Sugar – A Sweet Invitation to Disease

For several million years, humans existed on a diet of animals and vegetation. It was only with the advent of agriculture a mere 10,000 years ago – a fraction of a second in evolutionary time – that humans began ingesting large amounts of sugar and starch in the form of grains (and potatoes) into their diets. Indeed, 99.99% of our genes were formed before the advent of agriculture. In biological terms, our bodies are still those of hunter-gatherers.

Quantities of refined sugar came into the human diet after the process of making sugar by evaporating juice from sugar cane was developed in India about 500 BC.

Today’s average American teenager slurps down more than 120-170 pounds of sugar a year, depending upon whose statistics you believe.

We call sugar “empty calories,” but it is actually worse than that because sugar leaches the body of precious vitamins and minerals. The sudden shock of a heavy intake of sugar disrupts the pH balance of the blood which has a very narrow range of acceptability. The body then mobilizes neutral acids and minerals including sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium in an attempt to correct the pH balance. Eating sugar every day exacerbates the problem – producing a continuously over-acid condition, which means that more and more minerals are required from deep within the body to rectify the imbalance. Ultimately, so much calcium is taken from the teeth and bones that decay and general weakening begin.

Meanwhile, because the sugar intake produces a surge in insulin production, the body assumes that plenty of energy is readily available, so it stops burning fat and starts storing it. High insulin levels suppress the hormone glucagon and growth hormones that are responsible for burning fat and sugar and promoting muscle development, respectively. When the insulin surge causes too much blood sugar to be transported out of our blood, then blood sugar levels drop below normal. We feel tired and hungry, and are tempted to reach for another candy bar. Over time, the drain on the body from having to produce so much insulin to regulate blood sugar level leads first to low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) from having to produce so much insulin, then to insulin resistance (high insulin but normal blood sugar) from the excessive production of insulin, and then to type II diabetes, when insulin production can no longer keep up with demand.

Yet we are drawn to sugar because of a predisposition for sweet foods.

Seventeenth century Doctor James Hart warned that “sugar rots the teeth, making them look black, and, withal, causes many times a loathsome stinking breath.”

Sir Frederick Banting, the co-discoverer of insulin, noticed in 1929 in Panama that diabetes was common among sugar plantation owners who ate large amounts of their refined sugar. Among native cane-cutters he saw no diabetes; they chewed the raw cane that still had all the inherent nutrients.

In 1975, William Dufty wrote a landmark book, Sugar Blues, warning us that our sugar habit was deadly:¹

“Excess sugar eventually affects every organ in the body. Initially, it is stored in the liver in the form of glucose (glycogen). Since the liver's capacity is limited, a daily intake of refined sugar (above the required amount of natural sugar) soon makes the liver expand like a balloon. When the liver is filled to its maximum capacity, the excess glycogen is returned to the blood in the form of fatty acids. These are taken to every part of the body and stored in the most inactive areas: the belly, the buttocks, the breasts and the thighs. When these comparatively harmless places are completely filled, fatty acids are then distributed among active organs, such as the heart and kidneys. These begin to slow down; finally their tissues degenerate and turn to fat. The whole body is affected by their reduced ability, and abnormal blood pressure is created.
     “The parasympathetic nervous system is affected; and organs governed by it, such as the small brain [cerebellum], become inactive or paralysed. (Normal brain function is rarely thought of as being as biologic as digestion.) The circulatory and lymphatic systems are invaded, and the quality of the red corpuscles starts to change. An overabundance of white cells occurs, and the creation of tissue becomes slower. Our body's tolerance and immunising power becomes more limited, so we cannot respond properly to extreme attacks, whether they be cold, heat, mosquitoes or microbes.
     “The ‘quick’ energy we feel after eating sugar is based on the fact that refined sucrose is not digested in the mouth or the stomach but passes directly to the lower intestines and thence to the bloodstream. The extra speed with which sucrose enters the bloodstream does more harm than good.
     “When sugars are eaten with other foods – perhaps meat and bread in a sandwich – they are held up in the stomach for a while. The sugar in the bread and the Coke sit there with the hamburger and the bun waiting for them to be digested. While the stomach is working on the animal protein and the refined starch in the bread, the addition of the sugar practically guarantees rapid acid fermentation under the conditions of warmth and moisture existing in the stomach. When starches and complex sugars (like those in honey and fruits) are digested, they are broken down into simple sugars called ‘monosaccharides’, which are usable substances-nutriments. When starches and sugars are taken together and undergo fermentation, they are broken down into carbon dioxide, acetic acid, alcohol and water. With the exception of the water, all these are unusable substances – poisons.
      “When proteins are digested, they are broken down into amino acids, which are usable substances – nutriments. When proteins are taken with sugar, they putrefy; they are broken down into a variety of ptomaines and leucomaines, which are nonusable substances -- poisons. Enzymic digestion of foods prepares them for use by our body. Bacterial decomposition makes them unfit for use by our body. The first process gives us nutriments; the second gives us poisons.”

