Recently there has been a lot of talk and public scrutiny surrounding sugar which is a great thing and something that needed to be done a long time ago. I was even invited to be a guest expert on sugar with Derryn Hiinch's Hinch News on Sky News! I would like to start this article by suggesting to all of you to watch the new documentary that has just been released called "That Sugar Film", one of the best nutrition documentaries to come out in recent times. Hopefully with all the hype surrounding this it begins to get the message through to people - SUGAR IS KILLING YOU! We all know the dangers of smoking and the graphic pictures on the TV and even on the product themselves have gone a long way to educate the community as to what this does to your body. But did you know that Sugar is killing more people than smoking? Yet there is little information about how this is happening. Most people would have no idea what foods contain sugar, how much is okay to consume and that it is 8 TIMES MORE ADDICTIVE THAN COCAINE! These are just some of the things I will be looking at in this article to help shed some light on what is the biggest saboteur to your health.

The History Of Sugar

As I already mentioned at the beginning I highly encourage you to get the DVD of the movie "That Sugar Film" as everything I am going to share here in this article you will see living proof of in this movie.

One thing I must say though that I find extremely disappointing is how many times in this movie it is announced as though this is new information. Even the so called "medical experts" and scientists at the end of the movie who are all in favor of reducing sugar intake are baffled at the findings and conclude we need to run more tests to find out why? This is just absolute stupidity and one of the reasons we are the unhealthiest we have ever been as a human race. It is ironic that we have more nutritionists, physical therapists, osteopaths, chiropractors, personal trainers & scientific analysis methods and machines than ever in the history of humankind, yet we are fatter, suffering from all types of chronic diseases that only 100 years ago did not exist! And when you go back 100 years and see what happened at that time that saw the increase in poor health you will find the consumption of sugar and also wheat increased substantially.

To "Really Know" Nutrition You Must Read "Nutrition & Physical Degeneration" by Weston A Price

There are so many people and "experts" who say they know all about nutrition but there is a big difference between knowing it and doing it. I cannot tell you how many Doctors, Scientists and even Dieticians giving advice on food or weight loss and are more sick and fatter than their patients! How can someone tell you how to do something if they cannot do it themselves? And without doubt the Best book on Nutrition I have ever read is "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Weston A Price written almost 80 years ago! I highly suggest going to Weston A Price Foundation and looking up the health articles on their website. In his book he provides clear evidence of perfect health from many different indigenous races from all over the world who were living on a diet free of processed foods and modern foods that we are a massive part of our culture today. In every single case that any of these indigenous races were exposed to white  sugar, white flour and processed foods their health suffered significantly to not only the people that ate it but also the children born from these people. The photos of his findings and the statistics of his research is amazing. These people were the last chance we could observe a human of pure health, as there are no real tribes left in the world left to do that now. When I read this book it changed my entire philosophy on food and health. I could see over and over in this book clear proof of how you could achieve great health via nutrition. These indigenous races had no words for diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome as they did not exist! His findings were a big part in the creation of Metabolic Typing which is the nutrition plan we use with our clients. To see more about that go to Metabolic Typing Nutrition Program.

To give you the full perspective of how much damage modern food and in particular sugar has made to our health, take a look at the picture below on the difference of chronic disease from 1900 to 2010. Heart disease and cancer were only 18% compared to now a combined 65%! Science and modern technology has been great at eliminating infectious diseases such as Polio, TB, malaria etc but in terms of helping chronic disease like diabetes, heart disease and cancer I would argue it has actually created these and even exacerbated them. We must get back to the basics with our nutrition, just like the indigenous races that Weston A Price observed. We must stop looking at short cuts to weight loss and stupid strategies like calorie counting and 12 week challenges. If we all got rid of the sugar in our diet we would be more than halfway to where we all want to be. It is that simple! I researched these statistics from the Center of Disease Control if you want to look it up yourself.

You Must Look At The Food Labels To Know How Much Sugar You Are Really Eating

A major problem with processed food is that when you look at the label, you have no way of knowing how much of the sugar is natural to the food itself, versus the sugar that was added. Even foods that are typically considered “healthy” can contain shocking amounts of added sugar or fructose, typically in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Clinical trials have shown that those who consume HFCS tend to develop higher risk factors for cardiovascular disease within as little as two weeks, so if I had to pick out the worst culprit among sugars, it would be fructose. "According to Dr. Lustig, it’s important to distinguish between natural food-based sugars versus added sugar. For example, he notes that a small serving cup of plain yogurt has about seven grams of sugar in the form of lactose, a natural sugar found in dairy, which does not cause any major harm." A fruit flavored yogurt on the other hand, contains about 19 grams of sugar, 12 grams of which is added sugar. This equates to eating a small cup of plain yoghurt with a bowl of Corn Flakes. According to Dr. Lustig, we “abdicated rational nutrition when we went to processed foods.”

The low-fat craze has been particularly harmful, because when the food industry removed the fat, they had to put lots of sugar in. Without either fat or sugar, the food is unpalatable and no one would buy it. We now know that good nutrition includes healthy fat, and quite a bit of it, and that sugar is a primary driver of chronic inflammation and related health problems, including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. In short, by removing fat and adding sugar, the processed food industry has created more ways to give you a disease... Besides enormous amounts of sugar, processed foods are also loaded with ingredients that have been banned in other countries, such as trans fats, artificial sweeteners, genetically engineered ingredients, and glyphosate.

How Much Sugar Can The Body Actually Handle?

The quick answer to this question is not much at all. The specific answer is 6 teaspoons per day is the safe amount recommended by most experts. Four grams of sugar is equivalent to one teaspoon. When you consider how much sugar is in one can of soft drink, you can see why people gain weight so easily and also are highly likely to develop serious diseases like diabetes.

