Sugar : Too Much of a Bad Thing
Sugar : Too Much of a Bad Thing
Sugar proponents call it quick energy, opponents say it’s empty calories. To the average American, who consumes a third of a pound of it each day, sugar is mostly an irresistibly good taste. Human societies have long equated sweetness with goodness – sweet mystery of life, sweet smell of success, sweetheart – and that enhances the attraction.
People seem to have an innate “sweet tooth.” If saccharin is injected into the womb, the fetus will increase its swallowing of the sweetened amniotic fluid. Newborn rats given a choice will consume sugar water in preference to a nutritious diet, even to the point of malnutrition and death.
Cited for such evils as distracting youngsters from more nutritious foodstuffs, enhancing obesity, ruining teeth, and possibly contributing to diabetes and heart disease, sugar has become the most maligned of the main components of the American diet. Since many of the more vocal accusers and defenders of sugar have links to industries that stand to benefit from their views, the public is hard put to sort fact from fiction, evidence from opinion.
Sugar, like starch, is a carbohydrate. The many types of sugars inc1ude sucrose (table sugar refined from sugarcane or beets), lactose (milk sugar), fructose (fruit sugar), glucose (blood sugar), dextrose, maltose, and galactose.
Seventy percent of the sugar in today’s American diet is “hidden” in processed foods. Check the labels of the packaged soups, cereals, salad dressings, soft drinks, ketchup, sauces, peanut butter, dessert mixes, and what-have-you in your pantry and see how many list sugar (or corn syrup) as a main ingredient.
At the turn of the century the average American consumed about 77 pounds of sugar a year (65 of them as sucrose), and starches formed two-thirds of American dietary carbohydrates; today sugar consumption hovers around 128 pounds per capita (98 of them as sucrose), and sugar represents more than half the carbohydrate calories and about 20 percent of the total calories eaten by Americans – 500 calories of sugar each day. Even the widespread use of artificial sweeteners has done little to curb Americans’ appetite for sugar.
In relying on processed sucrose-sweetened foods as a main carbohydrate source, Americans may miss the bulk, satiety, and essential nutrients found in other carbohydrate foods like fruits, vegetables, grains, breads, and pasta, which contain fiber, water, vitamins, and minerals as well as calories. Refined sucrose, as such, is nothing but calories (and unrefined sugar doesn’t contain enough trace nutrients to make a difference), and the foods in which it is used most heavily rarely contain enough other nutrients to counter the pejorative label of “empty calories.”
The body has no physiological need for sucrose that cannot be satisfied by other more nutritious foods. The body can convert starches to sugar or use the sugar in fruits and vegetables for energy. In fact, experts in carbohydrate nutrition say that even the purported need for sugar as quick energy is a myth except in a few rare situations, such as a diabetic in insulin shock.
If you eat a concentrated source of sugar on an empty stomach, the level of glucose in the blood rises within half an hour and insulin’ is rapidly released to move the glucose out of the blood and into storage as glycogen in the liver or fatty acids in the fat depots. The blood glucose level falls rapidly, and in two hours it is back to normal
During exercise the body calls upon its reserve of glycogen (and, if that runs out, fatty acids) to supply the muscles with needed energy. If you eat sugar before exercising, your body simply stores it. Only if “slugs” of sugar were consumed intermittently during prolonged, strenuous exercise would they help to maintain an elevated blood sugar level to fuel the muscles.