Sugar, also known as "added sugar", can be seen everywhere in our daily life. Flavoring sugar, sweetener, honey and fruit juice are extracted and purified and added to our daily diet, which greatly improves the taste. All kinds of complex and simple carbohydrates are actually composed of sugar molecules. After digestion, they can be hydrolyzed into glucose for cells to generate energy and maintain the operation of our smart brains.
Complex carbohydrates such as whole grains and vegetables, simple carbohydrates are easier to digest and can quickly release sugar into the blood, such as sugar, lactose, sucrose, glucose, artificial corn syrup and other sugars contained in our daily food.
It may be hard for you to imagine that humans only come into contact with sugar in the month when fruits are ripe. About 80 thousand years ago, people could only eat fruit occasionally and taste the sweetness of sugar, because most of the fruit was taken away by birds.
Before16th century, only the rich could afford sugar. But with the colonial trade, sugar gradually became more and more popular. In 1960s, people invented the technology of converting glucose into lactose on a large scale, and on this basis, they invented the concentrate of fructose and glucose-high fructose corn syrup. Many public health advocates believe that high fructose corn syrup is far more harmful to human body than any other sugar. When many people think of the word "sugar", it is the first thing that comes to mind.
Nowadays, we can enjoy enough sugar all year round. In fact, the nutritional value of these sugars is not high, and they are very easy to obtain. Just open a can of drinks or a box of cereal. The sugar intake of modern people is far less healthy than that of ancient times. Nowadays, sugar has become the number one public enemy threatening public health: the government began to tax sugar, schools and hospitals no longer sell candy through vending machines, and experts even suggested that sugar should be completely removed from the daily diet.
The latest research found that people who eat more sugar are more likely to suffer from type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer, but this may not be the fault of eating sugar.
So far, scientists have not been able to prove how much sugar affects health besides excessive calories. A study shows that if the daily intake of fructose exceeds 150g, it will reduce insulin sensitivity, thus increasing the risk of diseases such as hypertension and high cholesterol. However, the researchers also concluded that this usually happens when you consume too many calories in addition to eating a lot of sugar, and the impact on health is more likely because eating sugar will increase the chance of excess calories, not just the role of sugar itself.
In addition, more and more people point out that it is a dangerous practice to "demonize" a certain food, which will lead people to misunderstand and even refuse to eat food necessary for life.
Sugar shock
During the period from 1970 to 1990, the consumption of high fructose corn syrup in the United States increased by 10 times, far exceeding any other food, which coincides with the growth rate of obesity in the United States.
Sugar-containing beverages usually use high fructose corn syrup, which has always been the focus of sugar and health research. A large-scale analysis found that there is a certain correlation between the consumption of sugary drinks and body weight. In other words, people will not reduce their intake of other foods just because they drink more soft drinks and consume more energy, perhaps because these drinks often increase their hunger or reduce their satiety.
However, the researchers concluded that although the intake of soft drinks and the amount of sugar added increased simultaneously with the increase of obesity, the correlation was too wide.
Not everyone agrees that high fructose corn syrup is the main cause of the "obesity crisis". Some experts pointed out that in the past ten years, the consumption of syrup in many countries around the world has been decreasing, but the level of obesity has not decreased but increased. For example, obesity and diabetes are also common in Australia and Europe, where high fructose corn syrup is hardly used.
It can be seen that high fructose glucose syrup is not the only sugar with problems. Other added sugars, especially fructose, are also related to many health problems.
First of all, fructose may easily cause heart disease. When liver cells decompose fructose, one of the final products is triglyceride. This kind of fat will gradually accumulate in liver cells. If it enters the blood, it will accumulate more and more and accumulate on the arterial wall, forming an arterial lump composed of fat.
A study also seems to support this view: compared with people whose daily calorie intake is less than 10% from added sugar, more than 25% people have twice the risk of dying of heart disease. The occurrence of type 2 diabetes is also related to the intake of added sugar. Two large-scale studies in 1990s found that women who drink more than one bottle of soft drinks or fruit juice every day are twice as likely to develop diabetes as women who seldom drink soft drinks.
Sugar is not the direct cause of disease.
But this does not prove that sugar really causes heart disease or diabetes. The main cause of diabetes, obesity and hypertension should be excessive calorie intake, and sugar is only a part of it.
