The sugar trap: part one

Forget diets: the real reason we are putting on weight is all the sweet stuff hidden in our food. Cut it out and watch the pounds slip away

Calgary Avansino

The number one new year’s resolution is to lose weight, and yet we are failing spectacularly. Despite the growing list of diets — from Atkins and Caveman to the fasting or 5:2 diet — none of them ever seems to work, or work long term. Instead, we are getting fatter. There are now 1bn overweight adults worldwide, and 300m of them are clinically obese. In Britain, a 2012 NHS survey found that more than a quarter of all adults in England are obese — rates that have risen threefold since 1980. Increasingly, however, experts here and in America are beginning to wise up to the real culprit behind our ever-increasing girths. Rather than fat, as was originally thought, it is sugar that is the biggest threat to our health. As our sugar consumption has increased, so has our weight, and the more we eat, the more unwell and overweight we become.

The NHS reckons the average person in Britain now consumes about 700g of sugar a week — that’s 140 teaspoons. Experts say our bodies are designed to handle only half that or less a week. If you really want to look and feel better in 2014, then forget about following a diet: make quitting sugar your new year’s resolution. So what exactly is this socially acceptable drug; why is it making us increasingly overweight and unwell; and why can’t we stop eating it?

Any ingredient that ends in “ose” is a sugar, and there’s a mighty long list of them: glucose, fructose, dextrose, maltose, sucrose, lactose and high-fructose corn syrup. The white granulated sugar you put in tea is harvested and refined from sugar beets and sugar cane and, like all other sugars, it has absolutely no nutritional value — no proteins, no essential fats, no vitamins or minerals. These “oses” are the emptiest of empty calories. It’s just pure, refined energy. It contains a whole bunch of calories and nothing else.

When we eat any form of sugar, the body deals with it in one of two ways. Either we burn it off as energy — but, given the amount of sugar the average person now consumes, it is impossible to expend it through activity unless you are Mo Farah (and I guarantee you he limits his sugar intake) — or, if it isn’t burnt off, it is converted into fat by the liver and stored directly in the fat cells.

The nutritionist Amelia Freer says: “If the amount of glucose in the bloodstream is above the body’s comfort zone of about 1½tsp-2 tsp at any one time — one regular can of Coke has 9 tsp — then the hormone insulin gets produced to chauffeur the excess glucose out of the blood and store it as fat. Elevated levels of insulin circulating in our bodies can be detrimental to our long-term health. Our cells can become less responsive to the presence of insulin, meaning our bodies keep needing to produce more and more insulin to get the same reaction. Eventually the cells stop responding at all. This is type 2 diabetes.”

Dr Robert Lustig, author of Fat Chance, says: “In 2011, there were 366m diabetics in the world — more than double the number in 1980.” Furthermore, the Center for Science in the Public Interest in America reports that “sugar consumption has increased by 28% since 1983, with many individual foods providing large fractions of the US Department of Agriculture’s recommended sugar limits”. 

How much sugar should we eat?

Most health organisations recommend that people limit themselves to 10 tsp (40g) of added sugars a day, but many researchers say it should be as low as 6 tsp for women and 8 tsp for men. Teaspoons are a much easier measurement to visualise than grams, so lock this easy equation in your head: divide the number of grams by four to get the number of teaspoons. To put that in perspective: a regular Snickers bar contains 27g or about 7 tsp sugar, a 330ml can of Coke has 35g or 9 tsp of sugar, three Oreos have 14g or 3½ tsp, and a chocolate-glazed Krispy Kreme doughnut has 26g or 6½ tsp of sugar.

We shouldn’t eat manufactured sugar bombs like that, full stop. Any food with sugar in the first three ingredients is a bad idea. Sadly, it’s not as simple as cutting out foods that you know are packed with sugar. Lustig (whose YouTube video Sugar: The Bitter Truth is well worth watching) says: “The food industry has contaminated the food supply with added sugar to sell more products and increase profits. Of the 600,000 food items in American grocery stores, 80% have been spiked with added sugar; and the industry uses 56 other names for sugar on the labels. They know when they add sugar, you buy more. And because you do not know you’re buying it, you buy even more.”