Today around the world, diabetes is called the sugar disease.

“I’m concerned for virtually every country where there’s modernization going on, because of the diabetes that follows,” said Dr. Paul Zimmet, the director of the International Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia. “I’m fearful of the resources ever being available to address it.”²

Sugar is addictive, and addictive substances are never easy to address.

We could easily list 100 ways sugar is destructive to the body – here are ten:

1. Sugar consumption requires the body to produce more and more insulin to keep blood sugar levels in balance which eventually exhausts the body’s ability at which point we give a diagnosis of diabetes.
2. Sugar dehydrates newborns.³
3. Sugar can suppress the immune system and impair defenses against infectious disease.^4,5,
4. Sugar upsets the mineral relationships in the body: causes chromium and copper deficiencies and interferes with absorption of calcium and magnesium.⁶
5. Sugar can cause can cause a rapid rise of adrenaline, hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children.⁷
6. In Los Angeles juvenile rehabilitation camps, when children were put on a low sugar diet, there was a 44 percent drop in antisocial behavior.⁸
7. Sugar feeds cancer cells. Otto Warburg, Ph.D., won the Nobel Prize in medicine when he discovered that cancer cells use glucose (sugar) for growth. All cells have a requirement for glucose, but cancer cells consume as much as 4 to 5 times more glucose than normal, healthy cells. In fact, they're unable to multiply rapidly without it.⁹
8. Sugar makes us stupid. The key to orderly brain function is glutamic acid, a vital compound directed by B vitamins. B vitamins are manufactured by symbiotic bacteria which live in our intestines. When refined sugar is taken daily, these bacteria wither and die, and our stock of B vitamins gets very low. Too much sugar and our ability to calculate and remember is lost.¹⁰
9. Sugar can elevate glucose and insulin responses in women who use oral contraceptives.¹¹
10. Sugar can impair the structure of DNA.¹²

One reason for everyone over 35 to avoid sugar: It is the most significant physical factor that accelerates aging. Call it the anti-fountain of youth. How? Sugar attaches itself to proteins and then forms new substances called advanced glycation end-products (AGEs). The higher the AGE levels, the faster we age. Sugar also produces free radicals which accelerate the aging process.

Where is refined sugar found? In the sugar bowl, the icing on the pastry, spaghetti sauce, candy, soda pop, flavored bottled waters, fruit juice, salad dressings, ketchup, in the coating on the French fries, baked beans, soups, cereals, cough syrup; these are obvious places. We also find it in some not so obvious places:

• MILK. Chances are better than 90% that the container of milk in your refrigerator is from the grocery store and it has been pasteurized and homogenized. Raw milk has sugar in the form of lactose which is absorbed slowly. In fact, drinking raw milk actually can reduce blood sugar levels. Heating milk however changes the lactose into beta lactose, an unnatural form of sugar which is absorbed very quickly, triggering a release of insulin. Pasteurized milk is mucus forming, raw is not. ^13,14.
       The thought of drinking milk straight from the cow probably horrifies you. “The germs will kill me!” you’ve been taught to think. Well, consider that for tens of thousands of years, that is exactly how mankind drank milk from animals. It wasn’t until people moved into the cities in the early 1900s that cows were shoved into confinement dairies with city filth and unnatural feed. “Sterilizing” milk seemed to have merit. But no longer. Since 1970, there are more documented cases of illness from pasteurized milk than from raw milk.
       Dr. William Campbell Douglass wrote a book well worth reading entitled “The Milk Book” where he explains how pasteurization and homogenization creates a food with almost no positive nutritional value, and one high in a bad form of sugar. He also makes a compelling case that 80 years of pasteurized and homogenized milk set the stage for the rise in many chronic diseases we see today.¹⁵
  
  
• BREADS, PASTAS & PASTRIES. Next time you see a hamburger, picture the meat patty sandwiched between two disks of sugar. Highly processed carbs like “enriched” breads (including hamburger buns) are so stripped of nutrients, fiber – anything that slows absorption – that the body processes them like sugar. Processed breads, etc., cause insulin levels to surge just as a candy bar would. So, think outside the bun and ask for that hamburger to be served on a plate please, with lettuce, onions and tomato on the side.
  
