Sugar. I love it. You love it. Everybody loves it. And guess what? It's poison. How can everybody love something is poison? Because it's very important that we do.In nature there are foods that are very sweet. Examples are certain fruits and vegetables. These foods have certain micronutrients that are important to the human organism, and its the sugar contained in them that ensures we eat them.
All humans are attracted to sugar because we all have some level of addiction to it. We are born that way. When we enter the world we are unaware of what is safe to eat and what is not. We do have some hard-wired instincts however, one of which is that if its sweet, it's good to eat.
Now although sugar is poison to us, we can deal with it when we get it from nature. This is because, in nature at least, sugar is always accompanied by fiber. Sources of sugar such as fruit and vegetables also contain high contents of fiber. This fiber slows down the ingestion of sugar which gives the liver time to process it all.
But we don't live in nature anymore. And we don't get sugar in the form it was once packaged. We now get sugar that has been processed into its purest form. We now get pure sugar. Or in other words, pure poison.
Sugar has a few different forms and they act very differently in the body. The most commonly known are glucose and fructose. These combine to make table sugar. Glucose is the type of sugar that is found in starches such as potatoes and pasta. Fructose is the type of sugar that can be found in fruit and vegetables.
If you were to eat 100 calories of glucose, 80% of it will get used up by the cells in your body and the rest would go to your liver for processing. If on the other hand you were to eat 100 calories of fructose, it would all go to your liver for processing.
Your liver of course is the primary organ in the body that deals with toxins, waste, and poison. The fact that all of fructose goes to the liver is a very telling factor. Our body must deal with it immediately because it can do serious damage in the bloodstream.
We now live in a world where this extremely addictive substance is readily available in its purest form. It's the cheapest drug on the market and it's doing some serious long term damage - obesity, diabetes, and all food related diseases can be attributed to this increase in fructose consumption.
It's not that our livers can't deal with the fructose, it can. But only in the way we were supposed to be eating it. Now there is just too much. It's too easy to digest, and the more we eat the more we want. It's in almost every food, so unless you eat only real food you're probably being poisoned by it.
Sugar is important to our survival, but it's also poisonous in large amounts. You never know how much sugar you are ingesting unless you eat real food. Processed food contains huge amounts of hidden sugar, all of which make them more addicting.
If you can eat sugar as it is found in nature. Fruits, vegetables, starches, honey, maple syrup and any other natural sugars. You don't have to eliminate sugar, just eliminate all the hidden ones. Your body will be able to process it much better and you wont have to worry if what you are eating is good for you or not.
About two weeks ago I felt compelled to give up high fructose corn syrup.Being a serious sugar- aholic, I was feeling all around like CRAP! I knew I needed to lose weight due to back problems, and giving up Coca-Cola would have to be the first thing to go.It’s a talk given by Dr. Robert H. Lustig, MD, a UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth", that made me realize just what I was doing to my body.
You can watch it here via Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
The reasons I love this talk? First: the man’s a doctor at a prestigious university teaching and doing research in the field of endocrinology. If anyone is qualified to speak authoritatively on this subject, it would be him.He tackles not just heart disease, but diabetes, obesity, and high-blood pressure. In other words, he shows the connection between dietary intake of sugar (specifically acute fructose) and the root causes of these diseases of industrialization. Hopefully, it can serve as a wake up call that can start others on the journey to eating Real Food. But, in the very least, it can answer that singular question, “Well, if it’s not cholesterol and saturated fat, what does cause heart disease?”
Then I figured after giving up HFCS, why not take it a step further and cut back on processed carbs that turn into sugar.Turns out eating a South Beach-like diet -- low in carbs, high in protein -- could have effects beyond whitResearchers also tried putting mice that were predisposed to breast cancer on the two diets. During their first year of life, nearly half the mice put on the Western diet went on to develop breast cancer, while none of the mice on the low-carb, high-protein diet developed breast cancer during this time period, according to the study.
And of the mice put on the Western diet, only one was able to reach a normal mouse lifespan of two years, and 70 percent of those mice died from cancer. However, only 30 percent of the mice on the low-carb, high-protein diet went on to develop cancer at all, with more than half of these mice either reaching or aging beyond their normal lifespan, the study said.tling the waistline. It could also reduce cancer risk and slow growth of tumors, according to a new study in mice.
That's because tumor cells are fueled by glucose, researchers said. By decreasing the number of carbs eaten, there is much less glucose in the body that tumors can use to grow.
Restricting carbohydrates also limits the amount of insulin in the body, which is a hormone that has been shown in past studies to promote the growth of tumors in humans and mice, researchers said.