As long as the intake of energy exceeds the consumption of energy, it will cause fat accumulation, insulin resistance and fatty liver in the long run, which has nothing to do with diet structure. If someone's energy consumption is large and his calorie intake is in line with an appropriate level, even if his diet contains a lot of fructose or other sugars, his body will not be unbearable.
For example, the sugar intake of athletes is often higher than that of ordinary people, but the probability of suffering from cardiovascular diseases is very low, because the excess fructose intake will be metabolized during exercise, thus increasing their sports performance.
In general, the evidence that adding sugar directly leads to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity or cancer is still weak. Indeed, a large intake of sugar is often related to these diseases, but clinical trials have not proved that sugar is the direct cause of diseases.
People always think that eating sugar is addictive, but this may not be the case. A study published on 20 17 pointed out that rats will have a sugar withdrawal reaction, and people think that sugar will have similar effects to cocaine, such as making people extremely eager to eat sugar. However, the academic community generally believes that this article has signs of misinterpretation. One criticism points out that these mice are strictly restricted to eat sugar for only two hours a day. But if rats were allowed to eat sugar at any time like humans, they would not have this addictive reaction.
But other studies have also examined the effects of sugar on the brain. For example, the researchers analyzed the relationship between the intake of sugary drinks and brain health indicators. It turns out that people who drink soft drinks and fruit juice usually have smaller brains and worse memories. Compared with people who don't drink at all, people who drink two cans of drinks a day are two years older than the former. However, because the experiment only measured the intake of fruit juice, it is uncertain whether sugar is the only factor affecting brain health. People who drink fruit juice or soft drinks often have other diet or lifestyle habits that affect brain health, such as little exercise and so on.
A recent study found that sugar can even improve the memory and physical function of the elderly. The researchers first asked some subjects to drink a drink containing a small amount of glucose, and then asked them to complete various memory tasks. Other subjects drank drinks containing artificial sweeteners as the control group. The researchers evaluated participants' participation, memory scores and their views on subjective feelings and efforts. The results show that sugar intake can better arouse the enthusiasm of the elderly and make them do their best to complete the task without feeling that they have made more efforts. The increase of blood sugar level also makes them feel happier in the task.
It is not advisable to "demonize" sugar.
Although the current guidelines suggest that the calories provided by adding sugar should not exceed 5% of the total calories consumed in a single day, nutritionists point out that a truly healthy and balanced diet varies from person to person.
Athletes need to consume more sugar during high-intensity training, because sugar is easily digested at this time. But they also worry that their sugar intake exceeds the guidelines. For us ordinary people, adding sugar is really not an essential component of a healthy diet. But some experts warn that we should not regard them as poisons and avoid them.
We shouldn't label food as "good" or "bad", which is unhealthy. Turning sugar into taboo will only increase its temptation. Once you tell yourself that you can't eat something, you will want to eat it especially, so I will never say that there are too many foods, only that some foods have no nutritional value, but even so, they will have other values.
Allen, an associate professor at James Madison University, has been studying the relationship between religion and science. He believes that the reason why we regard sugar as a demon is simple: historically, human beings have always demonized what they find most irresistible. Now, we demonize sugar, hoping to cultivate our self-control in the face of desire.
Sugar can bring a strong sense of pleasure, so we have to regard it as a strong evil. When we look at things from a good or bad perspective, we can't imagine that this evil can exist in a form between good and bad. This is our attitude towards sugar.
Looking at things with this extreme attitude will make us anxious about our diet and think hard about what we should eat every day. Eliminating sugar intake may even be counterproductive, because you may replace sugar with foods with higher calories.
In addition, when discussing sugar, we often confuse foods and drinks containing added sugar but lacking other essential nutrients with healthy foods containing sugar. The difference between the two makes Tina, a 28-year-old Swede, nervous. She once thought that all sugar was unhealthy, so she adopted a vegetarian diet with high protein and fat, and as a result, she suffered from eating disorders.
"When I started vomiting after eating, I knew I couldn't go on like this. I was afraid to eat all kinds of sugar since I was a child. But I later realized that added sugar is different from carbohydrate sugar, so I started to adopt a diet with high fructose and high starch to absorb natural sugar from fruits, vegetables, starch and beans. " "From the first day I started eating like this, it was like the dark clouds dispersed. I finally provided enough fuel for cells, which came from glucose, carbohydrates and sugars. "
Although people don't know how different kinds of sugar affect health, ironically, we'd better think less about it. We always complicate the problem of nutrition, because in the final analysis, everyone wants to feel fuller, more perfect and more successful, but this situation does not actually exist.
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