Chances are you already know that eating too much sugar isn’t good for you. Yet you’re probably still overdoing it. Sugary drinks, candy, baked goods, and sweetened dairy are the main sources of added sugar. Added sugars can be hard to spot on nutrition labels since they can be listed under a number of names, such as corn syrup, agave nectar, palm sugar, cane juice, or sucrose.No matter the name, sugar is sugar, and it can negatively affect your body in many ways. Here’s a closer look at how sugar can affect your health negatively.

What effect of sugar makes it harmful?

The amount of sugar a person should consume varies, depending on their sex and age. Sugar appears in our food in many forms, including sucrose, lactose, and fructose. Sweet as it is, it sometimes has a negative impact on our health. Let’s have a look at some of these:

Can Cause Weight Gain- Rates of obesity are rising worldwide and added sugar, especially from sugar-sweetened beverages, is thought to be one of the main culprits. Sugar-sweetened drinks like sodas, juices and sweet teas are loaded with fructose, a type of simple sugar.
Can drain your energy -Because your glucose levels spike and plummet, the unstable blood sugar can leave you experiencing mood swings, fatigue, and headaches. It also contributes to cravings, which begins the cycle of false hunger. By contrast, those who avoid sugar report having fewer cravings while feeling more emotionally balanced and energized.
Sugar affects cognition in children.-Let’s not forget about our little ones! When New York City public schools reduced the amount of sugar in their lunches and breakfasts, their academic ranking increased by 15.7% (previously, the greatest improvement ever is seen had been 1.7%).11 The study also eliminated artificial colors, synthetic flavoring, and two preservatives, showing the importance of natural ingredients for children.
Increases Your Risk of Type 2 Diabetes- There is a clear link between excessive sugar consumption and diabetes risk. Obesity, which is often caused by consuming too much sugar, is considered the strongest risk factor for diabetes.Additionally, prolonged high-sugar consumption drives resistance to insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas that regulates blood sugar levels. Insulin resistance causes blood sugar levels to rise and strongly increases your risk of diabetes.
Your immune function can be affected by sugar.-As if being sick wasn’t bad enough, studies have shown that sugar can interfere with the way your body fights disease. Bacteria and yeast feed on sugar, so excess glucose in the body causes these organisms to build up and cause infections.
A high-sugar diet can lead to chromium deficiency.-Chromium, a trace mineral that helps regulate blood sugar in the body. While it can be found in meats, seafood, and plant foods, 90% of Americans still don’t get enough chromium because of refining searches.6 Other carbohydrates can also rob foods of their chromium supplies, so limiting your carbs is your best bet for increasing those mineral levels.
Sugar accelerates aging.-While you probably know that sugars can affect your body composition, they can also mess with your skin by contributing to wrinkles and sagging. After sugar hits your bloodstream, it attaches to proteins. The mix of these proteins with sugar causes the skin to lose elasticity and leads to premature aging.
Sugar causes tooth decay.-With all the other life-threatening effects of sugar, we sometimes forget the most basic cosmetic damage it does. When it sits on your teeth, sugar causes decay more efficiently than any other food.8 It’s important to brush your teeth at least twice a day to stop sugars from fueling plaque and bacteria.
Sugar can cause gum disease, which can lead to heart disease.-Increasing evidence shows that chronic infections, like those that result from dental problems, play a role in the development of heart disease. It is believed that a connection stems from the body’s inflammatory response to infection. Luckily, this works both ways. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle will decrease your risk of common illnesses, which reduces the chance that they’ll become a more serious condition later on.
Sugar takes the place of important nutrients.- According to USDA data, people who consume the most sugar have the lowest intakes of essential nutrients––especially vitamins A, C, B-12, and calcium. This is because the body needs these vitamins to process the sugar which results in the body using up its reserves and therefore “negative calories” and loss of vitamins occur.The trade-off is especially dangerous for children and teens, because they simultaneously consume the most sugar and need the most nutrients.
May Increase Your Risk of Heart Disease.-High-sugar diets have been associated with an increased risk of many diseases, including heart disease, the number one cause of death worldwide. Evidence suggests that high-sugar diets can lead to obesity, inflammation and high triglyceride, blood sugar, and blood pressure levels — all risk factors for heart disease.Additionally, consuming too much sugar, especially from sugar-sweetened drinks, has been linked to atherosclerosis, a disease characterized by fatty, artery-clogging deposits.
Can cause Acne. Foods with a high glycemic index, such as processed sweets, raise your blood sugar more rapidly than foods with a lower glycemic index. Sugary foods quickly spike blood sugar and insulin levels, causing increased androgen secretion, oil production, and inflammation, all of which play a role in acne development.
May Increase Your Risk of Cancer.-Eating excessive amounts of sugar may increase your risk of developing certain cancers.First, a diet rich in sugary foods and beverages can lead to obesity, which significantly raises your risk of cancer.Furthermore, diets high in sugar increase inflammation in your body and may cause insulin resistance, both of which increase cancer risk
Can Accelerate the Skin Aging Process.-Wrinkles are a natural sign of aging. They appear eventually, regardless of your health. However, poor food choices can worsen wrinkles and speed the skin aging process.
Increase kidney disease risk.-Having consistently high blood sugar levels can cause damage to the delicate blood vessels in your kidneys. This can lead to an increased risk of kidney disease.
Increase the risk of developing gout. Gout is an inflammatory condition characterized by pain in the joints. Added sugars raise uric acid levels in the blood, increasing the risk of developing or worsening gout.
Accelerate cognitive decline: High-sugar diets can lead to impaired memory and have been linked to an increased risk of dementia.

