Sweet POISON: Why Sugar is Ruining our Health

Had to share my thoughts on this topic.

As you know I have done quite a few posts and blogs recently on sugar so why not do another.

Please take a read of the article found in last weeks Daily Telegraph.

There are some good points made in this article. For example I agree the majority of people could benefit from lowering their sugar intake.

Not all calories are created equally. Sugar does not contain micronutrients and can cause dental problems. Fructose is also metabolised differently by the body compared to glucose, but it still ends up as glucose. It is just metabolised by the liver compared to every other cell in the body.

A closer look at sugar

However, there are some points that I want to discuss –

1. Comparing addiction in rats to humans

Rats do not translate well to humans. While mice and humans do share some similarities the differences are vast.

For example, the average human heart beats around 72 times per minute, whereas a mouse heart beats 500 – 700 times per minute. Moreover, mice are susceptible to different carcinogens than humans, show differences in wound healing, and share some, but not all of the same genes.

There have been many studies people claim prove sugar can cause an addiction, for example an experiment where food was withheld for 12 hours, and then 4 hours into their normal active period they were given free access to sugar and chow.

The rats ended up choosing the sugar over chow! (1) But how does this prove sugar is addictive? Deprive animals of any food and they will end up overeating energy dense foods, like sugar, when given the chance.

2. Comparing cocaine addiction to sugar addiction is an insult to drug addicts in my opinion

3. ‘An analysis of 175 countries over the past decade showed that when you look for the cause of type 2 (non-insulin dependent) diabetes, the total number of calories you consume is irrelevant. It’s the specific calories that count.’

Granted putting on excess fat is not healthy and can lead to illness, but what the quote above gives is the impression that calories do not matter. Putting on fat which can cause disease, comes down to calories in vs calories out, irrespective of the type of calories.

The above quote conveys that if you consume the ‘right’ calories you will be immune to illness and disease, which isn’t true.  It is important to know that type 2 diabetes is caused by genetics and lifestyle factors, sugar being one of them, but not the sole cause. (2)

4. ‘Excess fructose cannot be converted into energy by the mitochondria inside our cells (which perform this function). “Instead,” he explains, “they turn excess fructose into liver fat.”’

Excess fructose can cause fat to acclimate in the liver, correct, which can lead to illness and insulin resistance (a condition in which the body produces insulin but does not use it effectively,) but how do we explain fatty liver in lean people? Could genetics also play a part?

If you want to cause insulin resistance in rats, Stanford University who did much of the pioneering work on the subject, achieved this by feeding them mostly fructose. But this was due to ridiculous amounts of fructose, far more than you would ever eat in a day. This led them to conclude that if you eat enough pure fructose, your livers convert the fructose into fat.

But in 2011, a study confirmed that people almost never eat fructose by itself.

This study also banishes the claim that ‘fructose fools our brains into thinking we are not full,’ causing over eating because it does not elicit an insulin response,

Yes fructose doesn’t cause an insulin response, which has been shown to suppress appetite, but fructose is very rarely eaten solely on its own. Sucrose is half fructose and half glucose and HFCS is nearly identical, 55%fructose: 45%glucose.

Honey is also being banished and considered poison, because of the fructose content too, but has been eaten by humans throughout evolutionary history, can still be obtained in its natural form and only half of that sugar is fructose. (3)

6. ‘You still shouldn’t eat very sweet fruit like grapes and melon to excess.’

Come again?

7. “You are breaking an addiction, so you need to stop consuming all sources of the addictive substance. They are all hard to give up because they are addictive – but they are all easy to give up once you understand what you are doing and why.”

So they are hard to give up, but then easy to give up once you understand? OK tell that to a drug addict or alcoholic. If sugar is an addiction just like drugs, and you are able to completely stop consumption in a day once you understand, surely this shows it is not a true addiction.

True addiction takes months and years to cure. Can we call over consumption of sugar an addiction, maybe it’s because sugar is more palatable!

8. ‘We’re buying fewer bags of granulated sugar.’

Surely if it was addictive, addicts would be buying the pure form?

9. “I stopped eating sugar and immediately started losing weight – without adjusting anything else about how I lived.”

Cut any food and you will lose fat if you carry on eating the same – ‘without adjusting anything’ . Cutting a food, results in cutting calories.

10. ‘At the two-four week mark I noticed I was no longer craving food’

Completely wrong…Try avoiding any food you like and see what happens? You’ll crave it!!!

Also notice he mentions ‘food,’ doesn’t mention sugar which I thought his conclusions were cutting sugar resulted in no cravings for sugar?

11. ‘I ate what I wanted and as long as it didn’t contain sugar, the weight kept coming off.’

