Truths About Sugar
Delicious stuff with sugar alternatives, including chocolate bars!
My - “Dr. Berkson’s to Die For Chocolate Mousse”…
Sugar
Sugars are hidden in many commercial foods. One must be a sleuth today to avoid them. They are labeled by different names so it’s even confusing to figure out what, if any, sugars are in there.
Companies care about profits. We should care about our health. No one is making you buy that stuff.
Companies put sugars in food to enhance food flavors so we will eat more and buy more. Sugars are now proven to create a transient “high” in some people (more in some than in others) and this contributes to wanting to eat more of what made you high. Though further down the day, you tend to crash. And wonder why? Duh!
I wrote a small easy book called “Retraining Your Tongue” (with graphics for the whole family) based on fighting back against a nation making food choices based mostly on how food tastes. I hoped parents would be encouraged to talk to their kids about eating foods that will watch their physiologic back. Not just eating food because it tastes good.
But what tastes good is learned!
Sugar addiction is trained.
Parents eat foods based on sugary tastes and kids are our best mirrors.
In contrast, kids raised by health-oriented parents who educate them on the benefits of whole foods, tend to enjoy the taste of natural foods.
Natural foods taste MUCH better once you retrain your dumb tongue.
Junk food does not taste good after you get used to the great bling of natural foods. Even though we are wired to avoid tart dangerous things in the ancient wilds, contemporary sugar addiction is an inherited bad habit where the body owner allows the lonely tongue to run the show!
I live in Texas. The Texas palate is greedy for all things sugary. I have to remember to order my salad dressings, in fact, all sauces and dressings, on the side.
Certain manufactured foods and drinks with seemingly 'safe' non-sugar names, such as dried fruit and fruit juice, still often contain “free sugars” (the ones that raise your blood sugar levels). For example, many green drinks, and even kombucha health drinks, are dangerously high in free sugars.
It is all confusing as it is meant to be confusing. THEY want YOU to buy their food. To get addicted to their food. And keep over-eating their food. But it’s you who does the shopping and chewing and swallowing.
It’s not just basic grocery stores. Health food stores can be problematic, too. I was having coffee at Whole Foods and this intelligent engineer who brings his wife in every morning said that he'll eat anything sold at Whole Foods. He doesn’t bother to read labels because he trusts that Whole Foods does all the scrutiny and elbow grease for him. NOT necessarily so.
If you walk through Whole Foods (which I highly appreciate but I still read all ingredient, which is the point) you will be shocked at how many products have added cane sugar (still sugar), rice bran syrup (still sugar but now it’s also high in arsenic), and on and on.
It’s not easy to find foods in health food stores that do not have added sugar. Health food companies want sales, too.
The consumer has to take responsibility. They buy more of what tastes sweeter keeping this crazy cycle spinning.
I had a job writing a whole-page article once a month in the San Francisco Chronicle in California in the 1980s. I wrote an article warning about the upcoming diabetes epidemic. I said we were all eating too much sugar. Add this to our too-large of portions, which are maddened even more by moving too little, and all this spells diabetic risk and woes. I cited study after study.
I got called into my editor’s office. Michael Bauer said, “Devaki, I have good news and bad news. The good news is your article is stellar. The bad news is, you’re fired.”
Turned out the largest advertiser, back then, in the Chronicle, was C&H Sugar.
Medical guidelines say that daily consumption of free sugars should be less than 10% of total energy intake. In the UK they say 5%. I think we should strive for even less than that. Ground zero. You don’t have to be a sugar Nazi, but if you buy things that come in boxes and jars and cans, well, maybe you do.
Here are 10 reasons why you should strive to use stevia, xylitol, or no sugar or sweetener as much as possible:
1. Sugar, over time, ages insulin receptors. These need to remain healthy to prevent diabetes, protect cognition, help prevent cancer, and keep energy levels Zen.
2. Sugar is worse for the cardiovascular system than fat.
3. Sugar is even more the culprit in gout than high protein foods.
4. Sugar feeds cancer cells.
5. Sugar sets up addictive eating habits.
6. Sugar creates dental cavities, obesity, and is even a major etiologic factor in the initiation and progression of osteoarthritis. Too few realize that much of osteoarthritis is secondary to inflammation from sugary blood problems.
7. Sugar makes you lose your common sense with portion control.
8. Overeating sugar makes your hormones work less efficiently and act more cancer-promoting. Especially the behavior of estrogen receptor alpha signaling, which is the main growth signal of estrogens. We need growth. But the body is put at risk if we have more “growth out of control” than “controlled growth.”
Sugar takes the brake off ‘controlled’ growth.
9. Sugar rinses critical B vitamins, especially pyridoxal-5-phosphate (P-5-P), out of the inside of red blood cells. This creates severe issues such as cortisol being out of control. Excessive cortisol causes excess inflammation and fatigue and dings all the other hormones, which all interact as an intimate family.
10. Refined sugar promotes “bad estrogen alpha dominance.” Since excess sugar rinses P-5-P out of the body, this makes the body lose one of its brakes on excess growth. P-5-P is a controller of the duration of ER alpha signaling. Too little P-5-P inside a hormone receptor makes for too long of an estrogen receptor alpha growth signal. It does the same thing with cortisol. Insufficient B vitamins promote excess estrogen and cortisol signaling. Longer duration of these types of signals can promote hormonally driven disorders from PMS to breast cancer in women, to man boobs and prostate cancer in gents.
Alternatives
Too much-refined sugar is not good for anyone. However, plenty of recipes are available that taste amazing and don’t use sugar. They contain healthy sugar alternatives (stevia, a natural sweetener discovered by a doc by that name, promotes better blood sugar control), or simply use the whole fruit, with is healthfully rich in nutrients and fiber.
—Mercola has some stellar bars that contain no sugar.
—Dr. Rita Marie Loscalzos has a great bar with a super level of fiber that I especially enjoy in the AM with a steaming hot cup of organic bold, black coffee. (Post pandemic not sure she is still selling them.)
—Whole Foods sells Lilly’s bars which are killer chocolate bars made with only stevia. One of their bars is both sugar and dairy free and tasty on roids. My best friend Janet thanks me over and over for turning her on to it!
—I publish, several times a year, my Dr. Berkson’s to die for chocolate mousse, sometimes for free. I hosted a webinar with my Live Level Members from my kitchen sharing how to make one of my favorite meals. The replay is accessible to members in the archives. Join my mailing list at my website drlindseyberkson.com for cool stuff like this that goes out. For free! You can find delicious and healthy flaxseed recipes here.
—You can also use whole fruit to sweeten many dishes. Instead of bars, dip walnuts in a dash of maple syrup, one of the healthiest sweet alternatives. I also just love walnuts with a few organic red grapes. Organic tastes better. Especially grapes. At the end of dinner, slices of oranges with hazelnuts, or toothpicks in slices of banana sprinkled with cocoa nibs and hemp seeds.
Be creative - but - eat safer.
Dr. B.
Wonderful, wonderful I do believe sugar is the cause of most of our increasing disease numbers. Thankyou for sharing.