How can you reduce your sugar intake?

Because excessive added sugar has many negative health effects and consuming small amounts now and then is perfectly healthy, you should try to cut back on sugar whenever possible. Simply focusing on eating whole, unprocessed foods automatically decreases the amount of sugar in your diet has huge gains.

Tips on how to reduce your intake of added sugars:

Swap sodas, energy drinks, juices and sweetened teas for water or unsweetened seltzer.
Drink your coffee black or use Stevia for a zero-calorie, natural sweetener.
Sweeten plain yogurt with fresh or frozen berries instead of buying flavored, sugar-loaded yogurt.
Consume whole fruits instead of sugar-sweetened fruit smoothies.
Replace candy with a homemade trail mix of fruit, nuts and a few dark chocolate chips.
Use olive oil and vinegar in place of sweet salad dressings like honey mustard.
Choose marinades, nut butter, ketchup and marinara sauce with zero added sugars.
Look for cereals, granolas and granola bars with under 4 grams of sugar per serving.
Swap your morning cereal for a bowl of rolled oats topped with nut butter and fresh berries, or an omelet made with fresh greens.
Instead of jelly, slice fresh bananas onto your peanut butter sandwich.
Use natural nut butter in place of sweet spreads like Nutella.
Avoid alcoholic beverages that are sweetened with soda, juice, honey, sugar or agave.
Shop the perimeter of the grocery store, focusing on fresh, whole ingredients.
Eating fruit can help ensure a person gets enough fiber, vitamins, and minerals. However many fruits are high in natural sugars and may not be suitable for those looking to lower their sugar intake. Some low-sugar fruits include strawberries, peaches, blackberries, lemons, limes, honeydew melon, oranges, and grapefruit.

Should we stop taking sugar?

Sugar is not unhealthful in itself. However, having excess sugar in the diet can cause a range of conditions, including heart disease, weight gain, and diabetes. To be aware of added sugars in food products, it is important to read labels carefully. Also, eliminating sugar from the diet can help prevent weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, and other problems. For these reasons, added sugar should be kept to a minimum whenever possible, which is easy when you follow a healthy diet based on whole foods.

If you need to cut added sugar from your diet, try some of the small changes listed above. You will slowly realize that you don’t need as much sugar as you once did.

