A Sweet Tale
Sugar Versus Sweeteners
How wicked are they?
Nutrition has been a huge interest of mine since I was in my early 20s — that’s a while ago! I have earned a diploma in the topic and have worked in health food retail. And in my experience, it appears many people have a love/hate relationship with sugar. Personally, I think that too much of anything is not necessarily a good thing. But maybe a little of the sweet stuff is better than a lot of sweeteners? Let’s take a look…
A Taste of Sugar
Sugar is a simple carbohydrate. It provides a very rapid source of energy as the body digests and assimilates it quickly. However, eating too much may cause health problems.
One such drawback is tooth decay. The more often you’re eating sugary foods the more you give the bacterium in your mouth time to go to work on the sugar.
This creates an acid that can attack the enamel of your teeth.
Until I was in my early 20s I thought I couldn’t do without 2 sugars in my coffee. Then, I started a new job where the same person made the drinks every day. Gradually, without me realising, he cut down on the sugar in my drink until one day he turned round and asked if I had enjoyed my coffee. I thanked him and replied in the affirmative. He explained I now took my coffee without sugar and I would be a lot better for it. The whole process had taken a month or so. Perhaps I should have been annoyed with him for taking control of what I was consuming? I wasn’t — it seemed he had done me a favour.
Sugary Health Problems
The nutritional goodness in sugar is negligible. This is why sugar is seen as empty calories. Eating sugary products frequently can lead to sugar cravings — and to an unhealthy diet as the person begins to substitute good nutritious foods for processed sugary products.
Consuming too much sugar will lead a person to put on weight as any carbs not used for energy are converted to fat on the body
Furthermore, too much sugar may contribute to the cause of type 2 diabetes because it affects how a body handles insulin — this is a hormone which helps turn food into energy.
Type 2 diabetes is a common condition that causes the level of sugar (glucose) in the blood to become too high.
The above reasons may make you consider passing on that piece of chocolate cake, or sway you to cut out the sugar in your tea. But, at the end of the day, sugar is a natural product. While I am not suggesting you gorge on sugary foods, in moderation it will not cause you too much harm. What’s more, in my opinion, sugar is far better for you than the artificial sweeteners that society has encouraged us to use instead.
Artificial Sweeteners
There is increasing evidence that artificial sweeteners, contained in a good deal of low sugar or zero sugar products, may be a cause of weight gain — the one thing they are meant to prevent. Artificial sweeteners basically trick the body into thinking it’s going to receive sugar (calories). When that doesn’t arrive, the body continues to signal that it needs more. This results in carb cravings and further eating.
Sweeteners, like sugars, have also been linked to diabetes. This is because they disrupt the intestinal microflora, causing glucose intolerance. This is a well known precursor to diabetes. But not only that, Aspartame in particular appears to be connected to other serious health problems.
Aspartame messes with your head
Aspartame is a chemical substance which contains excitotoxins. This can cause brain neurons to fire spasmodically.
Excitotoxins are a class of chemicals (usually amino acids) that overstimulate neuron receptors. Neuron receptors allow brain cells to communicate with each other, but when they’re exposed to excitotoxins, they fire impulses at such a rapid rate that they become exhausted.
The result of long term use can be migraines and possibly epileptic seizures.
Please be aware that Aspartame can trigger seizures in some children, due to the fact that it excites the brain cells. Each time I gave Daisy something with this product in she would seize within half an hour of eating/drinking it.
I had noted a rise in epilepsy within young people before becoming aware of this information. Looking back to my own childhood, I hadn’t known anyone with that condition until I was 18. But both my children had at least two close friends with epilepsy at primary school.
In 2016, California was considering adding Aspartame to their Proposition 65 list.
The list contains a wide range of naturally occurring and synthetic chemicals that are known to cause cancer or birth defects. OEHHA
But, as yet, have not done so.
Here’s, the science that was behind California’s concerns. The methanol (toxic fluid) in aspartame is bound weakly to the phenylalanine (amino acid) and breaks easily during digestion. Once released, your body converts the methanol to formaldehyde, one of the ingredients in embalming fluid.
Formaldehyde is known to be a carcinogen and a deadly neuro-toxin
Concluding
I have often wondered why over the last 30 years or so we have been led by the media and health professionals to believe sweeteners were better than sugar. Maybe this is simply down to business — it is relatively easy to produce sweeteners in a laboratory, whereas growing, harvesting and refining sugar is an arduous process.
I expect it would be healthy to have neither…
Whatever the answer — and however much I am told that sugar is bad for me — I’ll take my chances and enjoy that occasional slice of lemon drizzle cake. After all…
a little of what you fancy does you good!
Sources — Some are contained within the article. Others can be found here…
This post is linked to the Mmm Monday meme.
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