So, are we actually physically addicted to the sweet stuff? Most nutritionists respond to that question with: “Try giving it up and then tell me what you think.” The chairman of the Functional Medicine Institute, Dr Mark Hyman, believes we are. “The slick combinations of sugar, fat and salt in junk and processed food have hijacked our tastebuds, brain chemistry and metabolism. These foods are biologically addictive. We are held hostage by the food industry and yet we blame ourselves for not having willpower,” he says. “One animal study found that sugar is more addictive than cocaine. When rats were given the choice between cocaine or sweetened water, scientists found that most rats preferred the sweetened water. Even the rats who initially preferred cocaine switched over.”

Sugar improves our mood by prompting the brain to release the “happy” hormone serotonin, which is exactly why we turn to it when we are happy and celebrating, but also when we are sad, lonely or tired. The problem is that what goes up must come down, and those inevitable sugar crashes just make us crave more sugar and encourage a cycle of binge eating that makes us increasingly overweight and unwell.

Beware the hidden sugar

The nutritionist and naturopath Rhian Stephenson tells her clients to check all labels of canned vegetables, breads, sauces, preprepared foods and so-called “health” foods carefully. “If sugar, or a sugar pseudonym, is one of the first three ingredients, steer clear.” Even though it is a long list, it is important that you acquaint yourself with the vocabulary, much of which is made to sound healthy, organic and pure. The most common terms are: barley malt syrup, beet sugar, brown rice syrup, rice syrup, cane crystals, coconut sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, crystalline fructose, dextrin, evaporated cane juice, fruit juice concentrate, fruit purée, fruit pulp, agave, molasses, organic evaporated cane juice, palm sugar, raw sugar, saccharose, sorghum, treacle, turbinado sugar and xylose.

Sugar is often present in foods you don’t even associate with sweetness: pasta sauces, canned salmon, breaded fishfingers, porridge, fruit yoghurt and bouillon cubes. I could scarcely find a breakfast cereal, a deli meat or an Asian cooking sauce that wasn’t loaded with added sugar. And that’s before I got to the plethora of “healthy”, “organic” and “light” products that are boosted with sugar to compensate for the lack of fat. The American dietician Susan Burke-March warns: “Just because a food is labelled ‘low fat’ or ‘fat-free’ does not make it calorie-free; manufacturers add sugar to increase the texture and bulk lost by removing fat.”

Jenna Zoe, author of Super Healthy Snacks and Treats, says: “Craving sugary foods doesn’t make you a weak human being. We are programmed to opt for sweet foods because, in nature, sweetness is a sign that foods are safe to eat; it meant that early man chose juicy fruit over poisonous plants that are bitter in taste. The problem arises with processed foods, because sweeteners are used in conjunction with junky fats or hydrogenated oils. This is where the addictiveness is created. In nature, sugars and fats are not often found in the same foods.”

Alcohol

The sugar content of alcoholic drinks varies greatly. Dry white wine and red wine have a relatively low fructose content, while dessert wine and champagne contain more. Stay away from mixed drinks, which are usually laced with sugary syrups and sodas. If you must indulge in spirits, choose a “clean” mixer such as sparkling water or fresh lemon juice.

The author David Gillespie says in his book The Sweet Poison Quit Plan: “Alcoholic drinks are OK for the recovering sugarholic as long as they don’t taste sweet and are not mixed with other drinks that contain sugar. You can keep the dry wines, beers and spirits, but you need to toss out the dessert wines, ports, sweet sherries, liqueurs and mixers.” But remember: all alcohol is calorie dense, so if you want to lose weight, drink as little alcohol as possible. 