  
• LOW FAT FOODS. Fat gives taste. Remove the fat, and, well, the food is tasteless. So food manufacturers add sugar. Compare the labels for example as to sugar content on regular peanut butter with “low fat” peanut butter. There will be more sugar in the low fat version. Next, do the comparison with the low fat salad dressings. Low fat food will cause you to gain weight, not so much because of the calories in the extra sugar, but because of the insulin surge triggered. Also, without fat to give the stomach that “I’m satiated, I’m full” feeling, you want to eat more. Low fat foods can actually make you hungrier.
  
  
• ALMOST ALL MANUFACTURED FOOD. If you look on the label of almost any manufactured food, sugar appears somewhere in the list of ingredients. It may be called sugar, sucrose, glucose, galactose, or almost any other –ose, but it’s still sugar.
  
  
• NO SUGAR ADDED. The use of concentrated fruit juice is still another form of fructose (sugar).

All baby formulas contain added sugars; babies need the sugar to digest the proteins in cow's milk or soy. Lactose as is the natural sugar in milk. Most organic brands use lactose extracted from organic milk, but global supply and demand has driven up the price. "Similac Organic" made headlines because it came out in 2006 using cane sugar, also called sucrose.

"I would be very concerned about this as a pediatrician," said Dr. Benjamin Caballero, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an expert in risk factors for childhood obesity. "The issue is that sweet tastes tend to encourage consumption of excessive amounts," Dr. Caballero said. Evidence shows that babies and children will always show a preference for the sweetest food available, he said, and they will eat more of it than they would of less-sweet food.^15a

In Europe, where sudden increases in childhood obesity are a pressing public health issue, sucrose-sweetened formulas will be banned by the end of 2009.

The Danish government has banned fortification – the addition of vitamins and minerals – of sugary breakfast foods so that manufacturers cannot appear to make sugary and fatty foods appear more healthy by merely sprinkling a few (usually synthetic) vitamins around.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

Perhaps more ubiquitous in processed foods than refined sugar is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). It is a concentrated fructose sugar, very sweet, and mixes well in many foods. Food manufacturers, soda pop makers especially, began using HFCS widely in the early 1970s because it is cheaper than sugar.

Many call it the worst of all non-synthetic sweeteners because it is metabolized to fat in your body far more rapidly than any other sugar, and most of it is made from genetically modified corn which has it own set of health concerns.

HFCS has been identified as one of the reasons for the rise in obesity. The state of Florida even went so far as trying to ban HFCS from schools in 2006, but the legislation was never signed into law.

The PR spin is that HFCS is no more harmful than sugar. Many groups, such as the Grocery Manufacturers of America (whose members include Coca-Cola and Kellogg), have been formed to downplay the dangers of sweeteners because they know most of us are addicted and will buy based upon our taste buds, not our intelligence.

In animal studies, the Department of Nutrition at the University of California, Davis (UCD) found that fructose consumption contributes to insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, high blood pressure, and elevated levels of triglycerides. And although the data in humans is not quite as conclusive as the animal trials, the researchers report that a high intake of fructose may increase body weight and encourage insulin resistance, both of which are risk factors for type 2 diabetes.¹⁶

Researchers at Rutgers University discovered that beverages made with high fructose corn syrup contain high levels of reactive carbonyls, a free radical linked to tissue damage, the development of diabetes, and the occurrence of diabetes complications. A single can of soda contains about five times the concentration of reactive carbonyls than the concentration found in the blood of an adult person with diabetes.^16A

HFCS also triggers the “browning reaction” where certain carbohydrate molecules bind with proteins and cause aging. It's sometimes called the Maillard reaction. It changes the structure of enzymes and other proteins, resulting in tissue and organ damage.

According to the Weston A. Price Foundation, the browning reaction occurs with any sugar, but with fructose it happens seven times faster than it does with glucose.¹⁷

As consumers learn more about HFCS, they are saying in surveys that they don't want it. And food manufacturers are listening.

A 2007 International Food Information Council Foundation study found that 60 percent of American consumers said they were trying to consume less high fructose corn syrup.

According to Datamonitor's Productscan Online, 146 new food and beverage products have been launched worldwide in 2007 proclaiming that they are HFCS-free. ^17A

This compares to just 54 products that announced they were HFCS-free in 2006 and 53 products that made the same claim in 2005.

Sugar Substitutes

As the American waistline enlarged, food producers came up with “no-calorie” sweeteners. A public relations war unmatched since the introduction of fluoride in city water supplies was begun.

Today, you can see the results of it fairly clearly.

