Effects of sugar on the body

The effects of sugar on the body are multi-fold.

What does “Added sugar” mean?

Any sugar added in preparation of foods, either at the table, in the kitchen or in the processing plant. This may include sucrose, high fructose corn syrup and others; these are all processed sugars. http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/glossary.html#.WP_NFIjyuUl

The problem with processed sugar , regardless of source, is that the processed (white) sugar has been largely stripped of all it’s normally associated vitamins and minerals. The sugars found in fruit have vitamins, minerals, and fiber associated with them which help your body to metabolize them properly.

Sugar is a neurotoxin

In a 2010 study, Scott Kanoski, assistant professor of biological sciences at Perdue University in the US, showed that as little as three days of a diet that is high in saturated fat and sugar was enough to change cognition in rats. The Effects of a High-Energy Diet on Hippocampal Function and Blood-Brain Barrier Integrity in the Rat

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3409296/

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/this-is-the-impact-of-sugar-and-fat-on-your-brain

Sugar destroys your liver:

Sugar acts as a chronic, dose-dependent liver toxin (poison) when consumed in excess, according to Dr. Robert Lustig, professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (USCF).

 

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/01/13/sugar-destroys-liver-brain.aspx

Too much fructose can damage your liver, just like too much alcohol

There is growing scientific consensus that the effects of sugar, especially fructose, can be toxic to the liver, just like alcohol.1,2

All carbohydrates contain glucose. Some foods, notably fruits, also contain fructose. Fructose is the sugar that makes fruit taste sweet. For most people, there’s nothing wrong with eating fructose in its natural state, in fruit.

Fructose is sweeter than glucose, so it’s most often used as an added sugar in processed foods, whether in the form of high-fructose corn syrup or just plain old sugar. Fructose is one of the most common types of sugar in the US, Canada, and Mexico.

Sucrose is plain old sugar sucrose: it’s a 50-50 mix of fructose and glucose.

You make high-fructose corn syrup by adding enzymes to cornstarch, a glucose, so it turns into fructose. High-fructose corn syrup contains around 55 percent fructose. It’s an effective sweetener. See the FDA’s article: High Fructose Corn Syrup: FDA Questions and Answers

Manufacturers extract and concentrate fructose from corn, beets and sugarcane. They remove the fiber and nutrients in the process. High doses of fructose are in many processed foods. Unfortunately, many kids and adults eat a variety of processed foods throughout the day. Some people will eat a bag of chocolates and candy in an afternoon. Without fiber to slow it down, the fructose is way too much for our bodies to handle.

A new study, drawing on clinical trials, basic science, and animal studies, finds that fructose is more damaging to health than glucose.

Lucan and DiNicolantonio lay out a series of findings that show the digestive tract doesn’t absorb fructose as well as other sugars. More fructose then goes into the liver. Too much fructose in the liver eventually creates a cascade of metabolic problems that includes fatty liver disease, systemic inflammation, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.

sugar

This issue has been hotly debated, since many say that metabolic problems including diabetes, prediabetes, and obesity stem from eating too many calories, period, or too many calories from sugar regardless of the type.

Fred Brouns, Ph.D., a nutrition professor at the Maastricht University in the Netherlands, has published studies on fructose metabolism. He doesn’t think the evidence supports a claim that the fructose found in a typical American diet deserves to be singled out. It’s never eaten in isolation, for starters.

“Fructose can be detrimental, correct, but only in excessive amounts that are not consumed by the majority of the population. It is unrealistic to put the finger to sugars alone and certainly notto fructose in isolation,” he said in an email.

Michael Goran, Ph.D., a professor of preventive medicine and physiology at the University of Southern California, who has also published papers on fructose, also sees fructose as especially harmful.

31% of American adults and 13% of kids suffer from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

If you watch pre-1980s TV, you will be shocked to see that almost everyone was much thinner in those days.

Nearly all added sugars contain significant amounts of fructose.3 Typical formulations of high-fructose corn syrup contain upwards of 50% fructose, depending on processing methods. Table sugar and even sweeteners that sound healthy, like organic cane sugar, are 50% fructose.

http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/the-toxic-truth/#.WP_NjYjyuUl

UCSF Mini Medical School lecture about sugar by doctor Robert Lustig, MD

Pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig, MD gave a UCSF Mini Medical School lecture about sugar and obesity in July 2009. Over 7 million people have watched the YouTube watched the 90-minute video as of April 2017.

“I have been very gratified by both the volume of the response, and the quality of response that the video has garnered,” says Lustig, who serves as director of UCSF’s Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health, or WATCH, Clinic. “I also have been very touched by the personal testimonials of many patients who have written to me about their own travails.”

In the YouTube video, Lustig argues that the current obesity epidemic can be blamed on a marked increase in the consumption of a type of sugar called fructose over the last 30 years. Fructose is a component of the two most popular sugars: sucrose or table sugar, and high-fructose corn syrup, which has become ubiquitous in soft drinks and many processed foods.

Lustig says that fructose is toxic in large quantities because it is metabolized in the liver in the same way as alcohol, which drives fat storage and makes the brain think it is hungry.

“People are searching for answers to this epidemic that make sense,” he says. “The science of fructose metabolism in the liver and fructose action in the brain turn the normal cycle of energy balance into a vicious cycle of consumption and disease.

“What I have proposed is quite controversial; that our food supply has been adulterated right under our very noses, with our tacit complicity. But I think the public gets it, and the tide is turning.”

Read more about the UCSF Lecture on Sugar & Obesity Goes Viral as Experts Confront Health Crisis at http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2010/03/3222/ucsf-lecture-sugar-and-obesity-goes-viral-experts-confront-health-cri

 

 


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