Sugar – how you are consuming it and how is it playing with your health
Have you stopped having those two teaspoonfuls of sugar in your morning tea? Do not feel overjoyed thinking that the perils of consuming sugar will never affect you at all.
You will be surprised to know that your breakfast platter might be filled with sugar! If you consume bread, canned beans, breakfast cereals, low fat yoghurt, granola, rice syrup or protein bars, you are allowing the entry of sugar into the body.
Even the dollop of honey that you add to the glass of lukewarm water every morning for detoxifying yourself is filling up your bloodstream with sugar.
For your information, sugar is not present in foodstuffs that we can see and categorise as storehouses of sugar. There are many of them which are often overlooked as prime sources of sugar. But these food have an equal role in creating health problems due to high sugar content because they contain one form of sugar or the other.
Forms of sugar in food
Now, what does that mean when we say different forms of sugar? To be honest, sugar is just a name for different forms of sugar like sucrose, fructose and glucose. The effect of any form of sugar consumed in any way will be the same. The reason is such foods contain different ratios of glucose and fructose and the health implications of all of these are pretty much identical.
Health concerns sugar can cause
Here are some of the problems that you are subjecting your body to by consuming sugar in different forms and more quantities than recommended:
- Diabetes
High sugar content in the bloodstream spurs blood sugar levels too when food rich in sugar increases above the recommended level.
Sweet foodstuffs are not responsible for spurring blood sugar levels. Starchy foods like potatoes and white, polished rice that are not at all sweet to taste also lead to diabetes.
- Cardiac problems
The vulnerability of cardiac problems increases by 30% to 38% when you consume added sugar regularly for replenishing your body’s calorific needs.
Uncontrolled overdoses of added sugar in the regular diet can also increase the occurrence of deaths due to heart attacks.
- High blood pressure
While salt is considered the major culprit that leads to high blood pressure, the role of sugar is similar to that of salt in this respect.
High levels of glucose in the blood can damage the blood vessels and the nerves that carry blood. The heart finds it difficult to pump blood and strained blood vessels and nerves find it difficult to circulate blood. Eventually, the blood pressure gets elevated.
- Liver diseases
Liver disease is also linked to elevated levels of sugar in the bloodstream.
A healthy liver acts as the storehouse of glucose. But when the glucose level in the blood increases above the recommended level, it gets stored in the liver as the fat cell.
Increased oxidative stress on the liver increases the susceptibility to liver diseases.
- Cancer
Some researchers suggest that cancer cells consider the glucose in the bloodstream a stimulant that supports their growth, survival and metastasis.
This situation is typically associated with Type II diabetes.
- Obesity
While obesity is a global problem now, the role of sugar is imperative in the process.
The fructose contained in sweetened foods is specially responsible for causing obesity.
The presence of excessive fructose increases resistance to appetite regulating hormone known as leptin. As a result, the feeling of hunger increases and the desire to eat more increases. The result is obesity for sure.
How much sugar is good then?
While these recommendations might make you conclude that you have to lead a life where you have to curtail all forms of sweetness, the fact is something else.
You can consume added sugar every day, provided that you maintain its limit of 150 calories per day. So, you can roughly consume 30 grams of free sugar in your food everyday if you are an adult
In the case of children within the age group of 7 to 10 years, the daily consumption of free sugar should be 24 grams.
How to calculate your sugar intake as per this recommendation?
A simple calculation for this is, one teaspoon of sugar is equivalent to 4 grams.
Read the label of every sweetened food products that have been your obsession for so long.
Be careful about your servings, calculate how much of them can you eat in a day and stay immune to a range of diseases.
By
Apara Bhattacharya
Chief of Bureau, INSTANEWSGRAM
Kolkatta