what you’re using it for. Endurance athletes eat a lot of it. Probably has a different impact on them than it does on the average Joe eating a rack of Oreos while watching Netflix.
Not that I ever could, but my health and your would be incredibly better without it. Look at any disease in the US or anywhere lese and those diseases increase alongside the mass production of high fructose corn syrup. Sugar is just addictive, majorly addictive! Why do you think people are so fn fat now?
Sugar also increases the likelihood of developing diabetes, prevents triglycerides (a type of blood fat associated with cardiovascular disease) from being broken down and lowers the level of HDL cholesterol – the “good” cholesterol – in the body while raising LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels.
One of the biggest problems is definitely insulin resistance. You are on a way to have diabetes, when you consume huge amount of sugar at once, and don’t have the slow and stable release of glucose from the complex sacharides, like rice, potatoes and so
lol YES. Sugar is very bad for you, so added sugar is inherently unhealthy. Excess sugar drives atherosclerosis and dementia and NAFLD. There really is no reason to eat sugar ever except because you enjoy it.
Almost everything said about sugar is false or does not have sufficient evidence. I’m aware of one study that shows a rise in reactive oxygen species after sugar ingestion. The main bad outcomes are from observational studies that have allegedly controlled for other factors. It’s not a health food. Yes, people are consuming too much of it. Yes, it contributes to obesity etc etc.
However, I seriously doubt people are manually adding it to food or drinks. The same goes with salt. I don’t know if anyone consuming too much salt that is sprinkling it on their food. The main additions of salt sugar and fat are from industrially processed foods. So, I find the notion that sugar is equivalent to a type of poison farfetched and hysterical.
Take fruit for example. Typically it is said that fruit is not safe to consume in large quantities because it contains fructose, which allegedly raises triglycerides in the blood. There are no large scale analyses of significance that have associated fruit intake with negative health outcomes. There is zero scientific basis to restrict fruit intake.
Take the theory that sugar “spikes the blood sugar and induces a massive insulin response which dumps fat into the blood and leads to diabetes.” Where is this proven under normal conditions? I don’t know if any study that has shown that healthy subjects have become diabetic through sugar or carbohydrate alone. However, you can induce diabetes with dietary fat especially saturated fat. The precise cause of type 2 diabetes is unknown to experts. It’s amazing what people are allowed to say about it.
Common concerns regarding added sugar consumption pale in significance to those stemming from recent findings. Findings regarding serious adverse effects on the liver for instance have been trumpeted by Dr. Robert Lustig with the backing of the University of California San Francisco.
Lustig discusses the issue extensively in many You Tube videos easily found.
In the intro to one that I include below, he says, “Sugar [added sugar and highly processed foods] is not the only problem in our diet. It’s the big one. It’s the 2,000 lb. gorilla in our diet.”
Lustig is not alone. Tooth decay, obesity, malnutrition, etc. are giving way to much more serious inflammatory diseases like heart disease, cancer, dementia, diabetes, etc.
It is certainly worth our time to search it out for ourselves. Big Food likes the profits. And Big Pharma, well, let’s just say they like it the way it is!
Added sugars should be limited. Putting sugar on your baby carrots to boil them for a dish - is fine. Eating brownies and whatnot is fine as long it’s not everyday (or even 2x a day everyday).
Every food has limits. Any food can do harm to you in an uncontrolled amount. Food is food. Energy comes from all forms. There is sugar in everything, but the added stuff is what you should watch for and limit/track if you struggle and/or want to avoid health problems later on in life.
Nah, IMO the eating of sugar reduces your desperation to get the addictive hit of neurotransmitters. It’s temporarily satiating.
I looked at a video on the similarity between sugars and alcohol during metabolism, without the ability to understand the chemistry and organic biology, or verify it myself. The addiction pathways between sugar and alcohol are similar, I equate them in mind, though the alcohol has a very negative stigma that sometimes helps people reduce their consumption, sugar is consumed with abandon frequently by people who would never touch alcohol.
The principal issue with sugar as I can tell, or other highly refined simple carbohydrates, is that it’s empty calories providing little in the way of nutrition, if anything at all. You end up craving it, but if you consume it, you miss the massive diversity of compounds that plants have, from the tens of thousands of phytonutrients to the vastly different salts and minerals bound in the cells.
If you fulfill cravings with sugar alone, you have stronger cravings later, this amplifies the risk you will develop a deficiency. As blood is so very carefully maintained to be ‘in specification’ by the body at whole, it’s a less than useful indicator of health. I understand (obligatory: not a GP or medical professional or specialist) your bones will sometimes weaken and self-dissolve before your blood shows the slow, inexorable deficiency that causes a regular drawing down of compounds that would make for greater strength in age, rather than weakness.
Well yeah, ofc added sugar can be detrimental but at the same time you gotta remember that a) they’re many foods that arent the best for you that don’t have added sugar (fast food, microwave meals, basically almost anything that’s packaged or processed), and b) anything in a surplus can be bad for you
Me personally, I have BED along with anxiety, so to minimize that I find that cutting some added sugar out helps with reducing appetite and it just makes me more calm. At this point I’m just playing it by ear, some people were blessed with bodies that somehow run better on carbs and sugar, but that ain’t me nor is it everybody else.
To get our sugar fix many people feel the satisfaction from eating natural sugars like pineapple (in moderation!) and dark chocolate (90% is our choice) along with Smuckers natural peanut butter, no added sugar. Choosing any one of those has been a great choice for us.
You can share your story on our site if you would like!
No, sugar is not inherently dangerous or unhealthy. It’s just everyone’s scapegoat.
Why does this sub suffer so much by never considering context? If someone is living an overall healthy lifestyle, they can have plenty of added sugar and not worry. Sugar becomes a problem to humans who abuse it like water becomes a problem to a drowning person. The danger is in the dose, and it’s higher than most are aware. And this is a good thing. As someone in the field, I worry how scared everyone is about sugar while ignoring 7 other lifestyle components that are much worse.
The issue is, most people who have diets high in sugar are also obese, don’t workout, sleep like crap, are stressed etc. but the unhealthiness isn’t due to sugar. It’s just easy to point the finger at it.
Sugar is not the problem. The dosage is, and our lifestyle influences how everything together affects our health and well being.
Mods, can we address the borderline orthorexia that’s present in this sub? I swear 70% of posts are about a fear of an ingredient and it’s affecting peoples relationship with food in a bad bad way.