Dear Health-Conscious Reader,
Ever feel a little bit naughty and reach for the sugar to add it to your morning yogurt, bowl of fruit, cup of coffee or afternoon snack for a decadent little sugar rush? You’re not alone.
Eating is an emotional experience for most people. And modern diet advice takes all the fun out of eating. Take the advice of a nutritionist or diet guru and you’ll feel like you’ve been locked away in a dungeon somewhere and you’re only allowed to eat gruel.
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My basic philosophy of eating is to eat foods that you enjoy in their natural, unadulterated forms. That means for the most part, natural sugars are good, and man-made sugars are bad.
And I hate to ruin all the fun, but refined sugar is not natural. Take a look at the chart to the right and you’ll see all the steps it takes to make the white stuff. Not exactly straight from the field to your table.
And eating a lot of it can be dangerous. For the short rush you may get from eating it, you’re exposing yourself to dozens of health threats.
- Sugary foods could make you go blind.
In a study published in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science last year, researchers in Australia found that a high-glycemic diet increases cataract risk. They looked at the eating habits of more than 1,600 people and found that the ones who ate the most carbohydrates more than tripled their risk for cataracts.1
- Sugar will leech essential minerals right out of your system.
A can of soda has around nine teaspoons of processed sugar. But as little as two teaspoons of sugar throws off the natural balance of minerals in your blood. Starting with depleting chromium, the mineral that helps your insulin process all that sugar in the first place.
- Sugary foods make your calcium go up, and your phosphorous go down, which can lead to calcium toxicity. You can get kidney stones, gall stones, arthritis and hardening of the arteries.
- Sugar reduces zinc absorption. Your body needs zinc for your immune system to work right.
I remember reading a study that found eating only three ounces of sugar during a meal or snack almost stops white blood cells from being able to destroy bacteria and viruses.2 And that’s ALL sugars – fructose, glucose or sucrose. This immune suppression starts about 30 minutes after you eat the sugar and can last for up to five hours.
What may be even worse is that when you don’t have enough zinc, you can start to lose your sense of taste. That makes you want foods with more sugar and flavorings to make up for it, diminishing your taste sensation even more. It becomes a vicious cycle.
- Too much sugar in your food can shrink your bones.
In an animal study, they took bone building cells (osteoblasts) and dosed them with sugar (glucose). The more sugar they gave the cells that are supposed to build your bones, the more damage it did. There was less cell growth, more cell death, reduced activity of ALP (an enzyme that helps build bone), less calcium absorption and more free-radical damage.3
Another study found that refined sugar stimulates your adrenal glands to unnaturally release a cascade of hormones that can adversely affect your behavior.4
And all those “low fat” foods flying off store shelves just make it worse. The advertising and labels seem to promise that they’re better for you because they’re “fat free.”
Do you know what they replaced the fat with?
Sugar.
Many reduced fat and fat-free foods are basically the original food with the fat removed but with refined sugar added. Eat the reduced fat food and you’re taking in more sugar without even knowing it.
And “health” drinks are the worst. These things have heaping servings of refined sugar in them. The name “Vitamin Water” sure sounds healthy, until you see that a bottle has 32 grams of sugar. That’s like 8 sugar packets.
SoBe Green Tea seems like it should be healthy. It’s green tea, right?
Sixty one grams of sugar per bottle. That’s like eating four slices of cherry pie!
But what are you going to do, make all your food and drinks bland and tasteless? Then you will be eating like you’re trapped in a dungeon.
Fortunately, not everything that’s sweet is the enemy.
I’ve traveled all over the world looking for natural products I can bring back to my clinic to help my patients. And along the way I’ve found some delicious and healthy alternatives to refined cane sugar that don’t spike your blood sugar and cause health disasters.
One thing to remember is that no matter what their makers say, Rapadura, Panela, Sucanat, Muscavado, Turbinado, Jaggery, palm sugar and “organic raw” sugar act the same in your body as plain old cane sugar. They’re less refined, so they may still have some minerals in them, but does anyone eat sugar for its health benefits?
Here are some you’ve probably never heard of, but that I recommend to sweeten your foods and drinks:
Save Your Stomach With Peru’s Favorite Sugar – When I was traveling in the mountains of Peru I learned about Yacon, a fruit-like vegetable called the “jewel of the Andes.” Ancient Incas used to eat the roots for endurance and to keep from getting thirsty.
Yacon is good for diabetics because it has fructooligosaccharides, a kind of sugar you can’t digest, so it doesn’t affect blood sugar. But what I like about it is that yacon has inulin, a prebiotic. It helps you digest other foods and enhances immunity because it promotes beneficial bacteria in your intestines.5 It has an apple/caramel/honey flavor that you can try as a dressing, or add it to your morning coffee or tea.