Today, you’ll see endorsements for artificial sugars from various mainstream groups saying they are “considered ‘free foods’ because they don't count as a carbohydrate, a fat or any other exchange.” Take for example the American Diabetes Association (ADA). This organization gives its endorsement to:

• Saccharin (Sweet'N Low)
• Aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal)
• Acesulfame potassium (Sunett)
• Sucralose (Splenda)¹⁸

The December 2006 issue of the ADA’s journal Diabetes has an article on a research study showing that an intake of 200 grams of sugar per day has no effect on insulin sensitivity.¹⁹

Let’s look a bit behind the scenes.

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) receives some of its funding from the aspartame manufacturers. So, too, do many medical journals which carry reports on the subject. The ADA's corporate sponsors include Cadbury-Schweppes (the world's largest candy maker), General Mills, Kraft Foods, and too many pharmaceutical companies to count.²⁰ Conflicts of interest? That study which said there was no effect on insulin was conducted in 6 weeks time. Insulin sensitivity takes years to develop. And 13 people made up the study. Steven Hunter, lead researcher for the Belfast team, told Food Navigator USA, "Sugar has traditionally been linked to the development of diabetes. These findings challenge that thinking." Does that sound like a valid study or a public relations ploy?

The ADA was founded in 1940 to provide “diabetes research, information and advocacy.” Since 1940 the number of people who have developed diabetes has skyrocketed. The effort does not sound very successful, does it? On their website, the ADA states the idea that eating sugar leads to Type II Diabetes is a myth.²¹ What does the ADA make of the September 2006 New York Times piece on how sugar is creating an epidemic of Type II Diabetes in India and around the world? The “sugar disease” they call it.²²

In November 2006, the New York Times front page questioned the ADA’s ethics. The organization took $23 million in 2005 from drug and food companies, especially food companies whose primary business is selling products high in calories.²³ “Maybe the American Diabetes Association should rename itself the American Junk Food Association,” said Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group.

Perhaps someone should inform the ADA that carbohydrates turn into sugar when digested.

It’s not just the ADA. Many of the so-called health organizations are beholden to corporate sponsors who are often big food and pharmaceutical companies. Public Relations or advertising masquerading as research keeps the messages confusing. People don’t know what change to make for the better, so they keep doing the same thing and that keeps the bottom line intact for the big food and pharmaceutical companies.

If the ADA won’t speak clearly about the dangers of refined sugar, it’s no wonder it endorses sugar substitutes.

The FDA has received more complaints about aspartame than any other food additive. Groups have demanded its recall. In 2006, the Ramazzini study – peer reviewed by 7 world experts – showed conclusively aspartame is a multipotential carcinogen causing leukemia, lymphoma, kidney cancer and cancer of the cranial peripheral nerves.

Dr. James Bowen recalls, "I was one of only two independent scientists who ever read the original aspartame toxicity studies from FDA files. They were done at only 1/1000th the legally requisite dose. In that minuscule dosage the rat brain cancer was the worst ever caused by any chemical ever tested at any dosage! When they marketed aspartame for soft drinks in 1983, the next six months saw a 10% jump in the US brain tumor rate, and also a 30% jump in the incidence of new cases of diabetes.” ²⁴

Food and beverages containing phenylalanine, the major ingredient in aspartame, must be labeled due to the genetic disorder, phenylketonuria (PKU). People with this genetic disorder lack the enzyme needed to metabolize phenylalanine and therefore it accumulates in the body and, according to Dr. H. J. Roberts, can cause severe mental retardation.

Dr. H. J. Roberts has researched and written extensively about aspartame. He feels the so-called early-onset of Parkinson’s disease, Gulf War syndrome, and other neurological disorders are triggered by a generous consumption of diet soda.

Saccharin, cyclamate and acesulfame-K have all been shown to cause cancer in animals.²⁵ For a time, the government required a label on saccharin, warning consumers that it could cause cancer.

The newest sugar substitute on the block is Splenda. To make Splenda, a molecule of sugar is chemically manipulated to accept three chlorine atoms. Natural sugar when turned into Splenda becomes a chlorocarbon, in the family of chlorodane, lindane and DDT. “Splenda shares many similar characteristics to pesticides like DDT that can accumulate in your body fat and tissues,” warns Dr. Joseph Mercola. “It is impossible to predict the long-term consequences of ingesting this substance over many years. If you think that just because the FDA approved it, that it is safe ... think again. I can assure you that it had far less review than Vioxx, which was approved by the FDA and that drug killed 55,000 people.” ²⁶

Refined sugar is the lesser of the evils.

To put it another way, if you must have a soda, don’t make it a diet soda. Remember that the typical 12-ounce can of soda pop has 10 teaspoons of sugar in it.

Fortunately, there are some safe sweeteners to choose from including stevia, lo-han, Just Like Sugar, and xylitol. For further reading on these sweeteners, see
http://www.justlikesugarinc.com/
http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/sugarfree_blues.html