Science of Wellness: Sugar Science
Sugar – it’s not about the calories as much as it is about messing up the way your body operates.
The University of California San Francisco has launched a new site www.sugarscience.org to share scientific research about sugar and its effects on human health. Sugar Science: the Unsweetened Truth has an alarming message. We are usually concerned about sugar as a source of calories that can make us fat. The research shows that too much sugar is toxic and can wear down our internal organs and our cognitive abilities.
- 74% of packaged and processed foods contain added sugar.
- The average American consumes 65 pounds of sugar per year.
This overloading of sugar stresses the pancreas which produces insulin and makes it difficult for the body’s metabolism to operate properly. Fructose, in particular, stresses the liver and can damage it the way alcohol does.
The Sugar Science News Alerts are well worth reading. Some highlights:
- Artificial sweeteners don’t lower your risk of diabetes. They may actually increase it. Jotham Suez in a Nature Journal article showed that artificial sweeteners shift the living organisms in the human gut to those which increase insulin intolerance and favor diabetes.
- Colon cancer survivors raised their risk of their cancer returning if they drank two or more sweetened beverages per day according to an article in the PLOS One Journal.
- About 10% of people get 25% or more of their calories per day from added sugar. These high levels of added sugar intake raise your risk for heart disease even if you are not overweight according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association – Internal Medicine.
