How Sugar's Luring You to an Early Grave
Ways to Reduce Consumption, Plus a Hot Pants Farming Club Pro Tip
Most people don’t understand the devastating effect sugar has on their bodies. After all, isn’t it a source of quick energy and don’t we need energy? You need glucose for metabolic function, yes.
Your body breaks down sugars from the starches, carbohydrates and refined or processed sugars you eat. Once it becomes glucose, it enters your bloodstream and enters our cells. The mitochondria in each cell converts the glucose into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the form of energy our body uses to function. This is high school biology basics.
So What’s the Problem?
We’ve gone from eating mostly whole, natural foods to majority processed and ultra processed food products over the past century. Much of our processed foods are made up of wheat, corn, and sugar. Nearly all corn and wheat grown in North America is contaminated with glyphosate and contains far fewer nutrients compared with that from 150 years ago. These foods bombard the body with excess glucose, which the cell stores as fat.
Most Americans consume some form of processed food daily — boxed macaroni and cheese, pre-made sugar laden condiments, chips, sandwich bread, etc. In the 70s, food manufacturers stopped using cane sugar to sweeten their products and began using high fructose corn syrup. This highly concentrated form of fructose breaks down into compounds which inhibit the enzyme, which signals the liver to create additional mitochondria. This greatly compromises metabolic health.
Find out more about the physiology of this by watching this video featuring Dr. Robert Lustig. It’s a little over an hour, but incredibly informative and it will make you very hesitant to ever eat anything containing sugar again.
Damaged mitochondrial function, according to Dr. Robert Lustig, leads to chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, polycystic ovary syndrome, hormone dysfunction, and more.
Hidden Sugars in Processed Foods
Did you know that 74% of packaged foods contain added sugar? Even worse, food manufacturers often “hide” these sugars in ways that make them difficult to most people to detect, despite including it “in plain sight” in the ingredient list.
Taking the time to read each ingredient list will help you reduce the amount of sugar you consume. But you’ll need to know how to spot the different names used by manufacturers to conceal the added sugar.
Here’s a visual of how much sugar is in a bottle of name brand ketchup or, if you’re weird, catsup.
Here’s a few of over 56 sugars often included in foods at your grocery store:
Agave nectar
Raw sugar
Glucose solids
Evaporated cane juice
Mannose
Dextrose
Fructose
Fruit juice concentrate
Treacle
HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup)
Glucose
Read this List of 56+ Sugars to see all the rest.
Eliminating Dietary Sugar and Improving Your Diet
Most people won’t go so far as to completely eliminate all added sugar from their diets. It’s something we strive to do at our home, but if you’re just now deciding to greatly reduce exposure to sugar, it’s best to start small.
Avoid sugary drinks completely. This includes fresh squeezed fruit juice, sodas, energy drinks — anything with added sugar. Sugary drinks are linked to 180,000 deaths around the globe annually. That statistic is from 2013, so it’s probably higher now.
Know the different names for sugar. Print out and carry a list of the various names food companies use, so you can spot it as you scan ingredient lists.
Eat fresh produce and grass-fed meats. Organic fruits and vegetables that you prepare yourself are one of the easiest ways to improve the way you eat. Grass-fed meat, wild caught fish, etc., are healthier than other varieties. You can get to know your local butcher (not the butcher at the grocery store) and this relationship will go a long way toward supporting your health goals.
Grow your own food. I talk about this all the time. Grow some kind of food. It can be anything. If you live in an apartment, grow things in pots on your balcony. When you grow living food, it empowers you in ways you never imagined. Start now and grow something.
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Eat foods high in antioxidants and fiber. Pomegranates, blueberries, blackberries, kale, and other foods high in antioxidants, especially polyphenols could help repair some of the damage and improve gut health.
Take a quality prebiotic supplement. A prebiotic supplement can add needed support to your gut microbiome.
Our family started our healthy eating journey seven years ago with the Whole30 challenge. After that, we began eating according to the Paleo and Keto diet guidelines. It has transformed our lives. My husband lost 30+ pounds in that first 30 days. I didn’t really need to lost weight, but our new dietary lifestyle greatly improved overall health as well as athletic performance. I’ll never go back.
Pro Tip from the Hot Pants Farming Club
Image of heirloom stevia
You can easily grow stevia in a pot or directly in the ground. Once it’s established and bushes out, harvest a cup or so of the leaves and dehydrate them. Then you can crumble the dried leaves to a fine powder to use as a safe, natural sweetener in your tea or coffee.
I’ll have more Hot Pants Farming Club tips and pictures of the autumn crops next week.
Nailed it!
👏🎯