References

Healthline(2018):11 Reasons Why Too Much Sugar Is Bad for You. Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/too-much-sugar#section2
Atkins (2019): 10 Reasons Why Sugar Is Bad for Your Health, Retrieved from https://www.atkins.com/how-it-works/library/articles/10-ways-sugar-harms-your-health
WebMD: How Does Too Much Sugar Affect Your Body? Retrieved from https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/features/how-sugar-affects-your-body
Medical News Today (2019): 5 reasons why sugar is bad for you. Retrieved from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324854.php

If type 2 diabetes were an infectious disease, it is said we would be in the midst of an epidemic. This problematic disease is striking an ever-growing number of adults. With the rising rates of childhood obesity, it has become more common in youth, especially among certain ethnic groups. The good news is that prediabetes and Type 2 Diabetes are largely preventable. About 9 in 10 cases in the U.S. can be avoided by making lifestyle changes. These changes can also lower the chances of developing heart disease and some cancers. In this article, we will look at diet as a means to prevent and regulate T2DM.

How does what you eat affect you?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of every three American adults has prediabetes; that is 86 million people. Without intervention, up to one-third of them will go on to develop type 2 diabetes within five years

Is everything lost? Not at all! Lifestyle changes can help. While excess body fat is a recognized risk factor for diabetes (and weight loss is an important way to lower risk), specific diet patterns and foods seem to decrease or increase risk, independent of weight. The latest research suggests that diabetes risk (as well as the risk of heart disease and stroke) is largely influenced not by single nutrients but by specific foods and overall diet patterns.

Poor diet quality may influence weight and metabolic risk independent of calories: Different types of foods have different effects on satiety, glucose-insulin responses, liver fat synthesis, fat-cell function, craving and reward responses in the brain, and the creation of visceral fat.

So, which foods lower the risk of getting Type 2 Diabetes?

We will discuss in some detail everyday food that might either aid in the prevention of diabetes or accelerate your progress towards it. When you are making the decision of what to eat, choose wisely.

Choose high-fiber, slow-release carbs

Carbohydrates have a big impact on your blood sugar levels—more so than fats and proteins—so you need to be smart about what types of carbs you eat. Limit refined carbohydrates like white bread, pasta, and rice, as well as soda, candy, packaged meals, and snack foods. Focus on high-fiber complex carbohydrates—also known as slow-release carbs. They are digested more slowly, thus preventing your body from producing too much insulin.

Eat more plant foods.
Minimally processed plant foods such as fruits, non-starchy vegetables, legumes, and nuts/seeds are consistently linked to better cardio-metabolic outcomes, including decreased diabetes risk.
How about proteins?
While they have been studied to different extents, meat, poultry, eggs, fish, and dairy protein sources appear to impact diabetes risk differently.

In their 2011 meta-analysis, Pan and colleagues determined that red meat consumption, particularly processed red meat, is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and suggested that substituting one serving of nuts, low-fat dairy, and whole grains per day for one serving of red meat would lower diabetes risk by 16% to 35%.

4. Are fats bad for you?
Most research on fats typically looks at their impact on cardiovascular, not diabetes, risk, and fats’ association with diabetes risk is in need of clarification. Recent evidence suggests that the quality of fats consumed in the diet is more important than the total quantity of dietary fat. Some researchers point out that the source of fat is important, and possibly confounding, in studies looking at total fat intake and health effects. Although some results are controversial, it’s important to be aware of and keep an eye on emerging research. Some recent study findings include the following:

A Mediterranean dietary pattern, which is relatively high in monounsaturated fats, may help prevent type 2 diabetes.
High vegetable fat intake may decrease type 2 diabetes risk in females.
Intake of high-fat, but not low-fat, dairy products is associated with a decrease in type 2 diabetes risk.
EPA+DHA seems to provide neither harm nor benefits with regard to diabetes development. The omega-3 fatty acid ALA (alpha-linolenic acid) may be associated with modestly lower risk.10

Since fat is calorically dense (9 kcal/g as opposed to 4 kcal/g for protein or carbohydrate), it’s often the focus of weight-loss diets.

Should you take beverages?
What to drink is a choice we make every day. It is important to get into healthy drinking habits.

100% fruit juices are generally considered safe, as long as the serving is kept to one a day.
Both coffee (caffeinated and decaffeinated) and tea are associated with a lower risk of diabetes.
There’s strong evidence that moderate alcohol use is associated with lower diabetes risk across diverse populations, but people who don’t currently drink alcohol shouldn’t be encouraged to do so, and drinkers should limit themselves to up to two drinks per day for men and one to 1.5 for women.