Discover Incan “Gold” – Lucuma is a fruit grown in the high valleys along the coast of Peru and its sugar tastes sort of like maple syrup. But where maple syrup has to be heated and processed to get maple sugar, lucuma is just dried and ground. So it keeps all its nutrients and antioxidants.
Lucuma was called “Gold of the Incas.” In South America they use it to make ice cream, and to sweeten milk. But you can also add it to water to make juice, or even use it as a sugar replacement when you bake. They grow some in Hawaii and California now, but you can find authentic lucuma in a Peruvian restaurant or a Latin market near you.
Protect Yourself With Sugar? – Erythritol has a chemical-sounding name, but it’s really just a type of sugar alcohol, or polyol which occurs naturally in fruits and vegetables. It’s easy to digest, yet it’s not metabolized by your body. That means it’s teeth-friendly, and blood sugar friendly.
Erythritol also has another benefit… it’s an antioxidant. Studies show it has a protective effect against oxidative stress on the lining of your blood vessels.6
I don’t think erythritol’s polyol cousin xylitol is too bad. But some studies have shown problems at high doses. Also, a lot of what you can buy at the store is overly processed, and made cheaply from Chinese corn instead of from its real source – the xylan fiber of the birch tree. Stick with erythritol.
Use China’s Ancient Sugar – Momordica (Luo Han Guo) is a low-glycemic sugar substitute that’s almost unknown in America, but it’s 250-300 times sweeter than sugar and loaded with vitamin C. The Chinese have been using the dark brown juice from the fruit they call the “longevity fruit” for thousands of years.
Like honey, studies show that powder from momordica helps heal cuts and wounds.7 It can also help keep your teeth healthy. It’s a zero on the glycemic index, and has a little bit of a caramel flavor, so it tastes great in tea.
Try The All-American Sweetener – Folks in the southern United States have been making syrup from sweet sorghum stalks for almost 300 years.8 They use sorghum syrup as a substitute for sugar and to brew gluten-free beer.
Sorghum syrup is full of vitamin B6, iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium and selenium. But maybe the best thing about sorghum syrup is that you don’t have to put it in the refrigerator, and it won’t mold. And if it crystallizes like honey, just heat it a tiny bit to return it to a liquid.
Sweeten Summer Drinks With My Grandmother’s Secret: Here are two ideas you can use to make water a little more fun and tasty this summer, so you don’t have to settle for those sugar-water drinks from the store.
If you have kids, you can take whatever fruits they like the best – watermelon, pineapple or even strawberries – and add them to a large pitcher of water the night before. The next day, you’ll have a perfectly naturally-sweetened fruit-flavored drink.
Or you can try my grandmother’s wonderful natural solution. She called it “summer lemonade.” She made it from fresh squeezed lemons, water and a splash of apple juice. She served it over ice with a slice of orange and a slice of lime.
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1 Chung-Jung Chiu. “Dietary Carbohydrate in Relation to Cortical and Nuclear Lens Opacities in the Melbourne Visual Impairment Project.” Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, June 2010, Vol. 51, No. 6.
2 Ringsdorf, W., Cheraskin, E. and Ramsay R. “Sucrose, Neutrophilic Phagocytosis and Resistance to Disease.” Dental Survey. 1976;52(12):46_48.
3 Zhen D, Chen Y, Tang X. “Metformin reverses the deleterious effects of high glucose on osteoblast function.” J Diabetes Complications. 2010 Sep-Oct;24(5):334-44. Epub 2009 Jul 22.
4 Jones TW, Boulware SD, Kraemer DT, Caprio S, Sherwin RS, Tamborlane WV. “Independent effects of youth and poor diabetes control on responses to hypoglycemia in children.” Diabetes. 1991 Mar;40(3):358-63.
5 Stoyanova S, Geuns J, Hideg E, Van Den Ende W. “The food additives inulin and stevioside counteract oxidative stress.” Int J Food Sci Nutr. 2011 May;62(3):207-14.
6 Den Hartog G.J.M. et. al. “Erythritol is a sweet antioxidant.” Nutrition, 2009; 1-10.
7 Prasad V, Jain V, Girish D, Dorle AK. “Wound-healing property of Momordica charantia L. fruit powder.” J Herb Pharmacother. 2006;6(3-4):105-15.
8 D.J. Undersander, W. E. Lueschen, L.H. Smith, A.R. Kaminski, J.D. Doll, K.A. Kelling, and E.S. Oplinger. “Sorghum—for Syrup.” U of Wisc. Alt. Field Crops Manual. Nov. 1990.
