Few of us can truthfully say they do not love the sweet taste of sugar? It’s not really surprising because you may not have known that this is a reaction hardwired in our brain or that overconsumption can lead over time to serious and even lethal disease.
Sugar has a tarnished history but insidiously is now everywhere and in almost everything. But other than its natural form it’s simply superfluous to the functioning of our bodies. Some experts even say it may be addictive and as a result be contributing to the global problem of obesity.
Its impact on your health is shocking.
Let us begin.
Diabetes, cardiovascular ailments and many other diseases stem from a failure in the body’s metabolic system to function properly. And one of the main causes of this condition is now thought to relate much more to the vastly greater quantities of sugar in all its forms we consume each day. Such thinking is overtaking the customary and outdated warnings to avoid fats and stick to the light and lean.
It’s for this reason you need to be more aware of the blood sugar levels in your body because when you ignore the symptoms the damage can become permanent. And I speak from experience as a Type-2 diabetic with nerve damage in the feet from peripheral neuropathy.
So let us dive a little bit deeper into the world of sugar.
When we hear the word “sugar” no doubt most of us immediately picture those pure white or darkish brown crystals or cubes we put in our tea or coffee. Sometimes we may also see it called sucrose which is a compound of fructose and glucose.
Sugar is a simple carbohydrate found in most refined and processed foods. It differs from the complex carbohydrates found in fruit, legumes, and vegetables. It is a general term that encompasses a whole range of substances that includes fructose, glucose, maltose, galactose, and High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). All have a hardwired attraction to the pleasure and reward center of our brain via our taste buds because of their ability to sweeten.
You might also hear that fiber and starch are sugars. Fiber is also referred to as roughage and helps keep your bowel movements regular. It is found in fruit, vegetables, nuts, and grains. Starch exists in foods such as bread, rice, and potatoes, though some like potatoes contain lesser amounts of fiber too. Both are complex carbohydrates and play an important role in our digestive system. Fiber, unlike other sugars, cannot be broken down for energy, and is expelled intact. Starch, on the other hand, can mostly be broken down for energy use or fat storage. That part that cannot be digested, known as resistant starch, becomes food for your gut bacteria microbiome.
Whether coffee and sugar be really essential to the comfort of Europe, is more than I can say, but I affirm—that these two vegetables have brought wretchedness and misery upon America and Africa. The former is depopulated that Europeans may have a land to plant them in and the latter is stripped of its inhabitants, for hands to cultivate them. – 15 April, 1769 – J. H. Bemardin de Saint Pierre’s Voyage to Isle de France, Isle de Bourbon, The Cape of Good Hope … With New Observations on Nature and Mankind.
This passage, from a French writer and botanist in the eighteenth century, provides a glimpse into how sugar has a past few can now be proud of. The present-day billion-dollar sugar industry has its foundations built upon a history of conflicts and steeped in human abuse that included slavery and indentured labor.
Slavery was common in medieval times. However, in the 18th and 19th centuries the enslavement of Africans was initially the domain of the Catholic nations of Portugal and Spain, but they were soon overtaken by the Protestant British who were to dominate the trade.
During this period it is estimated that between 10 and 12.5 million enslaved African men, women and children survived the inhumane conditions they were subjected to during sea voyages to the New World to then work the sugar cane fields in terrible conditions. Many perished during the voyages and from debilitating work in the fields.
Sugar cane was originally cultivated as a food in New Guinea about ten thousand years ago. But it was in India around 500 B.C. that it was first processed into crystalised form. The Italian explorer Christopher Columbus brought sugar cane to the New World of North and South America in 1493. Thereafter, sugar cane plantations generally flourished from the early sixteenth century onward supplying an insatiable desire for the sweet taste of sugar in Europe and elsewhere and generating conflict between nations.
Since those early times, the global production of sugar has seen an ever-increasing upward trend as demand and access has grown. It was not always as cheap and available as it is today and remained a luxury item solely for the wealthy who ironically suffered from its overuse with blackened and rotting teeth and more than likely what came to be known as diabetes.
“Sweetness and Power – The Place of Sugar in Modern History” by Sydney W. Mintz, published in 1986, is a tour d’horizon of the origins of sugar with a focus on the Caribbean and sugar consumption in Great Britain.
There is also this video from 2004 which is an example of the bias promoted by the sugar industries in showing how sugar is produced from both sugar cane and sugar beet and how it is used today. It offers a superficial look at its origins but skirts issues surrounding the role and extent of slavery. Nor does it elaborate on how it impacts our health. It ends with an assertion that sugar may sweeten our options in the 21st Century and hold the key to extending human life.
How wrong could they have been!
This is a controversial issue.
Almost all of us get a sense of intense pleasure when we taste something sweet. The sensation transmits hardwired signals to the brain’s reward center. This is the opposite of how we generally react to the taste of anything bitter.
Scientists have demonstrated in animal studies that sugar can be an addictive substance. The studies have revealed similarities with drug abuse.
Such findings obviously present a potential threat to the viability of the sugar industry. So it is not surprising that the sugar industry has countered with claims that it is hard to draw meaningful conclusions about the impact on humans from studies that reveal sugar addiction in animals.
However, there is a growing belief that, in what amounts to losing control over their consumption of sugar, humans too have shown typical signs of addiction. And research suggests that many of us can unwittingly develop an addiction to sugar in the form of a craving owing its extraordinary ability to elicit a feeling of instant satisfaction that demands an almost automatic response to want more and more.
The possibility of an addiction-like reaction is highlighted in this article which mentions studies, undertaken over fifteen years by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. These studies show how people who overeat sugar experience neurochemical alterations in the brain similar to those observed in people addicted to alcohol and drugs like morphine. These changes produce an increase in dopamine to an area of the brain associated with the pleasure and reward center and an addiction develops over time from the constant “high” caused by the changes.
Paradoxically, sweetness is still used in the treatment and recovery of alcoholics because consuming sweets may help to suppress alcohol intake.
The use of sugar is ubiquitous. Besides confectionary, jams, and soda drinks, the food industry adds it to all kinds of processed and canned products to make the taste more desirable. Almost everywhere you look you’ll come across most products having a sugar content, even though the packaging might attempt to disguise it. And that is a subject for another day.
Sugar is also used in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. And it may surprise you to learn that it is added to blended cigarette tobacco to ease the process of inhalation by suppressing the natural urge to cough in the presence of smoke.
Sugar has in the past been described as “an innocent moment of pleasure, a balm amid the stress of life”, and was once thought to have medicinal properties. It was prescribed as a palliative to soothe pain by providing a sense of distracting pleasure. Babies react highly favorably to being fed sugared water and sugary products can still calm distressed young children. It is used extensively by parents to that end to this day.
Those who promote sugar, and the associated industries, say that carbohydrates are the primary source of energy for the human body and that the glucose produced from carbohydrate digestion is essential both for the central nervous system to function properly and to fuel the body.
Those assertions have been met with the fact that all sugars are empty carbohydrates which the body does not need. And while it may well be true, as is claimed, that forms of sugar existing naturally in fruits and vegetable have forever been part of what humans have eaten, that is a world away from processed sugars being in the same boat as those naturally occurring.
As a result, many health professionals believe that the information available to the public about sugar is confusing and, in some cases, misleading.
Unlike alcohol, we have become used to sugar consumption having no immediate harmful effects. But its effects are insidious, and they contribute to the growing problem of overweight and obesity.
Dr David Perlmutter, renowned for his books “The Grain Brain” and “Brain Maker”, among other publications, offers a revealing view in this video and this video about of how the consumption of sugar affects your health.
Be prepared to be shocked.