So, In Summary…..

Eat more

Healthy fats from nuts, olive oil, fish oils, flax seeds, or avocados
Fruits and vegetables—ideally fresh, the more colorful the better; whole fruit rather than juices
High-fiber cereals and bread made from whole grains
Fish and shellfish, organic chicken or turkey
High-quality protein such as eggs, beans, low-fat dairy, and unsweetened yogurt

Eat less

Trans fats from partially hydrogenated or deep-fried foods
Packaged and fast foods, especially those high in sugar, baked goods, sweets, chips, desserts
White bread, sugary cereals, refined pasta or rice
Processed meat and red meat
Low-fat products that have replaced fat with added sugar, such as fat-free yogurt

How to eat healthy on a normal diet

It is easier to adopt a healthy eating lifestyle than to go on a diet. A good dietary pattern to lower diabetes risk would limit red and processed meats, refined grains, sweets and Soda, and emphasize plant foods like whole grains, nuts, fruits, and leafy green vegetables. Evidence supports including coffee, tea, yogurt, vegetable fats, and possibly cheese.

Working with a dietary pattern instead of focusing on individual nutrients or “superfoods” (or vilifying particular food groups) allows greater flexibility for you. It lets you choose foods you like at times that are convenient for you.

Given the health advantages of plant foods like leafy greens and whole grains and their association with reduced diabetes risk, you should ensure your diet pattern includes a healthy serving of them at all times.

References:

Today’s dietician (2017): Diabetes Management & Nutrition Guide: Foods and Eating Patterns for Diabetes Prevention. Retrieved from https://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/0717p40.shtml

Harvard School of Public Health (2019): Simple Steps to Preventing Diabetes. Retrieved from https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/disease-prevention/diabetes-prevention/preventing-diabetes-full-story/

Health Guide (2018): The Diabetic Diet. Retrieved from https://www.helpguide.org/articles/diets/the-diabetes-diet.htm

In the United States, we have a malnutrition crisis, but it’s not caused by people not having enough to eat. Just as assuredly people died of famine in the past, they now die of excess eating. It’s just not as compelling to put an 85-pound four-year-old in an advertisement for Save the Children.

This malnutrition from excess is a leading cause of poor health and spiraling health care spending and causes nearly 1,000 deaths each day in the United States from heart disease, stroke, or diabetes. The conservative estimates of direct and indirect costs of chronic diseases as a result of obesity were $1.72 trillion in 2016 — almost 10 percent of the nation’s GDP. Just as a comparison, total healthcare expenses were approximately $3.5 trillion or 17.6% of GDP; diseases of obesity are over half of the healthcare expenses.

Additionally, obesity is the greatest contributor to the burden of chronic diseases in the US, accounting for 47.1 percent of the total cost of chronic diseases nationwide.

JAMA. 2017;317(9):912-924. doi:10.1001/jama.2017.0947

https://www.milkeninstitute.org/publications/view/944

https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html

A “research” investment of the 1960s might have led to selling more sugar, but it also might have led to accidentally sickening more than half the population. One of the sugar industry scientists eventually went on to play a prominent role in American dietary guidelines and nutrition philosophy.

In the 1960s, the sugar industry paid three Harvard scientists to publish a review of research on sugar vs. fat and their effects on heart disease. The Sugar Association paid the scientists the equivalent of about $50,000 and cherry-picked the research included in the review, resulting in a biased article published in the New England Journal of Medicine stating that fat, rather than sugar, was the main culprit behind heart disease.

One of the scientists, Dr. D. Mark Hegsted, went on to become head of nutrition at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he assisted in drafting what would become the country’s dietary guidelines. This manipulation by the food companies in nutrition science resulted in a long-term deleterious effect for the US, with likely millions of premature deaths and trillions of dollars wasted in healthcare.

Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents. Cristin E. Kearns, DDS, MBA; Laura A. Schmidt, Ph.D., MSW, MPH; Stanton A. Glantz, Ph.D. JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(11):1680-1685. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.5394

Why Is Sugar Bad For Your Health?