Carbohydrates are sugar too

Starches and carbohydrates are more of the same, I’m afraid. Our bodies process certain types of carbohydrates (the white, refined kinds) in a similar way to pure sugar, and they create an equally powerful endorphin response, making us want them more and more. The author of Grain Brain, Dr David Perlmutter, says: “During the course of digestion, carbohydrates are broken down and sugar is liberated into the bloodstream, causing the pancreas to increase its output of insulin so glucose can penetrate cells. The carbs that trigger the biggest surge in blood sugar are typically the most fattening, for that very reason. They include anything made with refined flour such as breads and cereals; starches such as rice, potatoes and corn; and liquid carbs such as soda and fruit juice.”

The scientists at Harvard School of Public Health explain: “The glycemic index ranks carbohydrates on a scale from 0 to 100, based on how quickly and by how much they raise blood-sugar levels after eating. Foods with a high glycemic index, such as white bread, are rapidly digested and cause substantial fluctuations in blood sugar. Foods with a low glycemic index, such as whole oats, are digested more slowly, prompting a more gradual rise in blood sugar.”

Eating too many high-glycemic foods may lead to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, some forms of ovulatory infertility and colorectal cancer.

A piece of toast is no longer just a piece of toast. Carbs such as white bread, white rice, pretzels, crackers and bagels are high on the glycemic index, while rye bread, pumpernickel bread, rolled oats, barley and quinoa fall in the low range. So although all carbohydrates are converted into sugar when digested, some are converted into more sugar than others. However, this doesn’t mean a bread-free life for ever. Try experimenting with new flours such as almond flour, coconut flour, quinoa flour and flaxmeal.

During the initial sugar-free week of our plan, however, try to resist carbohydrates as much as humanly possible. If you do feel the need for carbs, choose the good ones: brown rice, rolled oats, millet, quinoa, buckwheat, wild rice, bulgur and rye.

How to calculate sugar consumption

Most health organisations recommend that people limit themselves to 10 tsp (40g) of added sugar a day, but many researchers say it should be 6 tsp for women and 8 tsp for men. Teaspoons are easier to visualise than grams, so remember this easy equation: to get the number of teaspoons, divide the number of grams by four. So, a regular Snickers bar contains 30g or about 7 tsp of sugar, a 330ml can of Coke has 35g or 9 tsp of sugar. We shouldn’t eat or drink manufactured sugar bombs, full stop. Any food with sugar in the first three ingredients is a bad idea. Avoid foods with more than 10g of sugar per portion.

The truth about fruit

Fruit is not fundamentally bad for us, but the amount we are eating can be detrimental. In The Sweet Poison Quit Plan, the author David Gillespie recommends that adults eat only two pieces of fruit a day and children only one. Fruit containing higher amounts of fibre and lower quantities of fructose such as kiwis, apples, grapefruit, blackberries, pears, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and lemons are the best choices, while bananas, watermelon, pineapple, mangoes, papayas and grapes should be avoided.

None of this matters when it comes to fruit juice, as it’s all bad. When fruit is juiced, any positives are squeezed out and all that’s left is sugar, water and a bit of vitamin C. Dried fruit is even worse and often contains nearly 70% sugar.

The author of Grain Brain, Dr David Perlmutter, says: “Our caveman ancestors did eat fruit, but not every day of the year. A medium-size apple contains 44 calories of sugar in a fibre-rich blend thanks to the pectin. If you juice several apples and concentrate the liquid down, you get a blast of 85 sugar calories.”

If you want to think about it in terms of grams (as a benchmark a 330ml can of Coca-Cola has 35g of sugar), the average glass of orange juice has 21g of sugar, apple juice 28g, cranberry juice 37g and grape juice 38g, and many bottled fruit smoothies contain between 20g and 35g of sugar. All of which says we shouldn’t be starting our mornings or hydrating our kids with fruit juice.

However, the Plenish Cleanse founder, Kara Rosen, reassures us that not all juice is evil. “The new juice taking the market by storm is cold-pressed vegetable juice, particularly green juices made up of ingredients such as cucumber, spinach, kale, broccoli and lettuce and low-glycemic-index fruit such as pears. The sugar content is lower than conventional juices, and due to the cold-press juice extraction method, they have other nutritional benefits.” So, go green or go water.

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/

Graham