And this is a great question and one that 99% of the population would not know. To get on top of your weight loss program make no mistake you need to know this. I cannot remember how many times I have had a nutrition consultation with someone who refuses to give up the soft drinks. Even the diet drinks of Pepsi Max and Coke Zero create health problems using artificial sweeteners. They believe because of the name of the product it is okay to have when in fact it is sabotaging all of their efforts. If you are one of those people and reading this now, I hope this might convince you to get rid of it and start drinking water instead. According to Dr. Lustig, there’s a conspiracy around the sugar in soft drinks. Soft drinks contain caffeine, a mild diuretic that makes you urinate more, thereby eliminating water from your body. It also contains about 55 mg of salt, and when you take in salt and excrete water, you get thirstier. The reason why soft drinks contain so much sugar is because they have to mask the taste of the salt... “They [the soft drink companies] know what they’re doing, and this is very specific,” Dr. Lustig says, “because they have made it so that you will buy more. This is their business strategy.” Unfortunately, it’s a business strategy that is slowly killing customers... Adding insult to injury, sugar has also been found to be eight times as addictive as cocaine, which also ensures that you’ll stay hooked on processed foods and sweet drinks.

The main problem with sugar, and processed fructose in particular, is the fact that your liver has a very limited capacity to metabolize it. According to Dr. Lustig, you can safely metabolize about six teaspoons of added sugar per day. But the average person consumes 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day. All that excess sugar is metabolized into body fat, and leads to all of the chronic metabolic diseases we struggle with. According to a study published in JAMA earlier this year, Americans get, on average, about 350 calories a day from added sugar in the diet. (This equates to about 22 teaspoons of sugar, as noted earlier, which amounts to 25 percent of the average American’s daily calorie intake.) In this study, people who consumed 21 percent or more of their daily calories in the form of sugar were TWICE as likely to die from heart disease compared to those who got seven percent or less or their daily calories from added sugar. The risk was nearly TRIPLED among those who consumed 25 percent or more of their daily calories from added sugar. Approximately 10 percent of Americans consume added sugars at this tripled-risk level and Australia would be equal to if not worse!

Four grams of sugar is equivalent to about one teaspoon, and I strongly recommend limiting your daily fructose intake to 25 grams or less from all sources, including natural ones like fruit. That equates to just over six teaspoons of sugar a day. If you’re among the 80 percent majority who have insulin or leptin resistance (overweight, diabetic, high blood pressure, or taking a statin drug), you’d be wise to restrict your total fructose consumption to as little as 15 grams per day, until you’ve normalized your insulin and leptin levels.

How To Cut Back Your Sugar Intake

The easiest way to dramatically cut down on your sugar and fructose consumption is to switch to a diet of whole, unprocessed foods, as most of the added sugar you end up with comes from processed foods. If you watch the movie "That Sugar Film" you will notice the guy in the movie hits his daily target of 40 teaspoons by breakfast! There is so much added to our everyday foods that people do not realize and just eliminating processed foods from your pantry will go a long way to improving your health, and losing some belly fat!

But there are other ways to cut down well. This includes: 

1. Cutting back on the amount of sugar you personally add to your food and drink
2. Eating only fresh meats and vegetables with each meal. If it is in a packet, bottle or can then it is processed and most likely will have some sugar added to it.
3. Using fresh fruit instead of canned fruit or sugar for meals or recipes calling for a bit of sweetness
4. Use spices instead of sugar to add flavor to your meal - Speak to our very own Chef & Trainer Ben Higgs if you need some ideas or recipes to make your own sauces or ways to flavour meals.

Even Personal Trainers & Nutrition Coaches Recommend Sports Drinks

To make it even more confusing even the people who should know better are convinced that sports drinks are safe to drink, and that they can even speed up your metabolism to make you lose fat! It is true I attended a course where this was recommended as a strategy for weight loss and the guy taking the course was claiming he is a Scientist and can prove this works. My problem with his idea is he was focusing on weight loss, NOT HEALTH! In his mind if someone is skinny they are healthy, which is completely false. This is just outright dangerous and stupid! These drinks are loaded with sugar. Kids are now being given “electrolyte” drinks called “ergogenic aids” to replace electrolytes that are allegedly depleted during workouts. There are three problems with using these drinks as a rehydration solution. First, most soft drinks are diuretics, meaning they squeeze liquids out of the body, thus exacerbating dehydration instead of correcting it. Second, most people actually lose few electrolytes during exercise. After exercise the body is usually in an electrolyte load having lost more fluids than electrolytes. If sweating has been profuse, electrolytes can be replaced by drinking pure mineral water, which contains a proper ratio of minerals (electrolytes), and by eating a healthy diet containing Celtic sea salt. Third, when we give sugar-laden drinks to dehydrated kids, the high sugar content requires that blood be sent to the stomach to digest it. This fluid shift can lower the blood volume in other parts of the body making them more susceptible to cramps and heat-related illnesses. So whatever you do stop drinking this stuff now if you want to be healthy or lose weight.

Conclusion

I hope by now you get the point that Sugar is ruining your  health, making you fat and setting you up for a lifetime of disease. It sounds harsh but that is the truth. We all must be become better educated in order to make decisions around food that are healthy and enabling us to move towards our goals not away from them. Remember if you are unsure if something is good for you and it does not have a food label ask yourself this question. Was this food available 1000 years ago? If it is in a jar, packet or bottle it is processed and not as good for you. The longer the expiry date the worse it is for you as it has preservatives and additives added to it to make it last that long. Pretty simple stuff I know but it is often the simple things that the so called experts miss and why so many people are confused about nutrition when really it is very easy.

References:

• www.mercola.com
  
• "Sweet Poison" by David Gillespie
  
• "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Weston A Price
  

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