Dietary fat takes the rap for every health and weight problem in the universe, while the toxic impact of excess sugar in the diet goes virtually unnoticed. The purpose of this article is to help you understand what sugar is, how to figure out where it's hidden in your food supply, and what happens to you when you eat too much of it.
Sugar occurs naturally in fruits, vegetables and some dairy products. It's also a highly processed substance that you can buy in a bag in the grocery store and that manufacturer's add to their food recipes so we'll like them better. The focus here is about the sugar and sugar relatives that have been added to our foods and drinks.
Let's take a moment to define the terms "sugar" and "highly processed". Sugar comes from two types of vegetables: sugar cane and beets. Beets are actually the preferred source for making sugar because farmers get four beet crop rotations a year, whereas cane only yields one crop per year. Other sweeteners, like high fructose corn syrup, come from corn. I use the term "sugar" generically to refer to all the sweet substances that end up in foods and drinks that come in a container.
The term "highly processed" means that several steps have been taken to convert the beet, sugar cane or corn from the way you see it in nature to the granulated substance that appears on your table. These steps include chopping, boiling, pressing, carbonation, crystallization and other processes. The end result is a highly concentrated form of sweetener, which means you get a lot of sweetening power from a small amount of substance. This kind of sugar has no nutritional value whatsoever unless, of course, you happen to be starving and you need the calories.
Sugar quantities are typically expressed in grams, a unit of measure that most Americans are not familiar with. The logic goes something like this: If you don't understand what a gram is, then it doesn't count. Consequently, people are blissfully unaware that one teaspoon of sugar is equal to four grams. It's estimated that the average person in the U.S. consumes a whopping 92 grams of sugar every day. This equates to 23 teaspoons of sugar per day or 75 pounds per year! It's stunning.
Very few people pay attention to excess sugar. One of the big reasons is because we're trained to be fat-phobic. Food manufacturers are smart and savvy people who give you the low-fat products that you demand. Sugar is a food manufacturers dream because it has no fat and it makes their recipes taste really good. What you don't realize is that even the so-called healthy low-fat products are loaded up with sugar. The biggest culprits are healthy yogurts, healthy cereals, healthy snack bars and even diet foods!
When it comes to sugar, nutrition labels that appear on the back of food packages are also confusing and misleading. As previously mentioned, the quantity of sugar on the label is expressed in grams which is meaningless to many shoppers. Even more and worse, the nutrition label does not differentiate between sugar that's been added to foods and the sugar that occurs naturally. The label just gives you one great big giant sugar gram count. It's impossible to use the nutrition label to make a smart, informed decision about the quantity of processed sugar you're putting in your mouth. There is no standardized rule of thumb for grams of sugar per serving, but 4 grams or one teaspoon of sugar is a reasonable starting place.
That said, the one and only fool-proof way to find out how much sugar has been added to food is to become a sugar detective and look at the ingredients list on the back of the package. Typically, the ingredients list has the smallest, most hard-to-read print. It might even be under a flap or in some other inconvenient place. No matter. Your job is to be a sugar detective. Look for words like sugar, sucrose, high fructose corn syrup or anything that's a syrup. If these words appear first, second or third (or in all three places) on the ingredients list, then the food has a lot of sugar added to it.
Start paying attention to the amount of sugar you're consuming, because sugar is responsible for the five dreaded C's: bad C alories, bad C arbs, C ravings, C raziness with food and C rashing energy.
BAD CALORIES: One level teaspoon of sugar contains 15 calories. So, if you're like the average person who consumes 23 teaspoons of sugar per day, you're getting about 350 sugar calories. These calories are optional and unessential to the body. If you don't eat any sugar calories, your body doesn't miss them. Not even a little. You'll just have to trust me on this for now.
BAD CARBS: There are good carbs and bad carbs. Good ones are natural foods like fruits, vegetables, some dairy products and whole grains. Bad ones are highly processed foods like sugar. The bad carbs overload your metabolism with too much sugar in your blood stream all at once. This results in a big insulin response to process and handle all the excess sugar. Insulin is the hormone responsible for storing fat. When you have a lot of insulin in your blood it's difficult to lose weight and much more likely that you'll gain it.
CRAVINGS: The more foods you eat that are loaded with sugar, the more you crave them. It's as simple as that. As soon as you get excess sugar out of your system, your cravings disappear or at least minimize.
CRAZINESS WITH FOOD: Some people are super sensitive to sugar and highly processed foods. Nancy Appleton, PhD, the foremost authority on health problems having to do with sugar, roughly estimates that as many as 40 percent of the population might have issues with sugar. One of the biggest problems is out-of-control eating. If you're one of those people who has a hard time eating normally, and by that I mean three meals and two or three snacks per day, consider excess sugar as the underlying culprit.
CRASHING ENERGY: Excess sugar robs you of energy and the feeling of vitality because your metabolism gets unbalanced and overloaded with more food energy than it was designed to handle. Your energy can be recaptured, but you have to set it free from the prison of overwork.
Do a simple experiment on yourself and take a break from sugar for a week or two. See if it makes a difference. As former president Bill Clinton might say, "It's the sugar, stupid!"