So you could eat as much as you wanted of anything that didn’t contain sugar and you lost weight? Come on, calories in vs calories out matters!

12. ‘I’d been off sugar for about a month and I didn’t want to waste it, so I ate it. I figured I’d be all right, but how wrong I was. “The next day I had constant cravings for sugar and the gnawing desire to eat and drink everything available’

So banning sugar didn’t cause cravings, but then you really wanted to eat the cake?

Following the eating of the cake he continued to binge, because in my opinion he had banned sugar all together. The more restriction that is applied during a diet the more cravings you will have, which can only lead to you chucking in the towel and going off track.

Resulting in you binging on the foods you restricted, creating guilt, you apply further restriction, and the binge-guilt cycle starts. This has been shown in the research. (4,5)

13. “Sugar gives you an initial high, then you crash, then you crave more, so you consume more sugar.”

The reason you hear people claim sugar causes hunger is due to sugar spiking the hormone insulin, which is involved in controlling blood sugar levels. Insulin is released when blood sugar levels are too high causing them to drop back down to base line. It is at this point that anti-sugar individuals claim the drop in blood sugar levels causes cravings and hunger to increase.

The argument doesn’t stand up when insulin has been shown to suppress appetite (6) and we also know that protein causes a release in insulin not just sugar. The release of insulin is a completely normal bodily function and we very rarely just consume pure sugar which has an overall effect on the insulin response as well.

Research was also carried out on hunger levels after consuming a high or low insulin stimulating meal. The trial looked at a low glycemic index (GI) breakfast, and a high GI breakfast and the effects they had on both appetite and the amount of food they ate for the rest of the day (the lower a food’s GI, the less it raises blood sugar levels.

The subjects were required to rate their appetite levels every hour for that day. The results showed that the high GI groups appetite was significantly lower immediately after their meals and also lower throughout the day compared to the low GI group. (7) More compelling data that showed raised insulin levels do not lead to increase cravings and hunger.

Are You Addicted To Sugar ?

I wanted to answer the question to see if I was addicted – 

Sugar Addiction Symptoms

1. Do you struggle to walk past a sugary treat without taking ‘just one’?

Yes, because sweets taste good and one is not going to kill me!

2. Do you have routines around sugar consumption – for example, always having pudding, or needing a piece of chocolate to relax in front of the television?

I look to consume a piece of chocolate most days, as part of a calorie controlled diet.

3. Are there times when you feel as if you cannot go on without a sugar hit?

I do not feel anyone would answer ‘yes’ to this!

4. If you are forced to go without sugar for 24 hours, do you develop headaches and mood swings?

I am no doctor, but I do not feel this will be down to sugar!

Oh dear I am a sugar addict apparently!

To say sugar is ‘toxic’ and ‘poison’ with no dosages mentioned is misleading. It implies that the sweet substance is dangerous even at 1g, but of course, it’s the dose that makes a poison poisonous. Water can be poison if consumed in adequate amounts. For a quick source of energy, nothing beats sugar, as shown by olympians, endurance athletes and sportsman consuming sports drinks & supplements.

It very well may be true that high levels of fructose consumption, because of the unique way in which we metabolised, can cause fat to accumulate in our livers followed by insulin resistance and other illnesses, but remember this is not an overnight occurrence.

Following a calorie controlled diet that doesn’t restrict fruit and allows you to consume added sugar from your favourite processed foods in MODERATION is going to do you no harm as long as your body fat is controlled – IIFYM!

Do you know what wanting that piece of cake makes you? Human!

To keep things simple the solution is managing your caloric balance (calories in vs calories out) and physical activity, to quote the British Dietetic Association (BDA) – “Sugar is not bad for you as part of a balanced diet,” The final word is adding excess amounts of fat via any food source is unhealthy.

References –

1. Nicole M. Avena, Pedro Rada, Bartley G. Hoebel. Evidence for sugar addiction: Behavioral and neurochemical effects of intermittent, excessive sugar intake. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2008; 32(1): 20–39. 

3. http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/sweets/5568/2

4. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471015314000221

5. Stewart TM, Williamson DA, White MA. Rigid vs. flexible dieting: association with eating disorder symptoms in nonobese women. Appetite. 2002;38(1):39–44.

6. Pliquett RU1, Fuhrer D, Falk S, Zysset S, von Cramon DY, Stumvoll M (2006) “The effects of insulin on the central nervous system–focus on appetite regulation.”Horm Metab Res. 2006 Jul;38(7):442-6.

7. Wu MY1, Bowtell JL, Williams CA (2014) “Glycaemic index of meals affects appetite sensation but not energy balance in active males.” Eur J Nutr. 2014

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