* * * * * * *
Karen Bentley is the creator of the Sugar-Free Miracle™ Diet System, the most popular sugar-free weight loss system of e-books on the internet. For more information, go towww.sugarfreemiraclediet.com
Dietary fat takes the rap for every health and weight problem in the universe, while the toxic impact of excess sugar in the diet goes virtually unnoticed. The purpose of this article is to help you understand what sugar is, how to figure out where it's hidden in your food supply, and what happens to you when you eat too much of it.
Sugar occurs naturally in fruits, vegetables and some dairy products. It's also a highly processed substance that you can buy in a bag in the grocery store and that manufacturer's add to their food recipes so we'll like them better. The focus here is about the sugar and sugar relatives that have been added to our foods and drinks.
Let's take a moment to define the terms "sugar" and "highly processed". Sugar comes from two types of vegetables: sugar cane and beets. Beets are actually the preferred source for making sugar because farmers get four beet crop rotations a year, whereas cane only yields one crop per year. Other sweeteners, like high fructose corn syrup, come from corn. I use the term "sugar" generically to refer to all the sweet substances that end up in foods and drinks that come in a container.
The term "highly processed" means that several steps have been taken to convert the beet, sugar cane or corn from the way you see it in nature to the granulated substance that appears on your table. These steps include chopping, boiling, pressing, carbonation, crystallization and other processes. The end result is a highly concentrated form of sweetener, which means you get a lot of sweetening power from a small amount of substance. This kind of sugar has no nutritional value whatsoever unless, of course, you happen to be starving and you need the calories.
Sugar quantities are typically expressed in grams, a unit of measure that most Americans are not familiar with. The logic goes something like this: If you don't understand what a gram is, then it doesn't count. Consequently, people are blissfully unaware that one teaspoon of sugar is equal to four grams. It's estimated that the average person in the U.S. consumes a whopping 92 grams of sugar every day. This equates to 23 teaspoons of sugar per day or 75 pounds per year! It's stunning.
Very few people pay attention to excess sugar. One of the big reasons is because we're trained to be fat-phobic. Food manufacturers are smart and savvy people who give you the low-fat products that you demand. Sugar is a food manufacturers dream because it has no fat and it makes their recipes taste really good. What you don't realize is that even the so-called healthy low-fat products are loaded up with sugar. The biggest culprits are healthy yogurts, healthy cereals, healthy snack bars and even diet foods!
When it comes to sugar, nutrition labels that appear on the back of food packages are also confusing and misleading. As previously mentioned, the quantity of sugar on the label is expressed in grams which is meaningless to many shoppers. Even more and worse, the nutrition label does not differentiate between sugar that's been added to foods and the sugar that occurs naturally. The label just gives you one great big giant sugar gram count. It's impossible to use the nutrition label to make a smart, informed decision about the quantity of processed sugar you're putting in your mouth. There is no standardized rule of thumb for grams of sugar per serving, but 4 grams or one teaspoon of sugar is a reasonable starting place.
That said, the one and only fool-proof way to find out how much sugar has been added to food is to become a sugar detective and look at the ingredients list on the back of the package. Typically, the ingredients list has the smallest, most hard-to-read print. It might even be under a flap or in some other inconvenient place. No matter. Your job is to be a sugar detective. Look for words like sugar, sucrose, high fructose corn syrup or anything that's a syrup. If these words appear first, second or third (or in all three places) on the ingredients list, then the food has a lot of sugar added to it.
Start paying attention to the amount of sugar you're consuming, because sugar is responsible for the five dreaded C's: bad C alories, bad C arbs, C ravings, C raziness with food and C rashing energy.
BAD CALORIES: One level teaspoon of sugar contains 15 calories. So, if you're like the average person who consumes 23 teaspoons of sugar per day, you're getting about 350 sugar calories. These calories are optional and unessential to the body. If you don't eat any sugar calories, your body doesn't miss them. Not even a little. You'll just have to trust me on this for now.
BAD CARBS: There are good carbs and bad carbs. Good ones are natural foods like fruits, vegetables, some dairy products and whole grains. Bad ones are highly processed foods like sugar. The bad carbs overload your metabolism with too much sugar in your blood stream all at once. This results in a big insulin response to process and handle all the excess sugar. Insulin is the hormone responsible for storing fat. When you have a lot of insulin in your blood it's difficult to lose weight and much more likely that you'll gain it.
CRAVINGS: The more foods you eat that are loaded with sugar, the more you crave them. It's as simple as that. As soon as you get excess sugar out of your system, your cravings disappear or at least minimize.
CRAZINESS WITH FOOD: Some people are super sensitive to sugar and highly processed foods. Nancy Appleton, PhD, the foremost authority on health problems having to do with sugar, roughly estimates that as many as 40 percent of the population might have issues with sugar. One of the biggest problems is out-of-control eating. If you're one of those people who has a hard time eating normally, and by that I mean three meals and two or three snacks per day, consider excess sugar as the underlying culprit.
CRASHING ENERGY: Excess sugar robs you of energy and the feeling of vitality because your metabolism gets unbalanced and overloaded with more food energy than it was designed to handle. Your energy can be recaptured, but you have to set it free from the prison of overwork.
Do a simple experiment on yourself and take a break from sugar for a week or two. See if it makes a difference. As former president Bill Clinton might say, "It's the sugar, stupid!"
* * * * * * *
Karen Bentley is the creator of the Sugar-Free Miracle™ Diet System, the most popular sugar-free weight loss system of e-books on the internet. For more information, go towww.sugarfreemiraclediet.com